“The next Dream…” Lucy uttered to herself. Although she must have a spent a good amount of time considering her updated alignments and her first Feat, it was still surreal to know that she would be travelling to a new frontier of the unknown so soon.

  The King clapped, causing the remaining Feat bubbles to disappear. Lucy gazed out across the sky that spread out endlessly before, above, and beneath her. She could spend as much time as she wanted just like this, floating in the comfort of her Final Dream with its breathtaking views. But now that she had seen—and touched—the Feat bubble that would enable her ultimate goal, she felt that there was no point in dawdling or hesitating any longer.

  “I’m ready to proceed,” she said, holding her Ideal firmly at her side.

  The King looked to her with a silent nod. He gestured toward the door at the far corner of his audience chamber, where the door to Cole’s Dream stood just as before. A few feet away from it, otherworldly light gathered and condensed into a tall, flat shape, the luminescence soon fading away to reveal another door.

  Lucy gave the King a respectful nod, then stepped over conjured cloud platforms to reach a spot where she stood before both doors.

  The new door was quite different from the last. It was perfectly rectangular, almost constrictingly so in its flawless edges and sharp corners. Aside from the doorknob, which was a deep wine red, the entire door was a solid black; against the bright blue backdrop of the sky, it looked like a floating monolith, imposing and mysterious.

  But the most curious thing about the door was the insignia at the top centre of its frame. Cole’s door had a hand symbol, and it was easy now to guess what it had been alluding to. For this new door, there was only a circle of pure black that was somehow even darker than its surroundings. Its simplicity gave away nothing about what might be beyond the door, but still Lucy felt a knot in her stomach the more she gazed at it.

  Although Lucy observed the new door for quite some time, she stepped up toward Cole’s door. She wondered if the King was going to advise against what she was about to do, but she stubbornly let her curiosity continue to guide her as she opened Cole’s door once more and stepped through it.

  The all-consuming darkness enveloped her again, just as before, and her senses comfortably fell away into the nothingness of slumber. But in the next moment, she strained her closed eyes as a piercing but familiar brightness peeked through. When she opened her eyes, she found herself standing in front of Cole’s door again, as if she had never entered.

  “Why am I back here?” she said, gazing about the sky to confirm that this was, without doubt, her Final Dream.

  “The passage of these doors is led by connections unfulfilled”, said the King, his voice close and clear as he looked to her from afar. “Once a Dreamer is rescued, that connection leads back to the Dream Knight’s Final Dream, for the Dreamer’s legacy will continue to carry on in the Dream Knight’s ongoing quest and unfulfilled goals.”

  He paused as Lucy looked at him, then added: “It is understandable that you would wish to travel to a past Dream and converse with the Dreamer once more. However, a Dream fulfilled swiftly leads to a return to the waking world. As denizens of the dream realm, we can remain only in the hanging hours of slumber, looking toward the future we cannot see.”

  Lucy gazed at the King’s figure, his technicolor robes looking somehow forlorn against the blue sky, and sighed as she looked down at her armour and the sword in her hand. She mouthed the words, “I understand,” unaware of whether her voice came out. Looking down at the hundreds of miles of sky between her and the world below, and her boots hanging between them, she was struck by the sudden sensation of being stuck, of how this entire world before her was a crystallization of that brief, fleeting time before the last embers of her life in the waking world snuffed out. It wasn’t the impending demise that she fixated on, but the future that could not be seen, as the King had said. Her Dream was another one of those crystals in the Lattice—a crystal that she couldn’t look outside of.

  Perhaps it was this claustrophobic feeling that brought her, before she knew it, to the new door that had appeared. The door’s angular, pitch black form still made her hairs stand on end, but her hand was already reaching for the wine red doorknob, a doorknob that at least promised some form of escape from the stillness of her Dream’s skies.

  The door swung open with a starkly different sound: a low, sonorous groan that clawed its way from unseen depths to strain against the light of the sun. Lucy shivered, half expecting something to escape through the door, something horrible and existentially at odds with the brightness of the sky. But as she stood frozen before the open doorway, nothing emerged but the all-inviting darkness beyond.

  Lucy gulped and instinctively looked at the King. He gave a slow, reassuring nod, his figure firmly planted as if to say that no matter the outcome, she will still find her way back safely to her Final Dream. That was the only thing that could quell Lucy’s sudden rise in fear: to know that even should she perish, she would return to this azure blue status quo.

  That did nothing to abate the fear of encountering whatever it was that would cause her to perish, but still Lucy gripped her Ideal tight and took two heavy steps through the doorway.

  It swung shut on its own behind her, groaning infernally like before, then sliding into the frame with a quiet, hushed snap. The sound of the latter should have been pleasant, but it made Lucy’s legs quake, as she imagined the door itself trying to keep a low profile, to keep the silence undisturbed, lest it be heard by…whatever could hear, out in this darkness.

  Although she was still on edge, Lucy’s senses fell away into oblivion once more, her entire body relaxing like she were laying in the most comfortable bed ever made. Time transpired as both eternity and a moment, and then Lucy opened her eyes.

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  To find the same impenetrable darkness.

  Lucy’s agitation turned to confusion, wondering if the process of entering the Dream had gone wrong, but it turned back to agitation upon realizing this darkness wasn’t the same. The darkness beyond the door had been neutral, inviting, an absence of anything and everything to let thoughts and senses naturally fall away.

  But this darkness before her right now was anything but neutral. It was not an impartial and honest emptiness, but a veil, concealing, hiding, obscuring. An entity all its own, surrounding, coiling, smothering Lucy in every square inch of the vicinity.

  Lucy’s breathing hitched—and the darkness ebbed with it, alive, disturbed.

