Sleep did not come gently.
It took them.
Not as rest—but as descent.
Andrew dreamed first.
He was standing alone on unfamiliar ground. The sky above him was pale and empty, like it hadn't decided what it wanted to be yet. No stars. No moon. Just a pressure in the air that made his chest ache.
Then—
Something fell.
Not meteor-fast.
Not violent at first.
A sphere of glass, flawless and impossibly smooth, descended as if it had been released rather than thrown. It reflected Andrew's face as it fell—warped, fractured into a thousand versions of him staring back.
"Wait—" he said, stepping forward.
The sphere struck the ground.
The sound wasn't an impact.
It was a note—low, absolute, final.
The earth split.
Light erupted upward, not blinding but invasive, pouring straight into Andrew's eyes, his thoughts, his memories. For a fraction of a second, he understood something vast and terrible—
Then—
Andrew woke up screaming.
At the same moment—
Sylence dreamed.
He was standing somewhere cold.
A place that existed between moments.
Claude was there.
Alive.
Uninjured.
Standing at the edge of something vast and unseen.
Relief hit Sylence so hard his knees almost buckled.
"Claude—" he began.
Then he saw the hand.
It rested on Claude's shoulder casually.
Too casually.
It didn't belong.
Not human.
Not monstrous.
Just… wrong.
Too still.
Too knowing.
Sylence's breath caught. His heart slammed against his ribs.
Claude hadn't reacted.
That terrified him more than the hand.
"Claude," Sylence said again, sharper now. "Don't move."
The hand tightened.
Not aggressively.
Possessively.
Sylence's vision tunneled. Panic surged, raw and uncontrollable.
"Claude!" he screamed.
At the same instant—
Andrew screamed Sylence's name in the waking world.
And in the dream—
Sylence screamed Andrew's.
The sound crossed something it shouldn't have.
Claude's head snapped slightly to the side.
Just enough.
His eyes widened.
And for the first time—
He panicked.
"Carlos," Claude whispered.
The name detonated reality.
The explosion wasn't fire.
It was absence.
Sound ceased.
Light inverted.
The world tore itself inside out.
Sylence was thrown backward, unable to breathe, unable to scream.
When his vision returned—
Claude was still alive.
Standing.
Burned.
Cracked.
But unbroken.
They were no longer where they had been.
Rolling hills stretched endlessly under a sky bruised with impossible colors. Wind howled like it carried voices that had never been born.
Claude turned his head slightly.
Not toward Sylence.
Toward something far beyond him.
And he spoke.
Slowly.
Deliberately.
As if carving his words into existence itself.
"Now I know you are panicking."
His voice didn't shake.
It carried grief like gravity.
"Now I know you are wondering who keeps hope when meaning collapses."
Sylence staggered forward. "Claude—stop—don't—"
Claude continued.
"Who waits through eternity long enough to go insane…"
"And still chooses to remember."
He finally looked at Sylence.
Really looked.
And smiled.
Not with happiness.
With acceptance.
"I would remember you," Claude said softly, "on another point of the universe."
"In the existence of a new world."
"And I would run toward this story again."
The ground beneath him began to fracture.
Sylence ran.
Faster than he ever had.
"Claude!" he shouted, reaching out.
Claude stepped backward.
And jumped.
Sylence caught nothing but air.
He fell to his knees, screaming—
And woke up.
Silence filled the room.
Andrew sat upright in his bed, drenched in sweat, gasping for breath.
At the same moment, Sylence bolted awake across the hall.
Their eyes met through the darkness.
Neither spoke.
They didn't need to.
Somewhere—
Between dreams, systems, and fractured centers—
Something had confirmed what they feared.
Claude wasn't gone.
He had moved.
And whatever waited at the center
had just learned that memory could chase it across worlds.