The world was breaking. The sky folded in on itself, collapsing into a thousand mirrored layers that stretched endlessly in every direction. The ground quivered like rippling water, each tremor echoing back as if reality itself had become hollow.
Dogger's voice tore through the distortion.
"Ethan! Don't lose focus!"
But the sound bounced, split, and multiplied until Ethan heard it from all sides. Dogger's voice coming from above, behind, and even from his own mouth.
He spun around, Dogger was there one second, gone the next, pulled into a loop that folded back on itself like paper catching fire.
And then Ethan was alone.
The same field stretched before him again and again, repeating like a broken film reel. The thunder cracked, the air hummed, and each time he blinked, the world rearranged.
"He's rebuilding the dream around you. Stay aware…"
The echo faded into static.
And from that static, the Warden emerged.
A silhouette stitched together from broken light and shadows, glitching between shapes, part human, part void. Its voice was distorted, like metal dragged across glass.
"Dreamers disobeying code… must be erased."
Ethan took a step back, breath ragged. The Warden didn't walk, it flickered. One blink and it was ten steps closer. Another blink and it was right in front of him.
Ethan swung a punch, but it passed through the Warden's body like smoke and still, the world cracked as if he had struck reality itself. Lightning split across the false horizon.
The Warden raised a hand. A blast of raw static struck him square in the chest. He slammed into a mirrored wall that rippled like liquid glass, the impact echoing through his bones.
He gasped for breath. The reflections around him weren't of the world, they were of him.
Hundreds of Ethans staring back. Each one blinking at a different time.
And in one reflection — Dogger appeared, fighting his own version of the Warden in a parallel loop.
Ethan shouted, "Dogger!"
The voice that answered wasn't in sync. It was like hearing the past and the present collide.
"Remember the rule, Ethan! The mind shapes this world— not the other way around!"
Then the reflection shattered, leaving Ethan in silence again.
[The Flashback]
His knees buckled. The storm flickered weakly in his palms — fading like an old memory.
He pressed his hand to the ground, teeth clenched.
Then, a voice cut through the noise, faint but clear.
"Stop trying to control the storm. You don't create the dream by fighting it, you create by believing it's already yours."
Dogger's words from the training ground. The lesson he didn't understand then.
He closed his eyes and remembered the fall, the breathlessness, Dogger's hand pulling him up.
He exhaled, slow and steady, and raised his palm.
Light spiraled around his hand, not like a storm this time, but like something alive. Fragments of shape and color formed patterns, folding into geometry — triangles, circles, then walls.
He didn't command it; it responded to him.
The Warden surged forward, static tendrils lashing.
Ethan clenched his hand and a barrier erupted before him, made of transparent light. The tendrils slammed against it and dispersed like smoke.
He stepped forward, forming something from the air — a blade, incomplete and unstable, edges flickering like a dying flame.
He lunged.
Each swing tore through illusions. The field around them folded and reformed — trees twisted into spires, the sky bent downward, rivers ran vertically across the air.
The Warden countered, striking with an arm that split into dozens of copies. Ethan ducked, rolled, and slammed his palm into the ground.
The world burst open in response, a wave of light exploding outward.
And suddenly, Dogger was there — bursting from another collapsing loop, his coat torn, eyes sharp as steel.
He didn't speak. He didn't have to.
He just raised a hand and the air behind the Warden snapped.
The Warden staggered, glitching violently, its body splitting between shadow and data, struggling to maintain form.
The Warden's voice fractured mid-scream.
"Dreamers… must… not—"
Its body flickered, expanding — trying to absorb the collapsing fragments of its own illusion.
Ethan raised his arm, trembling. His blade of light sputtered.
He could feel the power draining out of him — every second burning through his mind like static in his veins.
The ground fractured, folding upward into a spiral. Gravity shifted, dragging everything toward the collapsing core.
This is it, he thought. One more hit.
He focused, pushing against the storm of pressure and distortion.
He smirked through the exhaustion.
"You want to erase me? Then try rewriting this."
He drove his hand through the air.
The blade split the world open.
A blinding burst of light ripped through the Warden's body — shattering it into millions of fragments.
The illusion crumbled.
Reality fell quiet.
Ethan dropped to his knees, gasping. His pulse thundered in his ears. The air smelled like burnt ozone and rain.
Dogger stood a few feet away, arms crossed, silent. His shadow cut clean against the pale ground.
He stared down at Ethan, eyes cold, voice calm.
"You forced it… and nearly tore yourself apart doing it."
Ethan looked up, blood on his lip, a weak smirk breaking through.
"Guess I'm a fast learner."
Dogger's expression didn't change — but something in his tone softened, just slightly.
"You learned something. Not control. Not yet."
Ethan blinked, his body swaying. "Then… what?"
Dogger stepped closer. His voice dropped low.
"Defiance."
Ethan laughed weakly, leaning back on the ground.
"Good enough… for now."
His vision blurred. The light dimmed.
And then he collapsed — unconscious before he hit the ground.
Dogger didn't move. He just stood there, watching as the fragments of the Warden's world drifted upward like dying
embers.
Then silence.
The dream settled — calm, for now.
But the air still hummed, faintly… as if the world itself remembered the fight.