Leon looked down the alley. A flicker of light shimmered at the far end.
He walked toward it.
The next door was waiting.
The second dream began without warning.
Leon opened his eyes and saw nothing beneath him but the ocean.
He was suspended in the sky. Floating. Weightless.
There was no wind, no clouds, no sun. Just gray-blue water stretching in every direction and a dim, colorless sky above. He didn't fall. He didn't rise. He simply hung there, midair, alone.
His limbs felt loose. Disconnected. Gravity had left him.
His first instinct was to flail, to grasp for something, to move. But he didn't. Not yet.
He remembered what they told him: "Don't fight the dream. Understand it."
So he stayed still. Every muscle tensed, frozen in fear that one wrong movement would send him hurtling downward, or worse, wake something up in the ocean below.
He looked down.
The water was impossibly far, dark and unmoving. But it wasn't empty.
Shapes drifted beneath the surface. Heavy, slow, like memories that refused to drown. He couldn't make out what they were, but the longer he stared, the more his chest tightened.
Pressure built inside him, emotional, not physical. Like someone was squeezing his lungs with invisible hands.
He started to sweat.
What is this? What does it mean?
Leon breathed slowly. Thought carefully.
No control and no direction. Suspended between falling and flying. The ocean below is like a mirror to the subconscious. Still on top, chaos below.
He remembered Elias Vorne's early reports. The man had been brilliant, but volatile. Highs of inspiration. Lows of silence.
And near the end, full collapse. The loss of control. The helplessness. The weight of your own mind.
Leon understood now.
It was a state. A moment in the dreamer's life frozen in thought.
The only way out was to do nothing.
So he stayed still.
Not out of fear now, but out of understanding.
If he moved, he would shatter the balance. Trigger panic. Sink into the sea of thoughts that weren't his.
Don't move. Don't interfere. Let it pass.
Minutes stretched.
Nothing changed.
And that was the hardest part.
Doubt crept in. What if he was wrong? What if he needed to dive into the water? What if the dream required action, not silence?
He twitched, just slightly.
The sky darkened.
His pulse raced.
No.
He steadied his breath. Closed his eyes. Refused to panic.
He wasn't drowning. He wasn't falling. He was floating through someone else's sorrow, and surviving it meant honoring its stillness.
Below, the shapes slowed, their movements languid, as if the ocean itself had exhaled. A ripple spread outward, perfectly circular, and for a moment the water looked like glass.
The pressure in his chest eased, and the dream broke apart like a reflection scattered by wind. fractured.
Leon opened his eyes in the next space, still intact. Breathing hard.
He stood this time. Feet on the ground. No pain.
Just silence, and the knowledge that not every battle in this place would be loud.
Two down.
He started walking again.
The third door was already forming in the dark ahead.