The world was quiet again — too quiet.
No rain, no wind. Just the faint hum of static breathing through the horizon, like a machine trying to remember how to dream.
Ethan stood beside Dogger, the ground beneath them flickering between broken landscapes — marble, sand, glass unable to decide what it wanted to be.
Then the silence cracked.
From the fog ahead, something stirred.
It was tall, humanoid, and wrong, its body stitched together by smoke and broken light.
Every step it took left ripples in the air, like reality was folding to make room for it.
The Warden.
Its voice came not as a sound, but as a distortion, a trembling radio signal full of whispers.
"Go back to sleep, Ethan…"
The sound hit him like a pulse through the chest. His thoughts slowed. His eyelids felt heavy. For a brief, dangerous moment… he wanted to obey.
Dogger's voice cut through the haze.
"Don't listen. It talks in memories, not words."
But it was too late.
The static shifted and suddenly, the voice wasn't mechanical anymore. It was soft. It was– human.
"You've done enough, Ethan. Just rest… you'll wake soon."
Ethan froze. That voice.
Ellie.
His breath caught in his throat. "Ellie?"
The Warden tilted its head — its form flickering like a dying lightbulb. Then it smiled, and the face was hers for a split second before melting away again.
Dogger's tone hardened.
"That's not her. That's bait."
The air fractured like glass.
The illusion broke, and the Warden's face twisted into something shapeless — a blur of shifting outlines, as if made from every nightmare that ever tried to remember being human.
"Wake up. Sleep. Wake up. Sleep…"
The words looped endlessly, overlapping like a thousand whispers.
Ethan stumbled back. "Stop it!"
Dogger grabbed his arm. "Focus on the ground. Anchor yourself. If you lose your mind here, you'll never find it again."
Ethan blinked rapidly, his breathing sharp and fast. The dream pulsed in rhythm with his heartbeat.
Then the ground split open.
Black mist crawled out, coiling around Ethan's legs like vines. He reached inward, calling for the storm again — that wild, electric pulse that once answered him.
The wind came… but weak. Scattered. Like the dream itself resisted him.
He forced harder — come on, come on — but the power sputtered and broke.
The Warden's arm stretched, distorting midair before slamming into him.
The hit threw him like a ragdoll through a flickering wall of light. He hit the ground with a harsh thud, the air knocked from his lungs.
"You don't belong here," the Warden hissed. A thousand voices speaking in unison.
Ethan gasped, the world spinning around him. "Dogger—!"
But Dogger was already moving.
One blink — he vanished.
The next — he was standing between Ethan and the Warden, his body flickering, trailing faint shards of reflected light.
The Warden lunged again, but Dogger wasn't there anymore.
He had phased — his body slipping through layers of mirrored air, reappearing behind the creature with a burst of distortion.
His fist struck like a sonic pulse, rippling the dream around them.
The Warden screeched, the sound jagged, mechanical — furious. Its arms fractured into dozens of black tendrils, whipping through the air with impossible speed.
Dogger danced between them.
Every attack passed through him, leaving ghostly trails of static light. He was pure motion — sharp, fluid, untouchable.
"Is he—breaking reality?" Ethan whispered, half in awe, half in fear.
Dogger's smirk flickered in the distortion.
"Something like that."
He bent forward, his outline glitching in and out like corrupted data.
Then — he split.
For a blink, there were two Doggers — mirror reflections of each other — moving in perfect sync.
The first struck low; the second appeared above, kicking the Warden square in the chest. The impact cracked the air like thunder.
The Warden staggered backward, smoke pouring from its wounds. It tried to repair itself. its body rewriting, pixel by pixel.
Dogger wasn't done.
He stepped into a shattered puddle and vanished.
The Warden turned sharply, scanning. The air bent. Then Dogger reappeared behind it, " "predictable". Emerging through another fractured reflection, both hands charged with static energy.
He struck once and the dream screamed.
Light exploded outward. The ground folded inward like paper.
The Warden's voice broke apart mid-echo.
"Wake… up…"
Dogger twisted his wrist, collapsing the glitch between his palms, and the Warden shattered dissolving into a storm of static fragments that disintegrated into the fog.
Silence followed.
Dogger exhaled, the static fading from his body. His outline stabilized, though faint crackles of light still ran across his arms.
He looked calm — too calm, as if he hadn't just defied reality.
Ethan stared, awestruck. "That was… insane."
Dogger smirked faintly. "Cool? Sure. But that wasn't the real warden. Just a fragment– a leftover piece of code."
He straightened, his face flickering for half a second before solidifying again. The glitch had taken its toll, even if he didn't show it. "They will send another one."
Ethan rose slowly, the air still trembling with leftover energy. "You didn't even get hit."
Dogger gave a crooked smile. "That's the point of phasing. You get hit once, you stop existing."
The joke didn't land — but the meaning did.
Ethan looked out over the horizon. The fog had quieted, but the silence was wrong — like a radio tuned to a dead channel.
Ethan breaks the silence.
"Dogger…"
-"yeah?"
Ethan said softly, " How do I wake up?"
Dogger freezes. He didn't answer at first.
He just stared into the distance, where the dream bent faintly like a heat haze.
The static in his eyes dimmed.
For the
first time, he looked uncertain.
"That's the question, isn't it?"...
The hum returned — slow, low, alive.
The world flickered once… twice…
Then still.