The world feels… off. Too still. Too fragile.
The air hums faintly, like a thin current running beneath reality itself. Ethan walks beside Dogger, every step echoing strangely across the fractured landscape. The plain that once stretched endlessly before them now bends and folds like a painting that's started to melt.
A faint vibration crawls through the ground.
The dream world is… trembling.
Dogger's gaze sweeps across the horizon, his expression unreadable. "He's rewriting it," he murmurs. "The Warden's close."
Ethan slows, listening. The silence is sharp — the kind that makes your heartbeat sound too loud. Then comes a faint metallic clink… another… then another.
Footsteps.
Measured. Heavy. Far, but closing in.
"Dogger," Ethan whispers, "do you hear that?"
Dogger nods once, his tone low. "He's reconstructing himself. The Warden doesn't walk, he builds his way forward."
Ethan's eyes flicker to his reflection in a nearby puddle — except it's not water. It's glass, liquid and still. And the face staring back at him isn't his own.
Cold metal. A mask.
The Warden.
He jerks back. The reflection shatters soundlessly.
Dogger watches, calm but tense. "He's breaching through," he says. "Not fully formed yet, but getting there."
The Distortion
The sky flickers, and the color drains from everything.
The light shifts from gold to gray to something between both dream logic trying to stabilize itself.
A low, rhythmic pulse rolls through the air.
The ground shivers. Then the horizon ripples like a disturbed pond and reality twists.
Walls bloom from nowhere, staircases stretch sideways, disappearing into smoke. A clock tower folds inward and melts into the earth.
Ethan staggers as the world bends beneath his feet, like walking on something alive.
"Move!" Dogger shouts.
They run.
Every step changes the terrain — cobblestone turns to marble, to water, to sand. Ethan's boots splash, skid, thud — sound blending into chaos. His breath grows short, adrenaline burning through the confusion.
"What's happening?" he yells.
Dogger: "He's rewriting the dream. Anything unstable, he erases."
Ethan looks around — the sky's tearing open, fragments of light falling like broken pixels. He feels the weight of something enormous pressing against the edges of existence.
The Silence Before the Voice
Then — everything stops.
No motion.
No color.
No sound.
Even the wind seems to hold its breath.
Dogger's eyes narrow. "Brace yourself."
The air bends, condensing into a single point ahead like gravity itself is being pulled inward. Bits of debris — glass, dust, shards of memory, float upward, circling the void. And then… from that nothingness, something forms.
Piece by piece.
A hand of metal.
A chest of fractured armor.
A mask of silver light.
The Warden manifests.
Glitching in and out of visibility, yet radiating command — like the world itself bows to his presence.
Ethan freezes. His pulse hammers in his ears.
Dogger mutters under his breath, "He's not whole yet. But he's aware."
The Warden tilts his head. The air distorts, and a voice — mechanical, layered, emotionless — downloads straight into their minds:
"Unauthorized entities detected. Reality distortion in progress. Correction required."
Ethan swallows hard. "Correction? What does that mean?"
Dogger doesn't answer immediately. His gaze stays locked on the Warden's eyes or whatever lay behind that mask. "It means," he says quietly, "we're the error."
The air vibrates again, not violently, but like a warning.
Dust lifts from the ground.
The color bleeds out of the sky until everything turns monochrome — shades of black, silver, and white.
Ethan clenches his fists. "So what now?"
Dogger smirks faintly. "Now we see what he remembers."
The Warden raises one hand and the dream around them shifts. Buildings move closer. The ground tightens, pulling them inward. The whole world seems to lean toward the center, toward him.
And in that moment, Ethan realizes the truth the Warden isn't chasing them.
He's resetting them.
The edges of the horizon start to collapse, folding like pages in a burning book. The hum deepens, and the light warps into a spiral.
Dogger breathes in deeply. "Stay sharp. This isn't the fight yet…"
He steps forward, eyes
sharp, calm amid chaos.
"…it's the warning."
The light flashes white — and everything cuts to black.