The Lorian didn't sleep like humans.
They entered something they called the Stillness — a trance-like dreamstate shared among the tribe, where memories, instincts, and even emotions were passed like echoes through root and breath. In the waking world, they lay perfectly still, their eyes open, glowing faintly as they dreamed together.
All except for Thalya.
Riku noticed it by accident.
Each night, as the grove dimmed and the tribe faded into their Stillness, Thalya would rise quietly and walk to the edge of the grove. She would sit beneath a branchless tree that looked more petrified than alive and stare into the mist, her silver eyes unblinking, her posture flawless.
She never entered Stillness.
Not once.
Riku asked her on the third night.
"Don't you dream?"
Her voice was barely audible. "I do not wish to be influenced."
He blinked. "Influenced by what?"
"By you."
That silenced him.
She looked at him then, the first real look she'd given him since the creature attack. "You are shaping us," she said. "Already. The dreams shift. The symbols mutate. The tribe dreams of roads they have never seen, of towers made of glass and fire, of names that are not in our tongue."
"I haven't done anything," Riku said defensively.
She tilted her head slightly. "That is what makes it worse."
Riku sat beside her, not sure why. "You don't trust me."
"I trust the dreams," she said. "And they no longer know what you are."
Later that day, he studied the system again.
The Fold interface was changing subtly. It no longer displayed loyalty percentages or cultural resonance in raw numbers — it began using terms. Words like:
Faithweight: Budding
Identity Root: Divergent
Locality Sync: Layer 2 / Entropic Resistance: Mild
Observer Count: 1
Observer count?
He scrolled again.
[Trait Queue: Cultural Sync / Sovereign Fear Index]
[New Trait Added: Shared Narrative Potential]
[Unlock Condition: Ritual Integration]
Riku frowned.
He needed to understand more about how the tribe's belief structure worked. And for that, he had to risk stepping into their dream.
That night, he asked Thalya to teach him how to enter the Stillness.
She refused.
So he asked Nilo.
Nilo shrugged. "Sure," he said. "But if your thoughts are weird, they'll remember forever. Even after you're dead."
Comforting.
Riku lay on a woven mat laced with dream-sap, placed over a living stone that pulsed gently beneath his spine. Nilo crushed a pair of bloom-nuts and smeared the paste under Riku's eyes.
"Don't fight it," he said. "Just... dream harder."
And then the world slipped sideways.
The Stillness wasn't sleep.
It was a forest made of memories, stitched together by emotion and light.
He stood in a grove of roots that pulsed like veins. Branches above carried laughter, whispered arguments, first hunts, lost children, funeral chants. Memories not his — but accessible.
Then he heard his own voice.
"I haven't done anything."
He turned.
There — a reflection of the conversation with Thalya, played in a loop on a shifting wall of fog.
Except... something was wrong.
In this version, he smiled at the end.
He hadn't smiled.
He stepped closer.
The fog shifted. The Riku in the dream turned to face him — and its eyes were hollow, mouths opening along its shoulders, repeating his words back like static.
Riku stepped back.
And saw Thalya watching him.
Not dream-Thalya. The real one.
Or close enough.
"You don't belong here," she said coldly. "Not yet."
"I need to understand how your dreams work," he said. "The system is responding to them."
She nodded. "Yes. Because you have rooted yourself in our mythos. Without permission."
"I'm trying to protect you."
She studied him for a long moment. "Intentions do not matter in dreams. Only impact."
Riku opened his mouth to respond — and the world shattered.
He woke gasping, chest heaving, drenched in sweat.
The vine-mat beneath him was smoking faintly. Nilo sat nearby, chewing a root.
"Well," the boy said. "That was fast."
Riku checked the interface.
[Fold Initiated – Cultural Sync Path Created]
[Trait Acquired: Sovereign Memory Imprint (Minor)]
[Passive Effect: Personal emotions now propagate through localized Stillness]
[Warning: Do not enter tribe dreamscape while emotionally unstable]
He sighed.
"Too late."
Thalya did not speak to him the next day.
But when the tribe entered Stillness that night, she lay closest to him.
And for the first time, the dreamforest whispered his name.