The traitor had gone deeper far beneath Vvralis, down into places where the Below thinned and strange paths twisted toward Ellas's domain. Dream could feel it. A faint, mocking echo of his own power, slithering away from him through cracks in the world.
He could have followed.
He could have forced the mountain open, flooded the tunnels with pure dream-force, dragged the traitor screaming into his grasp.
But Erias stood beside him.
A mortal boy.Bruised.Exhausted.Afraid.
If Dream fought here, the child would die first.
Dream knew it.I knew it.Even the traitor knew it.
centream chose restraint.
"We stop here," he said quietly.
Erias turned sharply. "But… isn't it down there? The thing that touched me?"
"Yes," Dream answered. "But it is no longer safe to pursue it. Not with you beside me."
The boy clenched his fists. "I'm not useless."
"No," Dream replied. "You are not. That is precisely why I refuse to see you broken under a mountain."
Erias looked at the cave one last time. The darkness inside seemed to breathe.
"…So what do we do now?" he asked.
"We leave," Dream said. "For tonight."
They descended the mountain in silence.
The air was cold, but Erias's breaths were hot and ragged. His steps were uneven. His injuries protested every movement. Dream adjusted his own mortal pace to match, keeping close enough to steady the boy if he slipped.
The traitor's presence faded the farther they walked.
Not gone.
Just distant.
Watching.
Waiting.
Erias finally broke the silence.
"Varos… I can't go home."
Dream stopped.
The boy wouldn't look at him. "I mean it. There's nowhere to go back to."
"What happened?" Dream asked.
"My parents died three winters ago," Erias said, staring at his hands. "The fever came though the village. Took them while I was out at the river. When I came back… it was just bodies and ashes."
Dream listened.
"They burned the house," Erias continued. "Said if they didn't, my 'curse' would linger in the wood. No one took me in. No one wanted the boy who made them wake up screaming."
Dream's jaw tightened.
"So you've been alone ever since,"and he said.
Erias swallowed. "I sleep in sheds, or in the woods when I have to. Sometimes under the old bridge. Until someone finds me and chases me out."
The boy said it as if reciting a fact that no longer hurt. It still did.
Dream walked again. After a few steps, he spoke.
"You're wrong about one thing,"for he said.
Erias frowned. and "About what?"
"You do have a home," Dream said. "You just don't know it yet."
Erias blinked at him, confused, but Dream didn't explain further.
They reached the outskirts of the village. Lanterns glowed with tired warmth; the world still looked small and ordinary to mortal eyes.
Dream stopped near the first row of houses and reached into the fold of his robe. He drew out a handful of coins local currency, minted with the crest of a distant capital city. They glinted in the twin-moon light.
He held them out.
"For food."
Erias stared at them, stunned. "Varos… this is this is too much."
"Then it will last you longer," Dream replied.
"I can't take all of"
"Yes," Dream said, tone gentle but absolute. "You can."
The boy's fingers closed around the coins slowly, as if afraid they would disappear. Emotion tightened his jaw.
"…Thank you," he whispered.
Dream nodded once.
"Go to the square," he said. "Find a stall. Eat something warm."
Erias glanced toward the clustered lights in the village center. "Will you be there?"
"I will not be far," Dream answered.
That seemed to be enough for the boy.
He jogged off toward the square, moving with a slight limp, clutching the coins as if they were the first proof that the world had not wholly abandoned him.
Dream watched him go.
Then he turned away.
He walked to the very edge of the village.
There, between the last crooked houses and the beginning of the dark tree line, lay a narrow patch of unused land just bare earth and a few scattered stones. Mortals had never bothered to build on it. It was too close to the wild, too far from the well.
Dream stood upon it and closed his eyes.
To anyone watching, it would have seemed as though he was simply thinking.
In truth, he was shaping.
He did not call on the full surreal nature of his realm. He did not twist physics or bend walls into impossible curves. This had to blend, not dazzle.
