I wasn’t waiting to wake up this time.

  Not because I slept deeply — I didn’t —

  but because the line between dreaming and waking felt thinner than it used to.

  I blinked at the ceiling, expecting the irritation to fade.

  It didn’t.

  It settled.

  Heavy. Cold. Quiet.

  The kind of frustration that doesn’t sit on the skin — it buries itself in bone.

  I pushed the blanket off and sat up, movements automatic, mechanical — like muscle memory was running me instead of thought.

  Work.

  Routine.

  Normalcy.

  Whatever the hell that meant anymore.

  The office screens blinked to life with the same backlog of tickets and bugs.

  Slack messages.

  Emails.

  Meetings that used to matter.

  I answered mechanically.

  Type.

  Delete.

  Retype.

  People talked.

  I nodded where appropriate.

  Smiled when expected.

  Pretended I remembered how to be human.

  But underneath all of it — like faint static layered beneath a song — one thought repeated:

  How do I get back?

  Could I?

  I still followed every instruction from the Dreamer Manual — the breathing, the intention, the patterning — but the system refused me anyway.

  I didn’t know if the lattice wanted me back.

  Or if wanting mattered at all.

  And worse — I wasn’t even sure if my original reason still mattered.

  All I could think was: maybe Akai was dead because I met him.

  Maybe I was the glitch.

  And now all I wanted was one thing:

  To stop feeling like I killed him.

  This shit system with its paper-thin firewall and god-complex.

  Days blurred.

  Work blurred.

  Meals blurred.

  Sleep was no longer rest.

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  It was attempt.

  Every time I closed my eyes, I waited —

  not passively, not gently, but with the tension of someone trying to pick a lock without snapping the metal.

  The dreams shifted constantly.

  Never the same twice.

  A hallway with too many doors.

  A beach where waves reset halfway through crashing.

  A city with no people — only moving lights and recorded sound.

  All of them felt constructed.

  Artificial.

  Stabilized patches over older architecture.

  And every one had flaws — invisible until I poked at them.

  A sky texture repeating every few meters.

  Grass arranged in exact mirrored tiles.

  Footsteps that kept going a half-second after I stopped walking.

  Static.

  Interface bleed-through.

  The illusion glitching if stared at too directly.

  Nothing useful.

  But enough proof to keep me breathing.

  The lattice wasn’t gone.

  It was guarded.

  Layered under scripted distractions.

  A maze meant to exhaust me.

  A loop meant to make me quit.

  I didn’t.

  At some point — hours, days, I wasn’t sure — the dreams shifted again.

  Not random.

  Ordered.

  Like progression without permission.

  If I stood still too long in one dream, it would warp — snapping into the next like someone flipping a slideshow.

  No loop repeated perfectly.

  No area returned unchanged.

  Somewhere around attempt fifteen — maybe twenty — realization crept in:

  These dreams weren’t messages.

  They were loading screens.

  Creepy ones, sure — but still just placeholders.

  Another night — or maybe just another failed nap — I tried again.

  This time, there was no scenery.

  No city.

  No waves.

  No halls.

  Just static — a faint electric hum like memory assembling.

  I didn’t move.

  No fear.

  No expectation.

  Just waiting.

  The static dissolved.

  White.

  Smooth. Endless. Familiar.

  Then the pod formed around me — seamless, cold, enclosing.

  My breath caught.

  I was back.

  The pod space.

  The core entry point.

  The place I thought the system cut me out of permanently.

  Relief hit like air after drowning.

  “I’m back,” I whispered.

  And then the system answered —

  not with warmth.

  But with the same cold greeting from the very first time I ever accessed this place.

  Slow.

  Deliberate.

  Clinical.

  Welcome, Dreamer Amaya.

  My pulse stuttered.

  The next line materialized.

  You may now choose your form.

  Choose… form?

  No.

  No, no, no.

  Ice slid down my ribs as it clicked.

  This wasn’t continuation.

  This wasn’t restored access.

  This was reset.

  A clean slate.

  A wiped profile.

  A brand-new file pretending it never saw me before.

  Everything I’d done —

  every level, every conversation, every progression—

  gone.

  Just to be sure, I went along with the UI.

  Selected the same form.

  Confirmed.

  Accepted.

  And there it was:

  Gate to Utopia — 200 coins.

  The exact same starting point.

  “Of course,” I muttered.

  “Corrupted system logic. Beautiful.”

  I wasn’t stepping back into where I left.

  I was being placed at the beginning.

  Not locked out.

  Rewritten.

  My hands curled slowly into fists.

  The anger came — not explosive, not wild — but steady.

  Controlled.

  Purposeful.

  “If you think resetting me fixes your mess,” I whispered to no one and everything,

  “you really don’t understand me.”

  I stepped closer to the hovering text.

  “You’re helping me,” I said softly.

  “Restart means repetition. Repetition means pattern. And patterns? I break.”

  I didn’t expect an answer.

  I just needed it said.

  Not bargaining.

  Not pleading.

  Just marking the moment.

  Because some part of me knew:

  Resets don’t happen randomly.

  Something triggered this.

  Something I did.

  Something it noticed.

  And that meant one thing—

  I mattered.

  The white space flickered — a faint pulse in the architecture.

  Then everything cut.

  Instant black.

  No fade.

  No exit prompt.

  Just severed connection.

  I woke sitting up instead of lying down, chest tight, breath uneven.

  I stared at my hands.

  Not shaking.

  Just ready.

  “I’ll find out how you work,” I murmured, voice low.

  “And next time, I won’t knock.”

  [SYSTEM — INTERNAL]

  Ping received: Dreamer AMAYA

  Recalibration Initiated.

  Old Data: Rolled back.

  Patch: Complete.