Zane lingered before the depictions, drinking in more revelations about the dreamy city and the realm that had become his prison. When they finally emerged from the cathedral after hours of exploration, night had already claimed the sky. A glowing silver moon—utterly unlike Earth's familiar satellite—shone overhead with crystalline radiance.
It was there every night, a constant sentinel reminding him of countless evenings brewing potions as silver rays passed through the mirrors of the academy's research room. Even during the night he'd discovered the unnamed potion, that same moon had watched, silent and knowing...
Needing no sleep since the eternal fusion, Zane spent the entire night watching the lunar face, remembering potion recipes he no longer needed, while simultaneously cataloging what he might exchange at the merchant's alley come morning. He would need occupation now that his exploration of the dreamy city was reaching its conclusion—especially after witnessing the prophetic depictions that had woven him into their mythology.
The following day arrived, and Zane traded with the gentlets in earnest.
He harvested fragments by the hundreds, conjuring items from pure imagination, giving them weight and history through the alchemy of fiction. The hours dissolved quickly beneath the rhythm of exchange—offer, story, acceptance, fragments accumulated. By day's end, his resources had swelled dramatically: ten thousand exchange fragments glittered in his mental ledger, a fortune built from manufactured memories.
Night returned with the same silver moon, and Zane immersed himself once more in recollections of potion knowledge—memories tinged with activities performed beneath that lunar glow. The consciousness he was slowly becoming, the owner of these borrowed memories, had rarely done anything unrelated to potions under the moon's watchful eye. The specificity was almost amusing, the narrow obsession of a mind he was inheriting piece by careful piece.
Finally, inevitably, the appointed day arrived.
The day when Zane, Lady Sylvia, and the gentish hunters would venture into the benign dream bubble.
…
It floated above the trees at the forest's outer edge—a sphere of shifting luminescence that defied simple description.
Predominantly blue, it exuded a calm, ethereal aura that made his heart settle into unexpected peace. Threads of yellow wove through the blue like veins of sunlight, igniting something approaching happiness in his chest. Purple streaked across the surface in melancholic ribbons, evoking nostalgic longing for whatever mysteries hid within that mostly-blue sphere. And there were other hues too—crimson flickers, emerald traces, colors he couldn't quite name—each one plucking a different emotional string, making him feel in ways he couldn't fully articulate.
"This one floats too high," Lady Sylvia observed, her voice cutting clear through the fresh forest air. "We'll need something to reach it. It's drifted higher since the scouts first marked it."
She turned toward the assembled hunters, purple eyes assessing.
"Does anyone possess a memory that can help us reach it?"
Blendriad, Easyglow, and Zest all turned as one to look at Cozysprouts, who responded with the resigned air of someone accustomed to being volunteered. He reached into the satchel hanging at his waist, fingers disappearing into the dimensional space within, and emerged with two memory orbs clutched in his palm.
He flung them to the ground in rapid succession—crack, crack—and from the disappearing shattered glass materialized a bow of dark wood and a single white arrow, its fletching dyed crimson, its head forged from gleaming steel. Cozysprouts collected both items with practiced efficiency, nocked the arrow with the fluid motion of long familiarity, drew the string to his cheek, and loosed.
The arrow flew true.
The moment the steel head kissed the blue surface—that shifting, multihued membrane—the dream bubble burst with a soft pop that somehow carried the weight of worlds collapsing.
The trees leaned inward as a gradually intensifying suction field descended over everything. Zane felt his hair stand on end, every strand pointing toward the empty space above that was beginning to warp, reality bending around an invisible aperture like fabric pulled toward a drain.
Being closest to the epicenter, Easyglow lifted first—his feet departing the grass with dreamlike slowness. But before the unseen forces could whisk him away entirely, he smashed a memory orb against the ground with dramatic flair. From the fragments, he seized a rapier, grasping its hilt with his right hand while settling the blade across his shoulder. His left hand moved to rest behind his head, fingers splayed, his face angled toward some distant point that displayed his jawline to optimal effect.
He was posing.
Actually posing as he rose slowly upward, pulled by forces that cared nothing for dignity or spectacle. His body began to orbit the warping point, each revolution bringing him incrementally closer to the center. His speed increased—gentle rotation becoming rapid spin becoming blurred motion—until he was nothing but a fast-moving haze streaking through the air.
Then he vanished, sucked into the aperture and whatever world was contained within the dream bubble's compressed reality.
Zane's gaze shifted to Blendriad, and realization struck with the force of revelation: the duo were absolutely insane.
As Blendriad's feet left the grass, he calmly folded one leg over the other, settled his hands upon his knee with thumb and index finger touching in meditative mudra, and closed his eyes. He ascended in perfect lotus position, the picture of serene contemplation, as if being drawn into an interdimensional vortex was merely an opportunity for spiritual practice.
Zane threw a quick glance at the others, anticipating similar theatrics.
He was mildly disappointed. Cozysprouts, Lady Sylvia, and Zest simply allowed themselves to be drawn upward without embellishment, their ascents practical rather than performative. Still, being furthest from the suction point, Zane had time to appreciate the spectacle before his own feet departed solid ground.
