Chapter 6: Integration

Alex closed their eyes and let the barriers down.

Twenty years of suppressed fear flooded through them—the helplessness, the betrayal, the way the world had suddenly become dangerous when they were seven years old. They had spent two decades learning to navigate other people's dreams because they couldn't face their own.

But this time, instead of running from the fear, Alex embraced it.

They took the child's hand—their own hand—and stood up together. The nightmare web trembled as its anchor point began to shift.

"I won't leave you behind this time," Alex said to their younger self. "But we have to face them together."

The bedroom door swung fully open, revealing the figures from their childhood trauma. But this time, Alex didn't run. They stood with the child version of themselves and faced the darkness.

The nightmare web began to unravel.

As Alex integrated their own buried trauma, the psychic beacon that had been drawing all the other nightmares together began to fade. The web of shared terror started to collapse, each individual's fears returning to their own dreams where they could be processed naturally.

The figures in the doorway dissolved, not because they were defeated, but because they were finally acknowledged.