Taro didn't remember the transition. There was no fading, no gentle lapse into unconsciousness. One moment, he was staring at the textured ceiling of his apartment, the afterimage of a plastic star burned into his vision. The next, he was standing.
The silence was the first shock. It wasn't peaceful. It was a dead, pressurized silence, the kind found in the vacuum of space or at the bottom of the ocean. It pressed against his eardrums, a physical weight.
He was in the middle of a vast, empty street. The asphalt was unnaturally smooth, a seamless black ribbon stretching towards a horizon that seemed to warp and bend. The buildings lining the street were familiar—the same bland concrete and glass of his own neighborhood—but their geometry was subtly wrong. Corners curved where they should be sharp, windows bulged like bloated fish eyes, and the perspective seemed to shift if he stared too long, inducing a low-grade vertigo.
He looked up. And his breath caught in his throat.
The sky was not a sky. It was a swirling, liquid tapestry of gold and garish magenta, like oil on water, but lit from within by some sickly, internal radiance. Not sunlit, not blue, but a flat, painted ceiling that felt oppressively close.
"What... is this?" Taro muttered. His voice didn't echo. It was absorbed by the stillness, making him feel even more alone.
A flicker of movement. A dog trotted past on two legs, its gait unnervingly human. It held a delicate china teacup in its paw, sipping from it with a soft, thoughtful slurp. It didn't even glance his way.
"I'm dreaming?" he said aloud, the words feeling thick and clumsy in his mouth. The concept felt alien. "No way. I never dream."
This felt too solid, too real. The air had a taste—metallic, like licking a battery. The ground beneath his worn sneakers felt unyielding. This wasn't a dream. It was a place.
Hesitantly, he took a single step forward.
Boom.
The ground pulsed beneath his feet, a deep, sub-sonic thrum that vibrated up through his bones. A wind he couldn't feel tore past him, soundless yet violent. And for a split second, the sky cracked.
A jagged, black tear ripped through the golden veil directly above him. It wasn't an empty blackness. Through the tear, he saw the machinery. Colossal, interlocking gears, each the size of a city block, turning with a slow, grinding inevitability. Cold, blue-white stars blinked in the darkness behind them, not like natural celestial bodies, but like data points on a vast, cosmic screen. And at the center of it all, a gate. It was gigantic, ancient, made of a material that seemed to be both stone and light. And it was breathing, its surface expanding and contracting with a rhythm that felt older than time.
Before the awe could fully register, three figures oozed from the tear. They were distortions. Their forms shifted and glitched, static bleeding from their outlines. They were barely holding a solid shape—a limb would solidify into a claw, then dissolve into a cloud of pixels, then reform as a tentacle. They hit the ground with wet, silent thuds, their faceless heads turning in unison towards him.
A primal fear, cold and sharp, pierced through his confusion.
"What the hell is happening right now?" he asked himself, his own voice sounding distorted, stretched thin.
A naive, desperate hope flickered in his chest. "Maybe they're friendly? It could be ..their possibly not evil...I mean we shouldn't always judge people based on their appearances...um even if it's not stable ..I guess?". It was a stupid thought, but it was all he had. He took a chance, stretching a hand out cautiously, his palm up in a universal, if feeble, gesture of peace.
"Ummm..Hi?"
One of the creatures lunged. There was no warning, no change in its glitching posture. Jaws of static and shadow snapped where his hand had been a millisecond before. He felt a phantom coldness, a void of sensation, as they closed on empty air.
"Argh!" Taro stumbled backward, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. He turned and ran. "Okay Okay! Obviously...not friendly!"
But luck had abandoned him. The creatures gave chase, their motion a terrifying skitter that defied their twisted, unstable forms. More horrifying than any roar was their utter silence.
He ran as fast as his legs could carry him, his lungs burning. The impossible street seemed to stretch on forever. He misstepped, his foot catching on...well nothing—on the sheer, perfect smoothness of the pavement—and fell face-first onto the ground. The impact was jarring, pain flaring in his nose and jaw. "Urgh! My face!"
He rolled onto his back, scrambling away on his elbows. It was too late. The three creatures closed in, surrounding him. Their distorted forms loomed, blocking out the ugly golden sky. The air grew thick and cold around them.
Taro's mind raced, a frantic, panicked mantra."What the hell do I do? What the hell do I do? Don't people dreams usually end at moments like this? Don't you wake up! I've never had one! I don't know the rules!"
