There are no doors here.
Only walls.
And they breathe.
---
Kai ran. Again.
He didn't know from what. He never did. The floor beneath his bare feet shifted from cold stone to warm sand to flesh that pulsed and sighed. A thousand footsteps echoed behind him, but when he looked back—
Nothing. Just walls.
Smooth, faceless walls that stretched infinitely upward and out, like a maze with no ceiling, no end, no beginning.
His breath caught. His hands trembled.
This wasn't a nightmare.
This was the nightmare.
He had stopped pretending to wake up years ago.
---
The First Memory:
A door. No, a window. Shattered.
Blood on white bedsheets. Screaming voices.
A little boy clutching his ears, screaming back.
"Kai, wake up—wake—KAI—"
He blinked.
The walls melted, became a hallway.
A hallway became a hospital.
A hospital became his childhood bedroom.
He was back.
He shouldn't be.
But the air smelled like bleach and burnt feathers.
"Kai," whispered the voice.
His mother's voice.
But his mother had died.
He remembered—
No. Wait.
Did she?
---
The ceiling above him began to crack.
Thin spider lines raced across the plaster.
Then a single eye opened in the center, wide and wet and watching.
He didn't move.
He didn't scream.
He bowed.
And the eye blinked back.
Because this was routine now.
This was the Labyrinth.
---
Rule 1: Don't trust doors.
He opened the bedroom door.
Behind it wasn't a hallway. It was a stairwell spiraling up and down at the same time.
He chose neither.
Instead, he jumped.
He fell.
For what felt like hours.
Through ink, through memories, through silence.
Until he landed — not on the floor —
But on a dream.
---
A school. Empty. Desks floating.
Rain outside. Except it was raining up.
On the blackboard, someone had written:
> "We are the dreams of the dead.
And you, Kai, are very, very awake."
He touched the chalk. It bled.
Red.
Behind him, the classroom door creaked.
A girl stood there.
Long hair. School uniform. Umbrella dripping moonlight.
He didn't know her.
But she knew him.
"You're in my dream again," she said, tilting her head. "Why?"
"I don't know," Kai replied honestly.
"You said that last time too."
---
Second Memory:
Laughter. A boy in the mirror.
A hand that didn't match his body.
A voice whispering: "Steal just one more. One more Path. One more dream. Then you'll remember who you are."
But Kai never remembered.
Not fully.
Only the pain remained.
---
"Do you want to wake up?" the girl asked him, now standing far too close.
Her eyes were mirrors.
In them, he saw himself —
Not as he was,
But as a monster made of stitched faces and broken bones.
"I can't wake up," Kai whispered.
"I'm already awake."
---
The classroom dissolved.
They were now on a rooftop under an ocean sky.
Jellyfish floated above them, tangled in constellations.
She sat at the edge, feet dangling into the stars.
"Do you remember my name?" she asked.
Kai hesitated.
"No."
"You stole my dream last week."
"I'm sorry."
"You're not."
She smiled — not sad, not angry. Just… empty.
"You're not the only Sleepless, you know."
That made him freeze.
She laughed, a sound that cracked the stars.
Then she whispered something that made his heart stop beating for three full seconds:
> "The Archivist is watching you."
---
Third Memory (maybe):
A room full of clocks.
All set to midnight.
Except one.
That one ticks backward, slow and wrong.
And inside it:
A piece of Kai's soul screaming.
---
When he looked up, the girl was gone.
In her place was a door. Wooden, old, pulsing like skin.
He stepped through it — because what else was there?
And fell again.
Not through space — but through people.
Each face he passed—
Screaming. Laughing. Crying. Dreaming.
He felt their dreams.
Their Dreambinds.
One man summoned swords made of shame.
A woman wept and turned her tears into wolves.
A child built walls from forgotten lullabies.
He tasted them all.
And stole just a little from each.
Because he had no Dreambind of his own.
He was a parasite.
A thief of fragments.
A Pathless.
---
He woke up.
Or maybe… he didn't.
He was in a bed now. A clean room. A clock ticking.
Was this the Waking Realm?
The walls were still breathing.
A TV flickered on by itself.
News anchor:
> "Seventeen more deaths in their sleep last night. Citizens advised to suppress dreaming using approved medication. In other news, a rogue Dreamwalker continues to invade public consciousness…"
His face flashed on screen.
Kai.
But the eyes were different.
Dead. Smiling.
He didn't remember smiling.
He didn't remember any of it.
He looked at his hands.
They were clean.
Then they weren't.
Blood. So much blood.
Whose?
He screamed.
No sound came out.
Only sand poured from his mouth.
---
And the room melted again.
He was back in the Labyrinth.
Back where the walls had no end.
Back where names faded.
Where memories slipped between fingers like smoke.
And still…
A whisper echoed across the endless corridors.
"Kai… wake up…"
But he never could.
He was already awake.
Forever.