Another night of insomnia continued—again, knowingly.

  The world outside was calm and peaceful, almost sinister. As if nothing had changed. As if an entire existence hadn’t been wiped clean and replaced with precision so terrifyingly perfect no one even noticed.

  Leon.

  Who was Leon?

  A human—or something from the dreamworld? My gut knew it was the latter.

  Airi.

  Is she safe?

  Will she stay safe?

  Akai… at least she’s still alive now. Did that mean his wish was fulfilled?

  Is that the payment for “uplifting reality”?

  If so—was it worth the cost?

  And who the hell was David?

  Was he erased too, like Akai?

  Am I just connecting unrelated corpses of information together?

  No. No, the threads are real. I feel them.

  I just don’t want them to be.

  The night crawled by at a snail’s pace.

  Resisting sleep wasn’t hard—it was simply returning to who I was before all of this dragged me under.

  Work the next morning was painfully normal.

  I could feel myself reverting—like shedding a second skin I barely got used to wearing.

  “Missed me?”

  The voice echoed through my skull. I ignored it.

  I welcomed bugs and reports. They were familiar. Predictable.

  Patterns.

  Patterns I could observe and break apart until they made sense.

  Night Lattice wasn’t a pattern.

  It wasn’t human.

  It was something beyond us—cold, deliberate, merciless.

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  It can destroy reality or replace it, and I’m sure it already has, countless times, swapping people out like defective hardware.

  But why?

  What are the cracks?

  Where does its logic bleed?

  Why did I meet Akai?

  Did meeting him cause his removal?

  Every time we crossed paths, the world glitched. Like the system itself was panicking.

  I knew there were other dreamers long before I met him—Use Your Dreams still burns at the back of my mind.

  That evening, instead of letting myself fall asleep, I went to the hospital where Airi was.

  Not to comfort.

  Not to talk.

  To observe.

  I wanted to see how the entity called Leon behaved.

  Was he dangerous?

  Was he a ghost wearing a human face?

  He sat by her bedside—too calm. Too composed.

  Brotherly, almost gentle.

  But something felt wrong. I’ve never understood family well, but whatever emotion was on his face didn’t match anything human.

  If saving Airi was the “reward” for Akai reaching some end-state…

  Then why replace him?

  And why attach Leon to her afterward?

  What purpose does their dynamic serve in this system?

  More questions.

  More cracks.

  More rot.

  I went home and opened my onion links again.

  Loaded the forum:

  Black background. White serif font.

  USE YOUR DREAMS

  Survive, or vanish.

  No logo. No ads. Just the same scrolling boards:

  ? First Bruises

  ? Spectral Encounters

  ? Ascension Logs

  Spectrals.

  I still haven’t seen one.

  Did Akai see one?

  Is Leon a Spectre?

  I don’t know.

  I don’t know if I want to know.

  What pulled me and Akai together?

  If the system didn’t want people to meet, why leave a glitch the size of a crater?

  Why me?

  Why, damnit?

  I don’t want to carry the weight of a death—

  “Again,” the voice buzzed through my skull, sharp enough to cut.

  I know resisting that place is pointless.

  If it wants me, it’ll drag me.

  But, If I’m going back;

  I’m going back armed—

  for answers, and for justice.

  If the system wants to play god, then I’ll show it what happens when it builds a world on broken code.

  I’ll patch the fucking system myself.

  Or I’ll burn it to the ground.

  So I closed my eyes, exhaled once—

  —and welcomed the white walls again.