  Slowly, with trembling fingers, she brought her hand up to her mouth. She didn’t see anything change, but the brief sound she had made caused a near-imperceptible change in the overwhelming fabric of darkness, like reverberations through a spiderweb. And Lucy was praying that the metaphorical spider, if there was one, would ignore her disturbance instead of making a beeline for her.

  There, with her hand covering her mouth and her body straining to keep absolutely still, Lucy was stuck between staying where she was to prevent drawing further attention, or moving away as quickly as possible to evade whatever might already be coming for her. The complete lack of light, of vision, only made this dilemma more difficult, as there was absolutely nothing for her to go off of.

  But, despite the constant alarm bells going off in her mind, Lucy soon became aware that a good amount of time had passed. And in that time, she was still standing, unscathed, without hearing or otherwise sensing anything approaching. To say that she had gotten lucky and nothing was coming for her was still a premature conclusion, but she grit her teeth and tightened her grip on her Ideal as she forced herself to hold onto that assumption and start walking.

  The floor was even, providing no resistance to her steps, and though Lucy was afraid of bumping into obstacles in front of her she couldn’t see, but she continued her slow walk forward without obstruction. Her boots striking the ground made a sharp clanging sound, no matter how softly she put her feet down, and each time it made her wince and dart her eyes around.

  As she grew aware that she could seemingly keep walking forward, there came the question of where she should be going. The darkness, complete lack of vision, and ensuing fear had caused her fight or flight instincts to take over, but now her mission was coming back into consciousness. She was to come into this Dream in order to rescue its Dreamer.

  Where was that Dreamer?

  Lucy’s heart dropped. According to the King, she would always emerge in a Dream within the general vicinity of its Dreamer. But how far was she from her starting point now? And even if she went back, how would she even find the Dreamer in the dark?

  Deciding there was no point in continuing along her path and distancing herself further, she turned around and began retracing her steps, her mind racing all the while. One way to locate the Dreamer without having sight to go off of would be to call out and ask if anyone was there. But that would be a surefire way to alert any hostile entities lurking nearby. And on top of that, given how silent it was in this place, would the Dreamer not have already heard her heavy, clanging footsteps and come toward her?

  No, that was making too great of an assumption. The Dreamer was likely just as scared as Lucy was, and if they’d heard her footsteps, there was no way for them to tell if the one making this noise was friendly or hostile. Most likely, they would have fled. But then, wouldn’t Lucy have heard them run, or walk, or at least in some way?

  There was one other explanation that would explain all of this, and it made Lucy gulp. What if the Dreamer was asleep? Or otherwise unconscious in some way? If that were the case, then it would be almost impossible for Lucy to find them short of accidentally stumbling upon or quite literally tripping over them. The thought gnawed at her as her feet ground to a halt.

  Standing still, she looked about her. It was futile, of course, as it was still as black and featureless as earlier, with no way for her to tell if this was her starting point. The King had said that all she had to do was stand at that spot and will herself to return to her Final Dream, so one way to solve this problem, inefficient as it was, would be to continue along this straight path and continuously think about returning until it happened. This had to be the only reasonable action to take next, if not to give Lucy a chance to think and re-strategize in the safety of her own Dream, then it was to allow her to find her exact starting point again and look for the Dreamer.

  With this decided, Lucy took a step, but her boot didn’t touch the ground. No matter how much she willed her foot to drop back down, it stayed hanging in mid-air. Lucy flinched in surprise—or, she had expected her body to, but nothing happened.

  She had gone entirely still.

  What was happening? Had her body finally succumbed to the mounting fear and gotten paralyzed? No; even her breathing had stopped. It wasn’t cut short, as in surprise, but it had suddenly ceased mid-breath. Even the darkness’s imperceptible ebbing and wavering had stilled, becoming a frozen veil where everything underneath had gone motionless as well.

  It was as if time itself had stopped. The moment this thought crossed Lucy’s mind, she knew.

  Her new Feat, Cognizance (I), had activated.

  And that meant something had just attacked her. Something she couldn’t see, with a strike that was totally invisible to her in this impenetrable darkness.

  Lucy’s mind raced even though her heart couldn’t in the stopped time. The Feat was called “Cognizance” because it was supposed to give her the opportunity to recognize her foe and their first strike, but what good was that here? Here, it had saved her from an attack that could have been life-threatening, but after that there was nothing, absolutely nothing she could do except run.

  Run. She had to run.

  She mentally prepared herself to dash away as fast as she could. She was more than ready to do so, but then there came back a recent memory, beating her for foolishness, for it reminded her that her goal should be to find the spot for her to return to her Final Dream.

  She had to return and leave this Dream, now more than ever.

  A clang rang out as Lucy’s boot finally struck the floor, and though Lucy was disoriented by suddenly having control of her body again, she used the adrenaline she had built in stopped time to get ahold of her legs and continue walking forward. All the while, she kept mentally muttering to herself: “Return, return, return…”

  There was no way of knowing how far her attacker was, whether they were on her heels or already readying another strike. All Lucy could hope for was that this unseen foe was still confused by how she had phased through its attack. And that she would miraculously reach her starting point before the attacker regained their bearings.

  What if she had already walked past the starting point earlier, so she had to head backwards? Or what if the attack was actually in front of her, and she was walking right into their hands?

  Lucy’s breathing came in rushed pants, and she struggled to hold her Ideal, but she shook her head and focused on taking each step and focusing on the word ‘return.’ But no matter how many steps and utterances she made, she was still here in the dark.

  But now, this had gone on long enough that she had reached a kind of mental equilibrium, her mind both in a state of alarm but also total calm. She could keep going. She could keep taking more steps. As long as she didn’t think of anything else but her escape, she would reach the starting point soon enough.

  Or so Lucy would like to believe, until she heard hissing a mere arm’s length behind her.