Outside, the building he made looked… normal.
A two-story house of smooth, well-fitted stone and dark wood. A strong door with iron hinges. Narrow windows with shuttered frames. A small balcony on the upper floor. A lantern hook. A neatly built step.
Simple .
Believable.
But the inside
The inside was worthy of wealth.
The first step through the door led into a wide entrance hall, floored with polished darkwood, lit by a chandelier of glass and brass. Columns lined the space, carved with quiet detail. Rugs with rich patterns covered the floors.
To the left: a sitting room with plush chairs, a polished table, shelves waiting to be filled. A fireplace already framed by carved stone.
To the right: a dining hall with a long wooden table, high-backed chairs, and tall windows dressed in heavy fabric.
A staircase swept upward with a gentle curve, its rail smooth and warm to the touch. Upstairs, multiple bedrooms waited soft beds, thick quilts, chests for clothing. The largest room, at the end of the corridor, held a bed fit for a noble's child and a window that overlooked the village and the distant mountains.
The kitchen was fully stocked: dried food, fresh bread, fruit that would not spoil, water that refilled itself from unseen wells.
There was nothing obviously magical.
But everything inside spoke of wealth and comfort something no orphaned boy from a village like this would ever expect to have.
Dream stepped inside, inspecting every corner.
He tested the door from within; it closed solidly. He checked the windows; they showed the world outside without distortion. The place felt real because it was real bound to Vvralis's rules, but fed and maintained quietly by Dream's power.
Satisfied, he stepped back outside and closed the door behind him.
No one in the village had seen it appear. To their eyes, it would be as if it had always been there, merely ignored until now.
Dream turned toward the village center.
He felt Erias searching for him.
It did not take long to find the boy.
Erias stood near the food stalls in the square, holding a hot bundle wrapped in cloth steam rising from whatever he'd bought. He spun slowly, scanning the crowd with anxious eyes.
Dream walked toward him.
The boy's shoulders dropped in relief when he saw him.
"There you are," Erias said. "I thought you'd left."
"Not yet," Dream replied. "Come with me."
Erias trotted up beside him, clutching his food as they walked back through the crooked streets. People glanced at them, but no one stopped them. To the villagers, Dream was just a stranger. An odd one, perhaps. But strangers passed through sometimes.
Erias frowned as they neared the edge of the village.
When they reached the new house, the boy stopped dead.
"This… wasn't here," he said.
"It is now," Dream answered.
Erias stepped closer slowly, eyes wide.
The stonework was smooth, expertly done. The wood looked freshly treated. The ironwork on the door was clean and unworn. It looked like a house belonging to a wealthy trader or a retired officer someone important.
"Whose is it?" Erias asked.
Dream looked at him.
"Yours."
The boy cho,ked on air.
"…Mine?"
Dream nodded once. "If you want it."
Erias stared at the door like it was a god.
"You said you had no home," Dream continued. "Now you do."
The boy shook his head slowly. "This is… this is a rich man's house. People from the capital build houses like this. Not people like me."
Erias turned, squinting at Dream.
"Varos… are you a merchant from the capital?"
Dream's eyes softened with a hint of dry amusement.
"Do I look like a merchant?" he asked mildly.
Erias took in the simple robe, the lack of jewelry, the absence of insignia.
"…No," he admitted. "You look… strange. Not from here."
"That is accurate," Dream said.
He opened the door.
Erias stepped in
And his world shifted.
He froze at the threshold of the entrance hall. His jaw went slack. His fingers tightened around the food bundle.
"This…" he breathed. "This is like a lord's house."
Warm light glowed from lamps along the walls. The floor gleamed. The air smelled faintly of wood polish and clean fabric. Gold-threaded curtains framed the windows. Every surface murmured of care and wealth.
Erias turned in a slow circle.
"There's no way this is for me," he whispered.
"It is," Dream said.