Flying must be extraordinary, he thought—or perhaps spoke aloud, his voice lost in the rushing wind.
He moved around the warping center in accelerating spirals, speed building the closer he approached until perspective itself became uncertain. It felt like moving inward while simultaneously going out, direction losing meaning as space folded around him.
Then—impact.
Ground beneath his feet, solid and real. Vision returning from certain oblivion.
Circular tables draped in fine cloth populated the space, poised atop polished wooden floorboards that gleamed with recent care. Dark wooden chairs surrounded the empty tables in perfect arrangement. The room was eerily deserted save for a single couple seated in the corner, engaged in what appeared to be an elegant dinner—cutlery laden with delicacies, accompanied by an ostentatiously large bottle of champagne.
Understanding clicked into place.
He was inside a restaurant—the sort of establishment he'd only ever seen on television, where wealthy patrons dined on food priced beyond reason.
The gentlets were nowhere to be seen.
And there was a serving tray in his hand.
He wore a suit—black, well-fitted, professional. The scent of expensive cologne clung to him, pungent and overwhelming, smelling distinctly of burned cedar mixed with something vaguely citrus. His reflection caught in a nearby mirror showed him transformed: not the hoodie-clad wanderer who'd entered the bubble, but a waiter, complete with the weary professionalism that role demanded. His face and build had also changed.
How? Why?
From the intelligence he'd received, gentlets never participated in dreams—they merely observed, passive witnesses to human memory. So why was he an active participant, embodying a role within the scene?
His gaze fell to the leather folio resting on the tray. Was it because he was human? Because these were human dreams, and he belonged to them in ways gentlets could not?
Fascinating.
This contradicted everything he'd learned about dream bubbles, rendering his carefully accumulated knowledge incomplete at best, fundamentally flawed at worst. And the less he knew with certainty, the better. He loved surprises—loved the sharp thrill of discovering his assumptions were wrong, that reality was stranger and more complex than any theory could capture.
There was nothing quite as intoxicating as discovering new truths, especially when trapped in a world that bordered on pure fantasy.
His eyes gleamed with something beyond mere anticipation or excitement. Deeper. More primal. A hunger to know, or perhaps the exquisite thrill of not knowing anything he thought he'd understood.
The bill belongs to the couple by the window.
The knowledge arrived unbidden, certain as instinct. His legs moved autonomously, carrying him between tables toward the corner as his attention focused on the youthful pair. He studied them as he approached, cataloging details with the automatic precision of someone playing a role he'd never consciously learned.
The young man appeared roughly his age, dressed in an expensive suit that spoke of wealth without quite achieving true aristocracy. He possessed the sort of symmetrical features and easy charm that made him resemble those noble love interests girls swooned over in fairy tales—handsome in a conventional, unthreatening way.
The young woman wore a red gown that clung strategically, complemented by a silver necklace of evident quality. She sat with her chest deliberately puffed forward, clearly wanting everyone in the empty room to admire the three rubies resting against her impressive décolletage.
Her face was exquisitely beautiful—mature but still youthful, the sort of beauty that inspired admiration rather than paralysis. The kind Zane had always imagined for a hypothetical wife: beautiful but not cute. Cute things, he knew with bone-deep certainty, would be his absolute undoing.
Rich but not elite, he noted mentally, parsing their status.
They'd ordered extensively—the table practically groaned with emptied plates—but the establishment itself, while nice, wasn't truly high-end. These were people with money enjoying the performance of wealth, rather than those for whom such luxury was merely baseline existence.
He reached the table's edge and placed the tray down with practiced efficiency.
"Whenever you're ready,"
The words emerged with an air of professional courtesy, a smile sculpting itself across his face as if he'd performed this ritual countless times.
He was about to turn away—giving them space to review charges, discuss payment, perform whatever small negotiations couples engaged in over restaurant bills—when the young nobleman looked up and smiled.
"Thank you. I'll pay now."
A sweet, disarming smile spread across his face, directed nominally toward Zane but performed for the lady's benefit, as if prompt payment was yet another gesture of attentiveness meant to impress. His gaze lingered on Zane for a heartbeat—perhaps noting something unusual, perhaps merely being thorough—before returning to his companion, who looked almost too mature for the youth her face suggested.
He reached smoothly into his coat pocket, withdrew a payment card and several foreign currency notes—clearly a tip—and placed them inside the leather folio with the casual generosity of someone for whom money posed no immediate concern.
Zane collected the folio and retreated toward the reception area. His hands moved through the payment process with muscle memory he didn't possess, processing the transaction, printing a receipt, securing the card. He tucked both items back into the leather folder and turned to return them.
He was halfway to the table when everything became fuzzy.
Disorienting. Wrong.
Like the world had been turned inside out, reality inverting through dimensions that shouldn't exist. In the space of a single blink—less than a blink, the infinitesimal moment between one state of being and another—
The world shifted.