Most minds scream in dreams.
Some whisper.
But this one… this one was silent.
---
Kai drifted down the synaptic slide into another host's subconscious, expecting the usual chaos — flickers of memory, irrational logic, metaphors made of trauma.
Instead, he landed in a void.
Black. Cold. Still.
No wind.
No thoughts.
No center.
He blinked.
Check-in protocols ran through his skull.
> [Target Sync: #0000]
[Name: Unknown]
[Dream State: Inactive]
[WARNING: Null-state detected.]
[Dreambind: N/A]
"What…?" Kai murmured.
No Dreambind.
No pathway.
No anything.
This was impossible.
---
Everyone dreams.
Even the broken ones.
Even the dead sometimes echo.
But this man — this subject — was empty.
Like a machine that forgot how to sleep.
Or worse…
Like someone who'd given their dreams away.
Kai's pulse quickened.
He moved forward through the dark — trying to conjure some sense of terrain, some reaction, even a phantom.
Nothing responded.
Until something blinked behind him.
He turned.
And saw himself.
Not a mirror.
Not a projection.
An exact copy of Kai stood there — older. Paler. With completely white eyes.
"Who—" Kai started.
The double spoke at the same time.
> "Who are you?"
Both voices echoed, overlapped, twisted.
The doppelgänger blinked — and shivered.
Not like he was cold.
Like he was waking up.
---
Suddenly, the space rippled.
Black turned to gray. A field of withered trees grew from nowhere.
All leafless. All identical.
Each tree had a single item hanging from its branches:
Photographs.
Thousands of them.
And in every one — the same man.
The Host.
Face blurred. Standing. Always staring.
In cities, ruins, hospital rooms, battlefields, deserts.
Unaging. Unchanging. Unreal.
Kai whispered, "He's… everywhere."
The doppelgänger Kai didn't speak. He was staring at the sky — which had begun to crack.
From the cracks oozed not light, but paper.
Old. Torn. Handwritten.
They fell like ash.
Kai caught one.
It read:
> "The first door opened by mistake. I did not mean to stay here."
"But the Archivist gave me a name. And I forgot my own."
His blood ran cold.
The figure he saw last chapter — the one with the book of teeth — The Archivist.
This dream — this mind — wasn't empty.
It was archived.
---
The Kai-double turned suddenly.
Its eyes were now mouths.
All whispering the same phrase:
> "No escape. No escape. No escape."
Then it screamed.
Not with sound — but with memories.
Kai collapsed.
---
He saw:
A door in the sky.
A young boy pulling out his own Dreambind, tearing it from his chest.
The Archivist watching silently, writing his screams into the book.
An entire city inside a dream. Not made by the Labyrinth — but by a single sleeper.
The dreamer was not a victim.
He was the source.
---
Kai gasped awake — inside the mind again.
But the trees were burning now.
Each photograph screamed as the fire ate them.
And standing at the center was the man himself.
Host #0000.
His face… finally visible.
It was… Kai's.
But older. Hollow. Eyes like holes in reality.
> "You found me," he said.
> "And now you'll never leave."
---
Kai activated emergency override — tried to snap the tether between himself and the host.
Nothing happened.
The system returned:
> [Unable to Disconnect.]
[This Dream has no surface.]
[You are not invading. You are being absorbed.]
He tried again.
And again.
> [Error: You are now part of Subject #0000.]
The man stepped closer.
Kai screamed and slashed the Echo Blade toward him — but it passed through, as if slicing smoke.
The man touched Kai's chest.
And Kai's memories began to bleed out again.
This time faster.
---
A girl's name — gone.
A promise — gone.
The reason he started all of this — gone.
Kai collapsed to his knees.
The man smiled.
> "You'll forget everything," he said.
> "Until you remember… that you were me."
---
Then — a new voice.
Feminine. Sharp. Cold.
Like glass breaking underwater.
> "Step away from him."
Light pierced the dream.
A sword made of starlight slashed down between them.
The man hissed — recoiling — his form cracking like porcelain.
The dream began to break apart — shatter outward.
Someone grabbed Kai's arm.
"Wake up, idiot," she said.
And pulled.
---
Kai awoke — gasping, drenched in sweat — back in the Waking Realm.
For the first time in days.
He fell off the cot in his hideout, crashing onto concrete.
A pair of boots stepped into his view.
He looked up.
The girl had silver hair tied back in a loose braid, eyes like faded embers, and a scar running down her neck like someone had tried to erase her once.
She flicked the Dreambind crystal in her palm — a jagged thing glowing dark purple.
> "Name's Lira," she said.
> "You're not the only Sleepless anymore."