The rails groaned as the train pulled into the broken platform.
Nameless stood alone—no conductor, no crowd, only the whistle of a breeze that shouldn't exist in a dream. The train itself was enormous, longer than any building he could remember seeing, and yet it shimmered at the edges, its form incomplete, wavering like a painting half-dreamt.
Its surface was mirrored metal—a hundred windows and none showed the same reflection. Some showed him, others showed her. A few showed the world burning under a sunless sky.
Above the doors, flickering letters scrawled in and out of focus:
Line 0
No Stops. No Time. No Passengers.
And yet the doors slid open with a hiss, revealing a carriage lit by crimson gas lamps, their glow falling unevenly across plush, velvet-covered seats, many of which were—
Occupied.
Nameless froze.
Each seat contained a figure, motionless.
Some faced forward. Some turned toward the windows.
Each had a stitched mouth and shadowed eyes.
Each wore a different uniform from different eras.
A plague doctor's robe. A silver-buttoned military jacket. A scholar's academic sash. A child's paper crown, stained with ink.
And every one of them looked just a little like him.
"You were always going to sit down," whispered a voice from behind.
He turned.
The dream-woman stood in the aisle now, dressed not in tatters but in mourning black, a lace veil hiding her eyes. Her lips were whole. Painted deep violet.
But she wasn't smiling anymore.
"This is your lineage," she said, gesturing to the passengers. "The echoes of names you almost were. The ones you forgot. The ones you'll become."
"What is this place?"
"The Interstice. Where dreams that shouldn't exist go to wait for the end that never comes."
"Why am I here?"
She stepped forward.
The lights flickered.
"Because you left the door open."
Her hand extended.
Inside her palm sat a small, ticking object—a silver pocket watch. The same one that once hung in the sky above Lucien's fractured dream. Its hands spun slowly backward.
"This is your debt."
Nameless hesitated. "To you?"
"No," she said, placing the watch gently in his palm. "To the dream that bore you."
The moment the metal touched his skin, he remembered.
A Sliver of the Past: Not His, But Close
A candlelit room. A mirror cracked along the center. A young man—Lucien—writing frantically into a ledger, the words bleeding off the page like water down a drain.
On the desk beside him, a bottle of violet perfume. Half-empty.
Behind him, a girl laughs softly.
"What are you trying to trap in there, Luce?" she says. "A god or a ghost?"
Lucien doesn't answer.
Because he's crying.
Not from fear.
But from knowing he's almost done being real.
Nameless gasped.
The vision tore away like old wallpaper, leaving only the endless humming of the train. The silver watch in his hand stopped ticking.
Elira's voice echoed in his head—though she was miles away.
"You're anchoring. Don't lose yourself in the dreamline…"
The dream-woman stepped back into shadow.
"The first name is free," she whispered. "The second will cost."
"And the third?"
"Will erase everything else."
The train shuddered.
It began to move, though no engine could be heard.
Nameless stumbled, catching himself on a rail.
He looked at the seats.
Then down the aisle.
A single empty seat waited at the far end, across from a darkened window that showed no reflection at all.
He walked toward it, slow and deliberate, the dream pulling at him from all sides now.
When he sat down, the silver watch vanished from his hand.
In its place—
A single card.
Tarot-shaped.
No name. No number.
Just a blank face… and his own reflection, faint, just below the surface.
The train picked up speed.
Outside the windows, the dream twisted.
Buildings collapsed inward. Moons blinked open and shut. Rivers of ink flowed uphill. Statues wept feathers.
And then—
The sound returned.
That low, familiar bell.
Not from ahead.
From behind.
Chasing the train.
The Bell That Has No Name was following him.
Nameless looked around the car.
The stitched-mouthed passengers had opened their eyes.
And they were all staring at him now.
"You are the echo," they whispered in unison. "You are the crack. You are the Dream That Cannot Wake."
He stood.
The aisle warped beneath his feet. The car stretched, folding inward like a page turning itself.
Ahead—another door appeared.
Smaller.
Brass and leather, etched with Lucien's initials.
He ran for it.
The stitched ones reached.
Their fingers passed through him.
But he felt it—each touch a memory extracted. His first breath. A sunrise. A name he once liked. Gone.
He slammed into the door—
And it opened.
Back in Vinterra
Elira was waiting outside the sanctum gate when he reappeared.
One second the shadows were empty.
The next—Nameless fell out of thin air, gasping, clutching the tarot card in one hand and a burning mark on his chest: three lines, now wrapped in spirals.
She caught him, barely keeping them both upright.
"You were gone two minutes," she said, eyes wide.
"It was longer," he gasped.
"Where?"
"The train… the passengers… the watch… she—"
She pressed her fingers to his forehead.
Felt the tremor.
The fever.
The echo.
"You're mutating again," she whispered. "Dreams aren't supposed to loop back like this. You're building something."
"What am I building?"
Her eyes darkened.
"A new path. One that doesn't exist yet."
Nameless looked at his hand.
The tarot card had vanished.
Only the mark remained.
And the whispers had returned.
You are no longer walking the Pathless. You are writing it.