The storm was gone, but its echo still hummed in the air.
A soft vibration trembled beneath Ethan's feet, not quite thunder, not quite silence.
He breathed slowly, letting the dizziness fade. Dogger walked ahead, scanning the horizon with sharp, flickering eyes.
The dream around them was broken, fragments of worlds overlapping like shattered mirrors.
One moment, the ground looked like cracked marble. The next, it rippled into sand dunes beneath a pale sun that wasn't there a second ago.
Buildings appeared in flashes — a road sign, a window, then nothing again.
Ethan frowned.
"Where… are we now?"
Dogger didn't look back. "Nowhere stable. When you break a piece of the dream, it tries to fix itself. That's what we're walking through, a patchwork of repairs."
Ethan kicked a small stone, watching it fall through the floor and vanish like smoke.
"So, it's fixing itself because of me?"
Dogger gave a dry laugh. "Because of what you did. You shook the code, kid."
They walked in silence. The air shimmered faintly with static, the horizon bending and straightening like a heartbeat. Ethan felt it — the dream wasn't quiet anymore. It was watching.
After a while, Dogger slowed.
He pointed toward an old diner half-sunk into fog. The sign above it flickered between names that didn't make sense — Moonlight Café, The Edge, ECHO_01.
"Rest stop," Dogger said, pushing the door open.
Inside, the diner looked alive and dead at the same time. Plates sat on the tables, steaming faintly. A radio whispered softly, but the voice kept repeating the same line:
"Wake up… wake up…"
Ethan's eyes followed a flicker in the corner. A woman sat in one of the booths, her face blurred. She was laughing with someone invisible — then, in an instant, both vanished.
"What was that?" Ethan whispered.
Dogger slid into a seat, motioning for him to do the same.
"Echoes," he said. "Fragments of other dreamers' thoughts. Emotions that never found their way home."
"So they're… people?"
"Not anymore." Dogger's tone was flat. "Just memories that don't know they're gone."
Ethan's throat tightened. He looked around; everything felt half-alive, like the place was pretending to remember life.
"This world's wrong," he muttered.
Dogger gave a crooked smile. "Welcome to the afterimage of a million sleeping minds."
They sat in silence for a while. The hum of the lights mixed with the sound of wind outside. Then Ethan asked quietly,
"How do I control it? The storm, the things I create — how do I stop breaking everything?"
Dogger leaned back, watching the ceiling flicker.
"You don't stop. You focus. The mind's the architect of everything here — power comes from belief, but belief without control…"
He snapped his fingers. The radio sparked and died. "…is just noise."
Ethan exhaled, trying to steady his thoughts.
He closed his eyes, imagined a glass of water. Nothing.
Then, he pictured thunder — the sound, the weight, the pulse of it.
A low rumble answered. The lights dimmed, and a small spark of lightning flashed across the diner's ceiling.
Ethan flinched. "That… wasn't supposed to happen."
Dogger laughed quietly. "Guess you're better at storms than soft thoughts."
For a moment, they both smiled — brief, human.
Then Ethan leaned forward, voice lower now.
"You said I shook the code. What if it breaks again? What if this place falls apart because of me?"
Dogger's eyes softened for the first time. "Kid, this place was broken long before you showed up. You just made it scream loud enough for everyone to hear."
He took a slow breath. "The Architect built this world to keep people asleep. But every now and then, something changes — someone like you shows up and starts tearing at the seams."
Ethan frowned. "Someone like me?"
Dogger looked away. "A dreamer who doesn't know when to wake up."
That line hung heavy between them.
Ethan tapped the table. "And you? What are you?"
Dogger's grin was faint. "A bug that learned how to think. The dream made me… but it also forgot to delete me."
Ethan studied him. "So you're not real."
Dogger shrugged. "Neither are you. Not here."
The silence stretched — thick, uneasy, honest.
Then the lights flickered again — harder this time. The hum in the air deepened.
Dogger's grin faded. "That's not me."
Outside, the sky twisted. A ripple of shadow spread across the horizon, warping the ground.
Ethan felt the air tighten like the world had suddenly stopped breathing.
"What's happening?"
Dogger stood slowly, eyes narrowing.
"Something's coming. The dream noticed us."
Ethan frowned. "The Architect?"
Dogger shook his head. "No. One of his hounds. A Warden."
The word felt heavy in the air, as if the dream itself recoiled from it.
Dogger's voice lowered to a whisper.
"They erase things that don't belong. And right now, that's us."
Ethan's pulse quickened. "Erase?"
"From existence," Dogger said simply, turning toward the door. Static rippled over his shoulders. "If it finds us, you'll wish you never woke up."
He glanced back at Ethan. "Time to move."
They stepped outside. The world was darker now, pulsing like a broken signal.
In the far distance, something stirred — tall, humanoid, and wrapped in black smoke.
Its head twitched like a broken marionette; faint whispers leaked from the air around it — the same voice from the radio, looping endlessly:
Wake up. Wake up.
Ethan's breath caught. "That's it, isn't it?"
Dogger's expression hardened. "Yeah. That's a Warden."
The ground
trembled beneath them.
Dogger turned, his voice low and grim.
"Stay close, dreamer. The deeper we go, the hungrier they get."