"Why?" Erias asked, almost desperate. "Why would you do this?"
Dream considered.
"Because someone marked you," he said. "Because someone tried to use you as nothing more than a step in their escape. Because I will not let them turn you into a casualty of their betrayal."
Erias swallowed hard.
"Are you… some kind of noble?" he pressed.
Dream shook his head.
"No," he said. "I am simply… not from here."
That was all he would give.
He led the boy up the staircase, into the largest bedroom.
Erias stared at the bed in disbelief.
"You can sleep here," Dream said. "No one will disturb you."
The boy's voice broke. "This is… more than I've ever had."
"It is the least you deserve," Dream replied.
Erias sat on the edge of the bed slowly, as if expecting it to vanish. It didn't.
He looked up.
"Varos… who are you, really?"
Dream deflected gently.
"We will talk more tomorrow," he said. "For now, eat. Then sleep."
Erias stared at him for a long moment.
"You'll still be here?" he asked.
"I will not be far," Dream said.
It was not a lie.
The boy nodded slowly and began eating, hands shaking slightly. When he finished, he set the bundle aside and lay back on the bed, staring at the carved ceiling.
"I'm… afraid to sleep," he admitted quietly.
Dream stepped nearer.
"You won't see him tonight," he said. "The one you saw in the cave. I will bar your dreams from him… for now."
Erias's eyes fluttered.
"You can do that?"
"Yes."
"Then… I'll try."
Sleep took him quickly. A child's exhaustion is heavier than fear.
Dream watched his breathing steady, his body relax. He waited until he was sure the boy was fully asleep, his consciousness immersed in a controlled, gentle dream one Dream shaped carefully for him: a simple dream of warm fields and clear skies.
Only then did Dream step back.
He closed his eyes.
And left his mortal form behind.
He rose back into his realm like mist returning to a higher sky.
The tremors greeted him again.
Another section of his world had withered the edges of a once-mighty city of dreams, now faded and brittle. Rivers of color had drained from entire regions. Some structures floated half-formed, unfinished, as if their creators had forgotten them mid-thought.
Dream's expression hardened.
"Seros," he called.
His trusted assistant emerged from a rolling cloud of fragmentary dreams.
"My lord."
"Have you begun?" Dream asked.
"Yes," Seros replied, bowing. "I am tracing every citizen who left our skies in the last eras. Every dream-born that strayed near the edges, every one that lingered near cracks between realms."
Dream stepped down from his throne, the trembling realm stretching beneath his feet.
"One of them found the Fallen," he said. "One of them learned how to hide from me. One of them touched a mortal boy on Vvralis and led me there through erosion."
Seros swallowed.
"I did not think one of ours capable of"
"Do not finish that," Dream said sharply. "What you thought is no longer relevant. It happened."
Seros bowed lower.
"What else would you have me do?"
"Look beyond the obvious," Dream replied. "The traitor is not foolish. It would have drifted on the fringes. It would have watched rather than acted. Search for the quiet ones. The bitter ones. The ones who began to question why they existed only to vanish at dawn."
Seros nodded once, face pale.
"I will find them," he vowed.
Dream turned away, looking out over the fractures in his once-untouchable sky.
"And when you do," he said softly, "bring me their name. Nothing more. I will handle the rest."
Seros vanished into the swirling depths.
Dream stood alone.
Far below, in a house that looked ordinary from the street and opulent within, a boy slept for the first time without seeing a watching shape in the darkness.
Far beneath that world, a former dream-citizen nestled in the cracks between realms, whispering with the Fallen, learning new ways to drain what it once called home.
The boy did not know he was caught between them.
But I did.
And so did Dream.
The consequences would reach far beyond Vvralis.
Far beyond Dream.
Far beyond even the Fallen.
I watched.
Because this was how universes change:Not always with gods roaring or dragons burning,but with a boy who finally has a bed
and a traitor who chose the wrong realm to betray.