The silence after the fight didn't feel like peace.
It felt… held as if the world itself had paused to think.
The fog no longer screamed or twisted. The air shimmered, faintly repairing — cracks in the ground turning into glowing veins of light, the horizon folding and refolding like a page trying to erase what had just happened.
Dogger stood motionless, staring into the broken sky where the Warden had vanished.
Static still breathed through the air like a faint heartbeat.
Ethan's voice came quietly, breaking the stillness.
He repeats: "How do I wake up?"
Dogger didn't move. For a long time, it seemed like he hadn't even heard him.
Then slowly he spoke, his tone low and flat.
"There are only two ways out."
He raised two fingers. One flickered, its outline faint in the light.
"Beat the Architect's code…"
He lowered the first finger.
"…or get unplugged from the outside."
The words didn't make sense, not fully but they felt heavy, like something that had been waiting to be said.
Ethan frowned, stepping closer. "The Architect's code? What is that?"
Dogger finally turned. His eyes shimmered faintly, reflections rippling through them like water.
"I don't know," he said. "Not really. I just remember fragments — echoes — from when the dream wrote me into existence." He said quietly, "as if the memory wasn't supposed to exist at all."
He looked up at the sky. The cracks above them shifted and pulsed, like veins under glass.
"I think it's the rule that holds this whole place together. The code everything obeys."
His tone darkened.
"Break it, and the world ends. Wake up… or die trying."
The words sank between them like stones.
Ethan's chest tightened. "And unplugging? What does that mean?"
Dogger's voice grew quieter. "Someone out there, in the real world — disconnects you from the system. Cuts the signal. Pulls the plug."
Ethan stared. "So someone has to decide to wake me up?"
Dogger gave him a look — unreadable, distant.
"Pretty much."
A long silence followed. Only the faint hum of static and the soft shimmer of the healing ground filled the air.
Ethan finally said, "So I'm trapped… unless someone decides I'm not."
Dogger tilted his head, almost smiling — though it wasn't kindness that curved his mouth.
"You're only trapped if you believe this place is real."
The dream seemed to pulse at his words as if it didn't like being called unreal.
Ethan exhaled, his breath fogging in the chill. "And if I die here?"
Dogger's tone was softer now, almost pitying.
"If you die here, you wake up dead out there."
Ethan's expression hardened. "So Abernathy's really gone."
Dogger nodded once. "That's why you learn to control the storm before it consumes you."
The silence that followed wasn't just quiet, it was sacred.
The fog dimmed, like the dream was listening in.
Then, without another word, Dogger turned and began walking. His steps barely disturbed the light beneath them. His reflection trailed faintly behind, out of sync, before fading into nothing.
Ethan hesitated, then followed.
Each step echoed soft against the glass-like ground that rippled beneath his feet.
He looked up. The sky was mending itself — slowly stitching its own wounds with threads of static light.
Under his breath, he whispered,
"The code…"
Something in the air shifted.
The wind moved, almost answering — a faint, glitchy whisper like laughter trying to remember how to sound human. Leaving only the sound of their footsteps.
For the first time, Ethan wondered if the dream wasn't trying to trap him, but to teach him.