They lunged as one. A coordinated rush of glitching darkness, claws and maws of nothingness aimed to tear him apart. Just as their claws were about to find their mark, a scream was torn from the depths of his soul, a raw, final act of defiance.
"DON'T GET ANY CLOSER!"
A sudden beam of violent green light erupted from his chest. It wasn't a gentle glow; it was a torrent, a geyser of raw, emerald power. It didn't just hit the creatures; it engulfed the entire dreamscape. The force of it threw the creatures backward, their forms screeching with digital static as they were hurled through the air.
And as the blinding light faded, a figure stood in its epicenter.
It was Taro. But different.
He was clad in an elegant, form-fitting suit of black and deep, forest green. His hair, now a flowing, vibrant green, was longer, tousled back as if by an unseen wind. His eyes glowed with an emerald fire, casting sharp shadows across his face. Accents of polished, unknown metal gleamed on his wrists, and two connected dots of green light pulsed on the chest of his suit. In his hands, he held a large, uniquely crafted sword—a Reibone—that hummed with a low, powerful thrum, its blade seeming to be made of solidified energy.
"Woah" Taro head had turned looking around his new utterly alien design "I... Feel...Different"
The creatures had then hesitated, looking at each other in a moment of glitched, silent communication. Then, they attacked again in a coordinated rush.
But this Taro was different.
He moved with preternatural grace, a dancer in a ballet of violence. He weaved perfectly between one creature's scything claw, the motion so fluid it seemed rehearsed. He didn't bother with the sword for this one. He simply delivered a punch, his fist wreathed in green energy. The impact was devastating, a shockwave of force that sent the creature flying backward, shattering the impossible facades of multiple buildings in a cascade of breaking geometry.
He didn't wait. A sphere of condensed green energy bloomed in his free hand. With a casual flick, he launched it. It expanded mid-air, covering a massive radius and completely annihilating the first creature in a burst of fading, agonized static.
The second was relentless, leaping at him from behind. Taro shot into the air, meeting it mid-flight. A single, flawless swing of his humming sword cleaved the thing clean in two. The halves dissolved into motes of black dust before they could hit the ground.
Before the two halves had even finished fading, the third creature tried a surprise attack from his blind spot. Taro didn't even look. His hand snapped out, catching its wrist mid-strike. He spun, using its own momentum, and hurled it high into the shimmering golden sky. From his position on the ground, he raised his sword and brought it down in a final, decisive arc.
A blade of pure green energy, massive and terrible, shot forth. It was so powerful it didn't just destroy the creature—it ripped the sky in half, tearing through the liquid gold to reveal once more the cold, grinding, indifferent gears beneath.
Taro descended slowly, landing softly on the scarred street. He looked at his hands, the emerald light fading from his eyes, the suit dissolving into faint green motes. The familiar weight of his own cheap clothes returned.
"What... the hell just happened?" he breathed, the words trembling.
But suddenly, a loud, abrasive sound began to bleed into the world. It was a sound from another reality, crude and out of place.
BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.
"Damn... what is that," he whispered, clutching his head.
The sound grew louder, shattering the fragile silence of the dream, tearing at the edges of this impossible place.
"Stop!" he yelled, his voice cracking.
It was deafening, a drill boring into his skull. The world began to pixelate, to unravel. "STOOOOOP!"
He jolted awake, his hand slapping the alarm clock into a blessed silence. "Tch. Stupid alarm."
He sat in his bed, his heart trying to beat its way out of his chest, sweat cooling on his skin. He stared at his perfectly normal, powerless hands in the grey light of dawn.
"But... what happened before?" Taro looked at his hands , his face in utter confusion
"I can tell you."
A voice. Clear as day. In his room.
"Ahhhhhhhh! Who said that?!" Taro scrambled back against his headboard, sheets tangling around his legs, pure terror seizing him.
"Me...The star. Look over here."
His eyes, wide with panic, darted to the nightstand. The golden star he'd fished from the trash was... glowing. A soft, pulsing, intelligent light.
Hesitantly, his heart still hammering, he picked it up. It was warm.
"Hi," the voice said, cheerful and brimming with a confidence Taro could only dream of. "I'm Mexus. Senior Dremapol. And you, my friend, have a lot to learn."