Somnara always breathed at night.
Kairo Vale felt it before he saw it — that low pulse beneath his ribs, the hush before a dream is born. The skyline shimmered with drifting strands of dreamlight, neon blues curling into purples as they wove through the towers like living ribbons.
Most people never noticed.
Most people couldn't feel anything about the dreamworld unless they were asleep.
Kairo wasn't most people.
He stood on the balcony of his Silverline apartment, hood up, hands buried in his pockets, pretending the pull wasn't growing stronger — the whisper that kept brushing the back of his mind.
Enter.
Just one word.
A voice that wasn't quite his.
The city lights flickered. Once. Twice.
A sharp sting hit behind his eyes.
Kairo grabbed the railing as his vision warped — the air thickened, shadows stretched, and a translucent blue screen snapped into existence in front of him.
---
[ DREAM-FORGE SYSTEM INITIALIZING… ]
---
Kairo froze.
Systems belonged in myths, conspiracy forums, and the hallucinations of sleep-deprived dream theorists. Not reality. Not his life.
The screen pulsed again.
---
[ SYNCHRONIZING WITH HOST MIND… ]
[ LUCID POTENTIAL: 94% ]
[ IMAGINATION INDEX: 88% ]
[ STATUS: AWAKENED ]
---
"Awakened?" Kairo whispered.
The world lurched.
Fog rolled in from nowhere, swallowing the balcony whole. His shadow rose like liquid smoke, pulling him downward as the real world dissolved into soft, luminous mist.
Somnara took him.
But this wasn't like any dream he'd ever wandered through.
This Somnara was sharper. Focused. Breathing.
Buildings rose and fell as if alive. The marble streets pulsed like a heartbeat. Stars drifted overhead, shifting when he breathed.
A whisper curled around his ear.
"Finally… you're here."
Kairo spun.
Shadows crawled together, forming a long, twisted creature with too many eyes and a mouth that trembled with silent hunger.
A Wraithform — a nightmare made real.
The System flared.
---
[ WARNING: NIGHTMARE DETECTED ]
[ PROTOTYPE WEAPON ACCESS GRANTED ]
---
His hand warmed.
Light gathered in his palm.
Kairo didn't think — instinct moved him.
Dream-energy twisted into a blade of silver-blue light.
The nightmare lunged.
Kairo stepped forward.
One clean strike.
The Wraithform burst into dreamdust.
The screen blinked again
---
[ FIRST NIGHTMARE DEFEATED ]
[ TIER PROGRESSION UNLOCKED ]
---
More shadows rippled at the edges of the street.
Somnara wasn't done with him.
"Kairo!"
The voice wasn't the whisper.
It came from ahead — from a woman standing alone in the shifting dream-city. She was bright against the gloom, as if she didn't belong to this place.
He didn't know her.
Yet somehow, his chest tightened like he did.
She stepped forward, calm even as more Wraithforms formed behind him.
And with a voice that made the dream tremble, she said:
"You're not supposed to be here yet."
The city exhaled.
And the night didn't end.
Somnara shifted around Kairo like a living stage inhaling.
The silver dust of the fallen Wraithform scattered, absorbed into the glowing cracks of the dream-street. The city pulsed again—not randomly, but in response to him, as if taking his measure.
Kairo tightened his grip on the fading dream-blade.
It flickered once, twice… then dissolved into soft blue smoke.
"Of course," he muttered. "Figures nothing stays normal here."
He turned back toward the woman—
Only to find her glitching.
Not disappearing… not fading…
Glitching, like an image losing its signal.
Her outline fractured into pixel-like shards, snapping in and out of alignment.
Kairo stepped back on instinct.
"Okay," he whispered, "you're definitely not a normal dreamer."
The woman's head tilted slightly—too smoothly, too perfectly.
When she spoke, her voice didn't echo in the dream-city.
It echoed in him.
"Kairo Vale. You arrived too early."
"Early for what?" he shot back. His heart hammered but his voice stayed sharp. "Look, if you're going to be cryptic, at least be cryptic with context."
She blinked slowly.
The blink came a second after the motion—
a glitch again.
"I should not be visible to you yet."
"Right, because that explains everything."
A soft ripple ran through Somnara.
The buildings breathed in.
The streets pulsed.
Even the air seemed to lean toward him.
And then—
[ WARNING: DREAM DISTORTION APPROACHING ]
The System screen snapped into existence without warning, startling him.
"Again? Already?"
In the distance, dark ripples spread as more Wraithforms unfolded from shadows.
Not walking—
crawling, like puppets pulled by invisible strings.
Kairo felt his pulse spike.
"Hey!" he yelled at the glitching woman.
"A little help?"
Her body shimmered, two different poses flickering over each other like overlapping frames.
When she answered, her tone was unnervingly calm:
"I cannot intervene. Not yet. Not until you stabilize."
"Stabilize what?!"
"You."
Wraithforms shrieked.
Kairo took a step back—
Then another—
His heel hit the edge of a floating platform he hadn't even noticed forming behind him.
Somnara shifted without permission.
With a violent lurch, the platform launched backward, carrying him away from the street and the approaching nightmares.
He stumbled, nearly tripping as the world blurred into streaks of neon.
The glitch-woman's voice followed, echoing faintly:
"Wake up, Kairo Vale. Before Somnara wakes with you."
The dream shattered.
Kairo's eyes snapped open in his bed, drenched in cold sweat.
The room was dark.
Still.
Real.
Except for one detail—
A glowing blue fragment floated above his palm.
A dream fragment.
He whispered hoarsely, "That… that was real."
The fragment pulsed.
[ DREAM-FORGE SYSTEM: SYNC COMPLETE ]
[ NIGHTMARE BREACH DETECTED ]
Kairo froze.
"Breach? Where?"
Then he heard it—
From the hallway outside his room.
A soft scraping sound.
Too soft to belong to anything human.
Somnara wasn't done with him.
Not even close.