Some people dream to escape. She dreamed to trap them.
She stood in the church doorway like a stitched-together prophecy.
No feet. No shadow.Her face shimmered—glass and storm light, fractured memories bleeding across the surface like oil on water.
Kai took a step back.
The mirror-face turned toward him.
And every reflection that flickered across it was a version of him dying.
Over. And over.
And over.
"Who is she?" Elio whispered.
But Kai's voice was hollow. "She's not a person. She's the part of the dream we left behind."
Serai shook her head. "No. She's the dreamer. The one who imagined this town into being. And we… we forgot her."
The dreamer floated forward.
Every step she took made the ground glitch—like reality didn't know how to hold her.
"You abandoned me," she said.
The voice came from everywhere.It sounded like Serai at seven. Like Kai in his first death. Like Elio sobbing behind a burning door.
"I built this town for us. You promised we'd never forget."
Kai stepped forward, voice shaking. "We didn't know—"
"You left me here to rot in a memory that never ended."
The sky cracked.
Literally.
Like glass breaking under pressure.
From the edges of Ilyor, pieces of time began to fall upward. Days. Minutes. Faces. Seasons. All lifting, spiraling, unraveling.
"This town was supposed to be a sanctuary," the Dreamer said, her face burning with stars now. "You fed it your regrets. Your traumas. Your unspoken love."
"And now it's full."
Serai tried to reach for a blade. It melted in her hand.
Elio opened his mouth to cast a protection spell. It unspoke itself.
Kai stood firm.
He pulled off his coat.
Revealed the sigil.
And walked toward her.
"You're not the only one who remembers," he said.
"Ilyor didn't destroy me. You did. Every night I dreamed about this place—about you—I was dying a little more."
"Good," the Dreamer said. "Then you finally felt what I did."
Elio ran to Kai, grabbed his arm. "What are you doing?"
"I'm finishing what we started," Kai whispered.
He took Serai's hand.
Elio's.
And closed his eyes.
"Ilyor isn't real," he said softly. "It was a cage made of care. But now we break it."
The mirror-face began to crack.
Hairline fractures.
Then deeper.
"You think this can stop me?" she screamed.
But it wasn't anger.
It was grief.
Raw. Unhealed. Rotting.
Serai whispered, "I remember your name."
The Dreamer froze.
Kai whispered it too.
Elio followed.
They all remembered.
"Anelle."
And the mirror shattered.
A scream ruptured the streets.
The church exploded into light.
Buildings melted into golden dust. The ground sobbed. Time curled inward like burnt paper.
And then——silence.
Just stars.
Just ash.
Just them.
They stood in the center of where Ilyor had been.
Nothing remained.
Except the wind.
And the faint, humming echo of a lullaby.
Kai knelt.
Elio touched his face.
"Do you feel that?" he asked.
Kai nodded.
"It's… over."
Serai wiped her eyes. "No."
"It's just beginning."
The air around them shimmered like grief trying to take shape.
Ash curled upward in spirals, forming words they couldn't read—fragments of lives never lived. And as the wind settled, so did a new kind of silence.
One that listened.
Kai stood slowly, the sigil on his chest no longer glowing. It had faded into scar tissue.
A mark that no longer held power—just memory.
Elio crouched beside him. "Do you think she's really gone?"
Kai looked around. The horizon was a flat line of gold and dust. No buildings. No people. Not even the weight of time itself.
"I don't know," he said. "But something... stayed."
Serai moved to where the church once stood. All that remained was a cracked floor tile with a single name etched deep into the stone:
ANELLE
She touched it, and a flicker of warmth pulsed up her arm.
"Ilyor was never meant to last," she whispered. "But it still mattered."
Kai nodded. "Even cages made of dreams leave shadows."
A sound rose then.
Low. Distant. Mechanical.
A train whistle.
They all turned.
In the distance, emerging from what looked like nowhere, a glowing monorail slid into view—its body sleek and translucent, its windows flickering with moving images.
The past. The future. Moments they hadn't lived yet.
Moments they might never live.
"The loop's done," Serai said. "But the journey's not."
Kai stepped toward the train as it slowed beside them without tracks.
Doors hissed open.
Inside: nothing.Just seats. And a mirror at the far end, blank as dawn.
"We board," he said.
"Or we stay here. In the end of things."
Elio looked down at his hands. They weren't trembling anymore.
"I've had enough endings," he said. "Let's chase a beginning."
Serai smiled faintly. "Let's see what's left to remember."
They stepped inside.
As the doors closed behind them, the train didn't move.
The world did.
The ruins of Ilyor spun outward in slow, silent loops. Gold turned to black. Dust gave way to light. And far above them, the stars rearranged themselves into a new constellation.
A woman.
Crowned in broken glass.
Eyes closed.
The Dreamer, finally resting.
And then the mirror at the front of the train flickered.
Just once.
A single sentence written across its surface:
WHERE DO STORIES GO WHEN THEY END?
Kai smiled, exhausted.
"We tell another."
And the train vanished into the space between timelines.
The silence wasn't a void.It was watching.
Something unseen remained. Not malevolent. Not merciful. Just… aware.
Kai's breath fogged in the still air. "Did we really destroy her?"
Serai didn't answer right away.
She was staring at the mirror shards on the ground—only they weren't reflecting the sky anymore. They were reflecting memories.
Not theirs.
Ilyor's.
A girl giving a candle to her brother.A priest dancing barefoot on broken pews.A mother whispering stories to a hollow crib.A scream that never left the bones of the church floor.
Elio leaned closer. "These aren't just fragments of the dream. They're... souls."
The wind picked up, swirling the shards into the air like starlight.
Then—they vanished.
Not blown away.
Taken.
By something hungry.
"No magic dies clean," Serai said quietly. "It always leaves teeth."
Kai looked up sharply. "You think something inherited her place?"
"She didn't close the loop," Serai whispered. "She fed it."
And as if summoned by her words, a sound echoed from below.
A thrum.
Mechanical. Hollow.
Like a clock ticking inside a coffin.
The ground cracked behind them.
Just once.
And from that crack bloomed a small flower.
Glowing.
Alive.
And crying.
Kai approached carefully. "It's weeping…"
Elio knelt, watching in awe. "It's made from her memory."
Serai stood still. "No. From ours."
"We're the ones who kept Ilyor alive by dreaming about it. Feeding it pain. Love. Loss. We didn't escape the loop."
"We are the loop."
The ghost-train shimmered again in the distance, headlights forming twin suns through the ash.
Its whistle blew.
Longer this time. Sadder.
A farewell or a summons, they couldn't tell.
But when they turned back toward where Ilyor once stood—
They saw something new.
A child.
Sitting in the dirt.
Hands cupped, holding a glowing fragment of mirror like it was a secret.
She looked up at them with silver eyes.
Eyes that remembered everything.
Kai's voice caught. "That's not a memory."
The child tilted her head.
"Your name," Serai whispered, "is...?"
But the girl just smiled.
And vanished into light.
"What if the Dreamer didn't die?" Elio asked. "What if she planted herself?"
Kai looked at his hand again.
The scar from the sigil had bled slightly.
And beneath the blood: a new shape.
A seed.
They boarded the train.
But this time, as the doors shut, they weren't running.
They were carrying something.
Not guilt. Not grief.
A burden that could bloom.
The train shifted.
And as it did, Kai turned his head slightly, one last glance at the place where Anelle once stood.
A whisper only the wind caught:
"We'll remember you right this time."
And then the tracks lit up in fire.
And the future arrived in silence.