The glowing words on the terminal pulsed in rhythm with Rei’s heartbeat:
[SYSTEM RESET: CLASS REALIGNMENT]
Warning: Anchor Split Risk – 89%
His finger hovered over the prompt.
But because of the echo—a whisper in the back of his mind. A lazy voice, faint, distorted: fr eewe(b)nove.l.co\m
"...Rei, if you take it back... everything breaks."
He gritted his teeth.
Everything was already broken.
He slammed his hand on the terminal.
[Verifying Anchor Entitlement... Searching Original Bind... Matched: Rei Kazuma]
[Activating Class Transfer: "Dream Architect" → Rei Kazuma]
For a moment, Rei thought his soul would rip in half. Every fiber of his being stretched, torn, rewritten.
Then came the defense.
[ERROR: Core Anchor Conflict Detected]
[System Defense Protocol: Chrono Phantom Initiated]
The archive around him fractured like glass under a hammer.
From the void emerged something that wasn’t alive. A Chrono Phantom—a humanoid figure stitched together with threads of time, wearing a mirrored mask reflecting Rei’s past selves: young, hopeful, broken, erased.
"Unauthorized user detected," it said in Jay’s voice, cold and mechanical.
"You are not the vessel."
Rei raised the Dreamlight blade, which had returned to his hand—no longer imagined, but real now. A weapon shaped from memory and forgotten fate.
The phantom struck first—no sound, no warning. A flash of warped time, a blur that forced Rei to bend reality sideways just to dodge.
His feet skidded across nothing.
Rei concentrated, and a doorframe formed behind him, a leftover from the corridor of dreamless. He dove through—and came out in a shattered classroom, now wielding his own forgotten dreams as the rules of combat.
"You think a glitch like you can override the System?" the phantom hissed.
"Not override," Rei muttered. "Rewrite."
Memory surged behind him. A tidal wave of fragments:
His first failed confession.
The day he learned what dreaming cost in the real world.
The moment Jay took his place.
He poured it all into the blade.
He pierced the phantom’s chest.
[DEFENSE SEQUENCE: PHASE TWO ENGAGED]
The phantom reformed, now with multiple masks—each showing a version of Jay. Laughing. Sleeping. Hurting. Destroying.
"You can’t win," it whispered. "You’re built to care. He isn’t."
Rei bled from the ears now. His vision fractured. The system was trying to expel him—to cast him back into the Dreamless Corridor.
But Rei planted his feet.
"You gave him my system. Now I’m taking it back."
The phantom lunged again.
Not just the strike—but the source.
A line of code trailing behind the phantom like a leash.
[Chrono Phantom: Jay’s Failsafe Instinct (Bound Personality Thread 003)]
Rei grabbed the thread.
The phantom screamed.
And collapsed—shattering into static and silence.
Rei fell to one knee, gasping.
Behind him, the terminal glowed one last time:
[Class "Dream Architect" Realigned to: Rei Kazuma]
[Error: Dual Anchor Now Detected – Subject JAY]
"Sorry, Jay. You were never lazy. You were just made to forget."
Outside, far away—in the real world, Jay twitched in his sleep.
A crack formed on the glowing System HUD hovering over him.
A whisper escaped his lips.