When Rei opened his eyes again, he was no longer walking.
He was falling.
Endless white below. Endless white above. And then—
THUD.
He landed on what should have been a floor, yet felt like thought. Not a surface, but a frozen idea shaped into solidity. The environment formed slowly, as if remembering itself:
Shelves of glowing data cubes
Frozen moments from Jay's life
A ticking pendulum that swung without sound
Everything here pulsed with System Authority.
---
> [Access Granted: User R.K.]
[Lazy Genius Core Archive: Confidential Layer 0]
[Viewer Status: Unauthorized Dream Host]
---
The system should have rejected him.
But it didn't.
Instead, it welcomed him. As if it remembered him too.
Rei stepped forward, boots echoing in a vacuum of silence. Each data cube he passed blinked with labels that made his skin crawl:
Jay.001 – Assigned Sleep Personality
Jay.002 – Suppression of Original Intent
Jay.003 – Inherited Dream Class (Unstable Transfer)
