The Dream

10 April 4080

Night had settled over Hashito City.

The streets were quieter than usual. The last buses rumbled through the avenues before disappearing into the distance, their engines gradually swallowed by the silence. Apartment windows glowed one by one as another ordinary day came to an end.

Inside a modest, blue-colored two-story house, only one bedroom remained lit.

Rurouni Rakhora quietly adjusted his glasses and turned another page of the fantasy novel in his hands.

His room wasn't particularly large, but it was comfortable. A neatly made bed stood beside the window, while a wooden bookshelf overflowed with stories about dragons, forgotten kingdoms, and powerful magic. His study desk sat in the corner, buried beneath schoolbooks that had long since lost the battle for his attention.

Tonight...

Fantasy had won again.

"...Just one more chapter."

Rurouni smiled to himself as he ate another one of his favorite chocolate biscuits.

Stories like these had always fascinated him.

Floating kingdoms.

Ancient dragons.

Impossible adventures.

Magic capable of reshaping entire worlds.

For a little while, they allowed him to forget about reality completely.

Eventually, he reached the end of the chapter.

With a reluctant sigh, he closed the book and placed it beside his bed.

Then he tried to throw the biscuit wrapper into his dust bin while lying down.

He missed miserably.

The wrapper landed on the floor after dribbling two times.

Rurouni stared at it with a little amount of shame.

"I'm pathetic at throwing, aren't I?"

He leaned back against the bed.

His eyes drifted toward the digital clock.

10:39 P.M.

"Anyway, I'd better get some sleep."

Tomorrow will be another school day.

Which probably meant another day of thinking about fantasy novels when he was supposed to be paying attention on Monika ma'am's classes.

Rurouni put his glasses near his pillow and switched off the lamp.

Then, before lying down, he ran his tongue over each of his teeth.

He had eaten far too many chocolate biscuits.

Getting a cavity now would be a disaster.

"Huff, looks like I'm safe."

He finally pulled the blanket over himself.

Darkness swallowed the room, leaving only the pale moonlight filtering through the curtains.

His parents and older sister had left that morning to visit relatives who had been involved in a traffic accident. Rurouni had stayed behind because of school.

For the first time in months...

He had the entire house to himself.

Rurouni adjusted his pillow a little.

Then closed his tired eyes.

Outside, clouds slowly drifted across the bright moon.

Inside...

Sleep embraced him without any resistance.

Neither Rurouni...

Nor anyone else in that world...

Could have imagined that this ordinary night would become the beginning of something no one could comprehend.

Darkness.

Not the darkness behind closed eyes.

Not the darkness of night.

Something entirely different.

Ancient.

 Silent.

 Infinite.

...

Rurouni slowly opened his eyes.

But he didn't move, not even a little.

For several seconds, he simply stared ahead.

His bedroom was gone.

There were no walls.

No ceiling.

No sky.

And yet...

There was light.

A gentle light that somehow seemed to exist everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

"...Where...?"

His voice sounded strangely distant.

No answer came.

Rurouni lowered his gaze.

The ground beneath his feet shimmered like transparent crystal.

It wasn't glass.

It wasn't ice.

He couldn't even tell what it was.

With every movement he made, ripples of light spread beneath his feet, traveling endlessly in every direction.

Rurouni slowly looked toward the horizon.

Or...

What should have been the horizon.

His breath caught.

Upside-down mountains floated across an endless white abyss.

Rivers climbed through empty air.

Waterfalls flowed upward, disappearing into invisible oceans.

Countless fragments of light drifted peacefully around him.

Some resembled feathers.

Others looked like tiny stars.

Whenever one passed nearby...

A strange warmth spread through his chest.

It was breathtaking.

And deeply unsettling.

Nothing obeyed reason, gravity, or any law he understood.

Nothing seemed to obey anything at all.

Rurouni had spent years reading fantasy novels.

Stories about gods.

Magic.

Impossible worlds.

Yet...

None of them had ever imagined a place like this.

"...This..."

His voice trembled.

"...isn't even in my fantasies."

He slowly turned around.

The landscape stretched endlessly in every direction.

