The sub-basement of Riverside Psychiatric Facility had never been designed for the living. It was a place where broken minds were stored like defective machinery, kept functional enough to avoid death but too damaged to ever return to the world above. The air itself seemed thick with despair, and the fluorescent lights hummed with a frequency that made rational thought difficult.
But for Kyon, it felt like coming home.
Dr. Vasquez moved beside him like a sleepwalker, her professional composure completely shattered. The rational psychiatrist who had entered his room hours ago was gone, replaced by a desperate mother who would do anything to see her daughter again. It was exactly the kind of transformation that Kyon had become expert at orchestrating.
"The patients down here," Dr. Vasquez said, her voice hollow and mechanical, "they're not like the ones upstairs. Some of them have been in chemically induced comas for years. Others are so violent that they have to be kept in restraints twenty-four hours a day."
"Perfect," Kyon said, his smile never wavering. "Violence is just passion without direction. And passion can be... redirected."
They stopped at the first black-tagged door. Through the reinforced window, Kyon could see a man in his thirties, his body covered in self-inflicted scars that formed intricate patterns across his skin. He was awake, staring at the ceiling with eyes that seemed to be looking at something far beyond the confines of his cell.
"Thomas Chen," Dr. Vasquez read from the chart. "Admitted eight years ago after he murdered his entire family with a kitchen knife. Claims that voices from another dimension told him it was the only way to 'open the door' between worlds."
"And you've been keeping him sedated all this time?"
"He's extremely dangerous. The few times we've reduced his medication, he's become violent, trying to carve symbols into the walls with his fingernails. He insists that he's building a 'map' to guide others to the same place he's been."
Kyon pressed his face against the window, studying Thomas with the intensity of a predator evaluating prey. "Thomas," he called out softly.
The man's head turned immediately, his eyes focusing on Kyon with an alertness that should have been impossible given his medication levels. When he spoke, his voice carried the same harmonic quality that had infected Kyon's own speech.
"You're the one," Thomas said, sitting up on his bed with fluid grace. "The one who was supposed to replace the child. I've been waiting for you."
Dr. Vasquez stepped back, her face pale. "That's impossible. He's been on enough sedatives to keep him catatonic. He shouldn't be able to think clearly, let alone speak."
"The medication only affects the body," Kyon explained patiently. "The mind, the soul, the part of us that has touched the OtherSide - that exists on a different level entirely. Thomas, can you hear the others?"
Thomas nodded eagerly. "They're all waking up. The convergence is calling to them, pulling them back from the chemical darkness. They're scared, but they're also... hungry."
"Hungry for what?"
"For revenge. For the chance to make the world pay for what it did to them. For the opportunity to show everyone what happens when you abandon the things that need you most."
Kyon's smile widened. This was even better than he had hoped. The patients weren't just connected to the OtherSide - they were angry about it. They had been transformed by their experiences, marked by their contact with abandoned dreams and forgotten friends, and now they wanted to share that transformation with the world.
"Dr. Vasquez," Kyon said, turning to the psychiatrist, "I need you to unlock this door."
"I can't do that," she said, though her voice lacked conviction. "Thomas is extremely dangerous. If he gets out..."
"If he gets out, he'll help me bring Emily back," Kyon said, his voice taking on a hypnotic quality. "Isn't that what you want? To see your daughter again?"
Dr. Vasquez hesitated for a moment, then pulled out her key card and swiped it through the door's electronic lock. The heavy metal door swung open with a pneumatic hiss, and Thomas Chen stepped out into the corridor.
He was smaller than he had appeared in his cell, but there was something about his presence that made the air feel colder, more oppressive. The scars on his arms and chest seemed to pulse with their own light, and when he smiled, his teeth appeared sharper than they should have been.
"Thank you," he said to Dr. Vasquez, his voice carrying genuine gratitude. "You have no idea how long I've been waiting for this moment."
"What did you do to your family?" Kyon asked, not out of moral concern but from pure curiosity.
Thomas's expression grew distant, as if he were reliving a pleasant memory. "I set them free. The voices showed me how they were trapped, how their imaginations had been poisoned by the rational world. My wife had forgotten about her childhood friend, a little girl made of starlight who used to visit her dreams. My son had abandoned his invisible dog because his teachers said it was interfering with his social development."
"So you killed them?"
"I opened the door for them," Thomas corrected. "Death is just another barrier, another artificial construct designed to keep us separated from the truth. When I carved the symbols into their flesh, when I spoke the words that the voices taught me, I gave them the chance to cross over completely. To become part of the OtherSide instead of being trapped between worlds."
Dr. Vasquez made a sound that might have been a sob or a laugh. "You're talking about murder as if it were a kindness."
"Isn't it?" Thomas asked, tilting his head to one side. "Your daughter Emily - she's trapped in the OtherSide, calling out for you, but you can't hear her because you're still anchored to this reality. If you were to die, truly die, you could join her there. Wouldn't that be preferable to this endless grief?"
For a moment, Dr. Vasquez actually seemed to consider the question. Then she shook her head violently, as if trying to clear away cobwebs. "No. No, that's not... I want to see her again, but not like that."
"Then help us bring her here," Kyon said. "Help us merge the realities so that the living and the dead can coexist. So that no one ever has to lose anyone again."
It was a lie, of course. Kyon had no intention of creating some utopian merger of worlds. He wanted to tear down the barriers between dimensions so that the abandoned and forgotten could flood into reality like a tide of nightmares. He wanted to watch the world burn, to see everyone who had ever been responsible for creating the OtherSide suffer the consequences of their actions.
But Dr. Vasquez didn't need to know that. Not yet.
