Milo stumbled through the chaos, the ground beneath his feet flickering between sand, concrete, and something that might have been clouds. The sky was broken — a strange fracture stretching across it, each pixel of the sky cutting in and out of existence like a bad connection.
A deep hum vibrated through the air, distorting everything it touched. The trees, once tall and leafy, now bent in unnatural angles, their trunks twisting like pixels reloading into new shapes. The wind blew, but it felt wrong, like it was caught in a loop, pushing against itself in a constant struggle.
[i.d.e.a.l.], ever the steady voice in his head, stuttered:
"Alert… system… malfunction… unexpected event…"
Milo paused in his tracks, narrowing his eyes at the glitching sky above. Something was wrong — more wrong than usual. The feeling in his gut had gone from unease to sheer certainty. This wasn't just another quirk of the Dream World. This was something... deeper.
The ground beneath him flickered again — grass that he was standing on one moment turned to stone the next. Milo scrambled to keep his balance as sand spun into floating lava beneath him. He didn't need to look at [i.d.e.a.l.]'s erratic signals to know that something had gone terribly wrong. He was starting to feel… out of place, like a foreign object, an intruder in a world that had never meant for him to exist.
"I think we've gone too far this time," Milo muttered to himself, trying to steady his breathing. There was no telling what this breakdown meant. But he had a sinking suspicion that he was no longer just passing through the Dream World. He was—somehow—becoming a part of its malfunction.
Then, he saw it.
A figure, standing in the distance, partially distorted by the glitching air. At first, it looked like a mirage — human, but not quite. The figure wore a futuristic jumpsuit, glowing neon lines across it like circuitry, and the glow seemed to pulse with an energy that didn't quite match the Dream World's surreal vibrancy.
This person, whoever they were, didn't belong here.
Milo squinted and began walking toward them, the ground shifting unpredictably under his steps. When he was close enough, the figure turned slowly, their face partially obscured by a glitchy mask — as if their image was flickering between multiple states.
"You're not supposed to be here," the figure said, their voice fragmented, laced with digital distortion. "Who... are you?" They paused, blinking like a computer loading too many things at once. "Wait. You're real."
The figure seemed caught between two realities, flickering like an image stuck between two layers of a poorly loaded page. Their form shifted, becoming blurry and disjointed, as if they were half-dream, half-reality.
Milo's stomach churned. "What do you mean, 'real'? Of course, I'm real. I'm just… trying to figure out what the hell's going on here."
"You—" The figure paused, their voice glitching again. "You shouldn't be able to be here. You shouldn't exist in this place." The figure's glitching slowed just long enough for them to make eye contact with Milo, and in their eyes, Milo saw something—something like fear. "You're... causing it."
Milo took a step back, his heart skipping a beat. "Causing what?"
"The breakdown." The figure looked at the warping landscape around them with a sharp, almost accusing glance. "You're the cause of it all. The Dream World… it's breaking because of you."
"What are you talking about?" Milo asked, shaking his head. "I've been here for—what—weeks now? And now you're telling me I'm the problem?"
The figure's hand twitched. A holographic image flickered to life above them—a map of the Dream World, with lines of code scrolling in the background, broken and jagged.
"The Dream World was never supposed to exist like this," the figure said. "It's not just the girl's trauma. It's not just her mind. It's a system. A program. Built by something much bigger than any one person. Much bigger than you. Much bigger than her."
Milo's mind was racing, trying to process the words. A system? A program? None of this made sense.
The figure took a step closer, their voice growing softer. "The girl's pain — her fears — created this place, yes. But it's been manipulated. The Dream World is an experiment. A testing ground. And you, Milo, were never supposed to be here. You were never meant to interact with it. Your presence here is the anomaly."
Milo took a deep breath, trying to steady the dizziness creeping in. The air was thick with something more than static now. A deeper disturbance — a kind of pulling, unraveling sensation that made his head spin.
"Wait," Milo said, catching a thought. "If the Dream World wasn't supposed to exist like this... then what was it supposed to be? And who made it?"
The figure's eyes flickered, the digital mask shifting, like the answer was just beyond reach. "I don't know. But I think… it's someone else's design. Someone watching from the shadows. Someone who created the system, who… manipulated it for their own reasons."
Milo's pulse quickened. He felt a strange pull inside him, like a thread being tugged at from deep within his chest. "And what happens now?" he asked, his voice almost a whisper. "What happens to me?"
The figure paused, glitching again, their form flickering. The image around them blurred, leaving only fragmented codes. "The system... will try to correct itself," the figure said, voice fading. "And you will be erased. The anomaly will be removed."
The figure looked down at the ground — the shifting pixels, the crumbling reality — and then back at Milo. "But I can help you. If you want. I can give you a chance. A chance to stop this… before it's too late."
Milo looked around, the ground shifting beneath him once more, his mind spinning. Was this the truth? Was it really him — was it really his fault that everything was falling apart?
A sound — a distant hum — began to rise in the background. Like the sound of a distant engine starting. And as the cracks in the Dream World deepened, Milo realized there was no turning back.
"Do you trust me?" the figure asked, their voice now a calm, digital hum.
Milo hesitated. "I don't know," he replied honestly.
But the clock was ticking.