Some dreams bleed.
Others bite.
But this one… this one remembered him.
---
Kai drifted through the folds of a stranger's sleep like smoke through a keyhole.
His feet landed on soft earth — too soft. The ground pulsed faintly beneath him, as if it had a heartbeat. A field of flowers stretched endlessly around him, all the same color: ash gray. Each one blinked when he looked at it.
He squinted up at the sky.
It was upside down.
Clouds crawled along the soil above him, and the horizon looped into itself, forming a circle of sky that pulsed like a pupil.
This dream was wrong.
Not chaotic — no. Deliberate.
---
He focused his breath.
> "Dream type: Constructed. Host consciousness partially active. This isn't a passive sleeper."
A wave of static surged through his skull — the Dreambind sync completing.
The name came slowly.
Host: Subject #0198 — "Aiko H."
Path: Unknown. Unregistered.
"Huh," Kai murmured, his voice swallowed by the blinking flowers. "You're off the grid."
He took a step forward — and immediately heard a whisper.
It didn't come from a voice.
It came from beneath his skin.
> "He's here again."
> "The thief."
> "The parasite."
The flowers stopped blinking.
Every single head turned to face him.
---
Rule 4 of Dreamwalking:
"If the dream talks back, run."
Kai didn't run.
He smiled faintly, lifted his hand, and drew the blade from his palm — not metal, not light, but a sliver of regret.
> Echo Blade: Level 3 – Form: Guilt Shard
Weight: heavy today.
The blade pulsed with old pain. The scream of a girl he couldn't save. The blood of a friend who died in his arms. His own voice, begging reality to stop spinning.
He took another step.
The world shuddered.
---
Suddenly — a desk fell from the sky.
Not just one — a hundred.
They slammed into the ground around him in perfect rows, forming a classroom from thin air.
He blinked.
Now he was sitting in the back of it.
And standing at the front—
A girl with ink-black hair, white eyes, and a voice like winter.
"Kai," she said softly, "I thought you'd be smarter than this."
He tried to move.
Couldn't.
Tried to speak.
Couldn't.
The girl raised one hand. From it grew roots — thin, red, and wet — crawling toward his chest.
Dream Defense Protocol.
She wasn't just aware.
She was fighting back.
> "Let's open you up," she whispered.
The roots pierced him.
---
He screamed.
The desks exploded outward, the classroom crumbled, and the sky shattered like glass.
Suddenly, they were both in a black ocean — standing on its surface as if it were solid. Rain fell upward.
Kai gasped, falling to one knee. Blood — no, memory — poured from his wounds.
He saw himself — but younger. Crying.
He saw a man's voice saying, "Your sleep disorder is a gift, not a curse."
He saw a door — with his name scratched out.
"No," he hissed. "You can't take that."
The girl walked toward him.
She wasn't Aiko.
Her face was shifting.
His mother.
His sister.
His old mentor.
Then — a face he didn't recognize.
Eyes like knives.
> "You steal dreams," she said.
"But you never wondered what happens to the ones you take them from?"
Kai staggered back.
This wasn't a dreamer.
This was a Hunter.
A Sleepless like him — but corrupted.
A Dreambound who'd given up her name, her face, her path.
And now lived only to trap intruders.
> She had become her dream.
---
She lunged.
Kai reacted instinctively.
He fed the Echo Blade a fresh memory — the first time he killed. The guilt of it. The silence that followed.
The blade screamed in his hand and expanded into a spear of frozen sorrow.
He parried the attack — barely.
Her fingers left scars in the air.
Time bent.
The ocean turned to glass again — then fire — then sand.
She moved like glitching code.
Kai couldn't keep up.
---
Then he saw it.
The Core.
Every dream had one — a center point, hidden, pulsing like a heart.
He dived toward it — a flickering lantern floating inside the girl's silhouette.
She shrieked and warped — her form bending like melting wax.
But Kai was faster this time.
He plunged the Echo Blade into the lantern.
CRACK.
Light exploded — along with her scream.
The dream collapsed.
---
Kai opened his eyes in the in-between space — the liminal void between dreams.
He was sweating.
Bleeding.
His hands were shaking.
That was the first time he'd almost lost himself in someone else's dream.
He took a breath.
Checked his Dreamlog.
> [Sync Complete: Subject #0198]
[Path Fragment Acquired: "Hollow Bloom" — Class: Defensive Illusion]
[Warning: Memory degradation detected.]
[Fragments missing: 2]
"…Wait."
He opened his profile again.
Two fragments — gone.
His own.
He couldn't remember his sister's name.
He couldn't remember… why he started Dreamwalking in the first place.
"Shit," he whispered.
---
The Labyrinth punished greed.
And today, Kai had taken too much.
Or worse — he'd taken from the wrong person.
He stood in the empty black space, breathing hard, wiping blood from his lips.
Then, behind him — a click.
He turned.
A door stood there, tall, ornate… and open.
No door had ever opened for him before.
From the other side — a figure stepped out.
Cloaked. Faceless. Holding a book made of human teeth.
Kai froze.
The figure pointed at him.
Then at the book.
Then spoke a word without sound:
> "Thief."
The door slammed shut.
---
Kai stood alone again.
But his shadow was longer now.
And behind it, something whispered.
> "The Archivist has seen you."