There was no beginning.

No end.

No birds.

No wind.

Not even the sound of his own breathing.

It was as though sound itself had never existed here.

A strange uneasiness settled inside him.

His instincts whispered a single word.

Leave.

His mind asked another question.

But how?

Rurouni cautiously took a step forward.

The crystal beneath his foot didn't crack.

Instead...

A ripple spread across the endless ground.

Then another.

Then thousands.

As though the world itself had noticed that someone had arrived.

Rurouni froze on the spot.

For the first time in his life...

He felt unimaginably small.

Like an ant.

Not because the world was vast.

But because this place felt older than humanity itself.

Older than history.

Older than memory.

...

Then—

Something changed.

Not in front of him.

Not behind him.

Neither above.

Nor below.

The change had no direction.

It simply...

became.

Rurouni frowned.

"Huh...?"

"What...?"

The fragments of light drifting through the realm suddenly stopped.

Every ripple beneath the crystal ground became completely still.

The rivers froze in midair.

The floating mountains stopped moving.

Silence.

 An impossible silence.

Rurouni could hear his own heartbeat.

Thump.

Thump.

Thump.

Then—

His entire body trembled.

Someone...

No.

Something...

Was here.

He couldn't see it.

He couldn't hear it.

He couldn't even tell where it was.

Yet every instinct inside him screamed the same truth.

Something had arrived.

A cold chill crawled up his spine.

"...W-Who's there...?"

No reply came.

Instead—

Pain stroke.

"...AAAAAAAGH!!"

Rurouni collapsed to his knees, clutching his head.

It felt as though countless invisible needles had pierced his consciousness.

Not his skull.

Not his brain.

His very existence.

Then... his vision blurred.

The crystal beneath him twisted.

The mountains stretched into impossible shapes.

And his thoughts...

His thoughts began tangling together.

Then—

Images.

Thousands of them.

Worlds burning without fire.

Stars that dwarfed entire galaxies.

Infinite skies layered upon one another.

Creatures his mind refused to remember.

Voices speaking languages that had never belonged to humanity.

Each image lasted less than a heartbeat.

Yet somehow...

Each one felt older than eternity.

"...STOP!!"

Rurouni screamed.

The pain intensified.

His thoughts became even harder to hold onto.

Then—

His memories began slipping away.

His name.

His home.

His family.

Everything blurred together.

"W-Who...?"

He froze.

Who...?

Who am I?

For one horrifying instant...

He couldn't remember himself.

Fear unlike anything he had ever experienced gripped him tightly.

Not the fear of death.

Something far worse.

The fear of ceasing to exist.

"N-No..."

Rurouni dug his fingernails into his palms.

The pain brought back a fragment of clarity.

"...I'm..."

He swallowed and felt a slight pain in his throat.

"Rurouni."

Yes.

That was his name.

Rurouni desperately repeated it inside his mind.

Again.

And again.

As though repeating it was the only thing keeping him from losing it forever.

Rurouni.

Rurouni.

Rurouni.

The unbearable pressure continued to grow.

But...

Something felt wrong.

It wasn't trying to kill him.

It wasn't even malicious.

It simply...

existed.

The realization terrified him more than any attack could have.

This wasn't killing intent.

This wasn't malice.

Rurouni's mind was collapsing simply because it had come too close to something far beyond human comprehension.

Tiny cracks appeared beneath his feet.

The crystal floor fractured.

One crack became two.

Two became ten.

Ten became hundreds.

The fractures spread across the entire realm.

The floating mountains shattered into countless fragments of light.

The rivers dissolved into shimmering particles.

The endless white sky split apart like fragile glass.

The dream...

Could no longer endure.

Because reality itself...

Was collapsing.

Rurouni forced his trembling body to look up.

His instincts screamed.

Don't.

Every part of him begged him to lower his eyes.

His mind pleaded for unconsciousness.

But Rurouni had never been particularly good at obeying fear.

His vision shook violently.

"...What..."

He forced his eyes open.

"...are..."

The world continued breaking apart.

Then—

Beyond the collapsing realm...

Rurouni saw someone.