That night, the sky never truly darkened.
Instead, it flickered.
Like a flame trying to stay alive in a storm — like someone was peeling back the edges of the world to peek inside. And something was peeking back.
Ravin slept.
But its people tossed and turned, muttering, sweating, weeping in their beds.
No one knew why.
No one but three.
---
"Your dream is unraveling," Rhéa said. "This world's already starting to rot."
They were back inside the clocktower now, using it as a watchpost. Mira had lit dozens of candles around them. Light pushed back the shadows, but not the cold.
Outside the windows, the village looked normal. But it wasn't.
"See that?" Rhéa pointed. "That woman's repeating her steps. Same three, over and over."
Lior squinted through the cracked windowpanes.
She was right.
A woman in a shawl was walking down the dirt path toward the bakery. She took three steps… stopped. Turned back. Three steps again. Same expression. Same blinking.
"Memory's collapsing," Mira said. "Like a skipped record."
"She's not real," Rhéa muttered. "Not anymore."
"But she's my neighbor," Lior said, heart sinking.
"She was," Rhéa corrected gently. "But this is how dreams end. They don't explode. They fade. People stop moving. Time forgets how to flow."
Lior stared at the woman until, without warning, she vanished — like a candle blown out.
He stumbled backward, his breath catching in his throat.
---
"You said this is the last dream," Lior finally said. "Why?"
Rhéa's eyes softened.
"I've died in fourteen different versions of your world. Sometimes I was your sister. Sometimes I was your enemy. Once I was a bird that sang you awake. But every time, I found my way back to you."
"Why?"
"Because you're the Anchor. The center of the dreaming. If you fall, everything goes."
Lior clenched his fists. "Then tell me how to stop it. Tell me how to fight this Bleeding One."
Rhéa looked at Mira.
Mira hesitated, then nodded.
Rhéa pulled out something hidden beneath her coat — a jagged shard of black glass. It pulsed softly, like a heartbeat.
"This," she said, "is a fragment of the first dream. The one you never finished."
As Lior touched it, he was pulled—
---
—into a place without sound.
No sky. No ground. No air.
Only darkness.
But it wasn't empty. It was crowded with whispers. Memories. Eyes.
He saw himself — younger, frightened, clutching a doll. A boy who whispered things into the dark, trying to create a world without sadness. A perfect place. A safe place.
But dreams twist. They change.
They rebel.
And something had been born inside that dream — a version of Lior that hated the real world. That wanted to sleep forever and let everything else fall.
The Bleeding One wasn't some monster.
It was his fear, grown too big to contain.
---
He yanked his hand away from the shard, gasping.
Mira held him steady.
"I saw it," Lior whispered. "It's… it's me."
Rhéa nodded. "The worst parts of you, left behind in a broken dream. You created a version of yourself that never wants to wake up."
Lior looked between them. "Then how do I fight that?"
"You don't," Mira said. "You remember."
"Remember what?"
"That this world matters. That it's real because you believe in it."
Rhéa added, "But first, you need to find the first dream. The place it all began. The place you made the first mistake."
---
Suddenly, the tower groaned.
The candles flickered.
And down below, on the village streets…
someone screamed.
Mira ran to the window.
Her face went pale.
Lior joined her — and saw something wrong walking through the square.
Not the Bleeding One.
Something smaller.
A boy. About his age. Pale skin. Hollow eyes. Smiling too wide.
He looked exactly like Lior.
And every step he took, the buildings around him melted — turning to ash, to dust, to black static.
Rhéa stepped beside him. "He's not dreaming anymore."
Mira whispered: "He's here."
Lior's reflection looked up at the clocktower…
…and waved.