When Rei opened his eyes, he was already inside a classroom.
Not just any classroom—his first homeroom.
Everything looked the same, down to the cracked whiteboard and that faint lemony smell of cheap floor cleaner. Light filtered through the windows in perfect symmetry.
And all the seats were filled.
Except none of the students had faces.
Glitching heads that buzzed when he tried to focus.
"You’re late again, Rei."
The teacher’s voice echoed from the front of the class—but the teacher was Jay.
Hands folded politely on a desk that flickered in and out of reality.
"You were supposed to wake up," Jay said, tapping the desk. "You were never meant to see this far."
Rei opened his mouth, but the words caught in his throat like static.
Instead, the system HUD appeared:
[REALITY THREAD: OBSOLETE]
[SUBJECT: REI KAZUMA - OBSERVER TYPE: UNSTABLE]
[DREAM MODE: CONTAMINATED]
Jay snapped his fingers, and the windows shattered inward. A storm of papers, wires, and feathers whirled around them—each feather inscribed with a different date.
One read: "The Day He Let Her Die."
Another: "The Memory They Deleted."
Rei tried to reach for one, but they turned to ash.
"You’re not real," Rei whispered, almost pleading.
Jay tilted his head. "And yet here I am... in your dream. Which one of us is pretending?"
Falling sideways into a library made of bone and glass, each bookshelf curved like a spinal column.
Floating above the floor were doors—countless doors, spinning in slow orbit.
Rei saw his own name etched into one: [REI – LOCKED TRUTH FILE // FORBIDDEN ENTRY]
He drifted toward it instinctively.
His hand reached out—fingers trembling—
But a mirror slammed between him and the door.
In it, he didn’t see himself.
Staring at the sky like he was waiting for it to apologize.
"You think this is about you," the mirror said in a hundred voices.
"But it’s always been about the one who stayed behind."
[NEW MEMORY FRAGMENT UNLOCKED]
[DO YOU WISH TO VIEW IT?]
A girl—her face flickering between familiarity and static—grabs Rei’s younger self by the hand and shouts, "We don’t have time!"
A siren echoes in reverse.
And behind them, someone stands... unmoving... sword in hand... refusing to run.
But his dream self only watched.
"Why was I left behind?"
The memory cut to black.
And all at once, Rei fell—spiraling down through a wormhole of broken clocks.
Time shattered around him like glass confetti.
When he landed, he was alone.
Not in a corridor this time.
But in a room full of sleeping children. All connected to glowing, cracked Dream Terminals. All twitching.
A monitor blinked to life above them.
[WELCOME TO DREAM VAULT ZETA]
[ALL SUBJECTS IN STASIS]
[USER ACCESS: ILLEGAL]
Rei looked at their faces.
And the last... was a version of Jay he had never seen before.
As if he never carried the weight of the System.
Rei backed away, heart pounding.
[INCOMING ENTITY DETECTED]
Red light flooded the vault.
A scream—not human—ripped through the dream.
And behind him, the doors began to melt.
One voice echoed through it all:
OR YOU’LL NEVER ESCAPE WHAT YOU WERE."