They moved to the next door, and then the next. With each cell they opened, Kyon gathered another ally to his cause. Maya Reeves, the pyrokinetic who had been waiting for him. Sarah Kim, a teenager who had been committed after trying to sacrifice her classmates to "feed the hungry shadows." David Martinez, a middle-aged man who had been found standing in a field, speaking to creatures that only he could see.
Each of them had been marked by the OtherSide, changed by their contact with abandoned dreams and forgotten friends. Each of them had been medicated into compliance, their dangerous abilities suppressed but never eliminated. And each of them looked at Kyon with a mixture of reverence and desperate hope.
"You're him," Sarah whispered as she stepped out of her cell. "The one who was supposed to save the child. The one who was going to make everything right."
"I'm going to make everything right," Kyon agreed. "Just not in the way you might expect."
By the time they reached the deepest part of the sub-basement, Kyon had assembled a group of twelve patients, all of whom had been classified as permanently dangerous and incurable. They moved through the corridors like a pack of predators, their various medications having worn off as their connection to the OtherSide grew stronger.
"Where are we going?" Dr. Vasquez asked, her voice barely above a whisper.
"To the convergence point," Kyon replied. "The place where the barrier between worlds is thinnest. Maya told me about it."
Maya, who had been walking beside him in comfortable silence, suddenly stopped. "It's here," she said, pointing to what appeared to be a blank wall. "Can you see it?"
Kyon squinted, allowing his perception to shift the way it had when he was connected to the network in the OtherSide. Slowly, the wall began to shimmer and fade, revealing a doorway that seemed to exist in the spaces between molecules.
"I can see it," he said. "Can the others?"
One by one, the patients nodded. Dr. Vasquez was the only one who appeared to see nothing but concrete and steel.
"What's supposed to be there?" she asked.
"The truth," Thomas said, his scarred hands tracing patterns in the air. "The place where abandoned dreams go to die, where forgotten friends wait for their children to remember them."
Kyon stepped through the doorway, and immediately felt the familiar sensation of existing in multiple dimensions simultaneously. The room beyond was vast and circular, with walls that seemed to be made of crystallized screams and a floor that reflected images of places that had never existed.
At the center of the room was a pool of liquid that might have been water if water could be black and still somehow luminescent. And floating in that pool was a figure that made Kyon's heart skip a beat.
It was the child from the Heart of the OtherSide, but smaller, younger, more fragile than he had been when Kyon had last seen him. His body was translucent, as if he were slowly fading from existence, and his eyes were filled with a pain that seemed to encompass the suffering of every abandoned dream that had ever existed.
"You came back," the child whispered, his voice barely audible. "I knew you would come back."
"I'm here," Kyon said, approaching the pool. "But I'm not here to save you."
The child's expression didn't change, as if he had expected this response. "I know. You're here to replace me. To become the new Heart of the OtherSide."
"No," Kyon said, his voice growing harder. "I'm here to destroy it. To tear down the barriers between worlds and let every abandoned dream, every forgotten friend, every discarded piece of childhood innocence flood into reality. I'm here to make the world pay for what it did to us."
The child's eyes widened with something that might have been fear or excitement. "That will kill everyone. Not just the people in the real world, but everyone who has ever touched the OtherSide. Including you."
"I know," Kyon said. "But first, they'll suffer. All of them. Everyone who ever abandoned a friend, everyone who ever forgot a dream, everyone who ever told a child that their imagination wasn't real. They'll experience every moment of pain and loneliness that their actions created."
Behind him, the other patients had entered the room and were taking their positions around the pool. Maya was already conjuring flames that burned with colors that shouldn't exist. Thomas was carving new symbols into his flesh with fingernails that had become claws. Sarah was whispering to shadows that were beginning to take solid form.
"What do you need me to do?" Dr. Vasquez asked, though she was clearly struggling to maintain her sanity in the face of what she was witnessing.
"Just watch," Kyon said. "Watch and learn what happens when you abandon the things that need you most."
He reached out and touched the child's forehead, and immediately felt the full weight of the OtherSide's consciousness pressing against his mind. But instead of accepting it, instead of allowing himself to become the new Heart, Kyon began to feed it his rage, his hatred, his burning desire for revenge.
The child's body convulsed as Kyon's emotions poured into him, transforming him from a pitiful victim into something far more dangerous. His eyes became pools of liquid darkness, his skin began to crack and reveal the writhing mass of abandoned dreams beneath, and his voice became a chorus of every forgotten friend that had ever been left behind.
"Yes," the transformed child hissed. "Yes, let them all burn. Let them all suffer as we have suffered."
The pool around them began to churn and bubble, and through its black surface, Kyon could see glimpses of the real world above. The psychiatric facility, the city beyond, the millions of people who had no idea that their forgotten dreams were about to come home.
"Begin the convergence," Kyon commanded, and his voice carried the authority of someone who had claimed dominion over nightmares themselves.
The patients around the pool began to chant in languages that predated human speech, their voices harmonizing in ways that made reality itself shiver. The walls of the room began to crack and bleed, and through the fissures, Kyon could see the vast network of the OtherSide pressing against the barriers that kept it contained.
Dr. Vasquez stumbled backward, her face pale with terror. "What have I done?" she whispered. "What have I done?"
"You've helped me set things right," Kyon said, his smile now completely devoid of any human warmth. "You've helped me create a world where no one will ever be abandoned again. Because in the world I'm creating, there will be no one left to do the abandoning."
The convergence was accelerating now, reality bending and twisting as the OtherSide prepared to merge with the physical world. And at the center of it all, Kyon Blackwood stood triumphant, no longer the confused boy who had wanted to save everyone, but a monster who had decided that if he couldn't save the world, he would make sure it burned.
The real story was just beginning.