The never-ending abyss peeled back like a curtain, and suddenly we were standing in another cityscape. This one was different—hauntingly so. Neon lights still burned in patches, their glow fractured by time, while lush green growth had claimed everything else. Vines coiled up old billboards, their letters half-obscured by ivy. Trees split concrete walkways. Bushes sprouted from rusted cars like nature itself had decided it was tired of asking permission. Overhead, broken wires dangled like snapped strings of some forgotten instrument, swaying faintly in the stagnant air.

Where the last rung had been choking with life—an artificial, corrupted civilization of illusions—this place was defined by absence. Silence weighed heavier than the smell of ozone, heavier even than the flickering neon. A city once alive, now devoured by something greater than apathy: abandonment.

"Can anyone tell me what just happened?" Sven's voice cut through the stillness. He was panting, bent forward with his hands on his knees, his pistol still smoking faintly at the barrel. Sweat ran down his temple, and though he tried to disguise it with a smirk, the tremor in his breath betrayed him. "Running's not… my alley." He coughed. "Clearly."

To be fair, it wasn't mine either. Not really. I'd just grown used to it, the way one grows used to carrying scars. The ache was still there—I'd just stopped letting it slow me down.

"Reminder," I said, raising my hand toward the skyline, "Dominus Morres is obsessed with dreams being sacred." The green glow reflected off the polished surface of my Odachi as I gestured to the overgrown towers. "Dreams matter to him. They always have. What is a dream but the opposite of a nightmare?"

I paused, watching the way the neon flickered against vines, the way empty windows stared like blind eyes. "Honestly, it was Cordelia who figured it out. His entire demesne isn't some random illusion. It's the collective dreams of something, someone, or maybe a whole group. People, cities, minds stitched together into rungs. Each rung its own dream." I shook my head. "And all we had to do was distort the dream enough to make it crack—to 'wake up' the sleeper, so to speak."

Fallias blinked hard, her silver eyes reflecting the green-lit dark. "So… what happens to everyone still in that dream?" Her voice carried something fragile in it, like she wasn't sure she wanted the answer.

Before I could open my mouth, Cordelia spoke, her tone precise, analytical, but with that faint edge of sympathy she rarely let show. "We don't know." She folded her hands before her chest, her gaze cutting through the ruined skyline. "They could be dead. They could be in stasis, suspended between layers of consciousness. Or that dreamscape could keep playing indefinitely, bleeding into this rung and the ones above. Nothing here is guaranteed—not permanence, not release." She tilted her head. "But look closely. This is the same city. Just… further along."

She was right. The layout was unmistakable. The walkways that had once spiraled upward between pristine glass towers were still here, only now rusted, broken, choked with vines. Neon signage remained, but most were shattered, their colors muted and smeared. A husk of what we'd just escaped.

"It's lonely," I murmured, though the words left me with a smile tugging at the corner of my mouth. "Lonely, but beautiful."

V snorted, his scarf pulled tight against the stale air. His voice cut like a whip, sharp and dismissive. "Considering what you've called beautiful in the past, Duarte, I don't think you get to be the arbiter of aesthetics." His gaze flicked toward me with a faint sneer.

"I've never once claimed Pendell was pretty," I countered, my tone sharp but steady. "In fact, it's a disgusting heap of chimera fly carcasses, half-eaten corpses, and the countless damned burning in hellfire. No one in their right mind would romanticize that."

Ten, ever the knife that cut tension in her own strange way, walked up behind V and gave his shin a playful kick. The metal cuffs around her ankles rattled faintly with the motion. The resulting squeal from V wasn't so much pained as indignant, high-pitched enough to echo down the empty street.

"Good going, V," Ten said flatly, her expression unchanging.

V shot her a glare, rubbing his shin. "You're lucky you're funny."

"And you're lucky you squeal like a choir girl," she fired back.

The quiet pressed in as we moved deeper into the rung. Our boots scraped against cracked pavement overtaken by moss. Every sound we made carried far too well—like the city itself was hollow, like the air had been drained of everything that once gave it weight.

"Alright, fan out," Wallace rumbled, his shield strapped firmly across his back. "Not too far. Keep each other in sight."

We obeyed, though the order felt unnecessary. Nobody wanted to be alone here. The city didn't just look abandoned—it felt abandoned, in the marrow of your bones, in that space where instinct tells you you're being watched. Only this time, there was no gaze, no predator, no inhabitants at all. Just silence.

Ten hopped up on the hood of a vine-choked car, crouching like some pale gargoyle, scanning the broken roads. "Not a soul. Not even rats. And trust me, I'd see the rats." Her chains jingled softly as she shifted.

Fractal, tilting her head with wide eyes, pressed her hand against the side of a collapsed wall. "It's wrong." Her voice was quiet, uneasy. "Even in the lowest rung, there was… movement. Faces. Desires. Something. Here, it's like…" She paused, searching for the word. "Like everything just… gave up."

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Cordelia's lips tightened. She knelt beside a patch of grass pushing through shattered concrete, running her fingers along the stalks. "Life here is only natural life. Not dreamstuff, not constructs, not echoes of people's wants. Just plants. As though the dream forgot to dream of anyone."

"Great," Sven muttered, holstering his gun as though it was more trouble than help here. "We're in the one dream too boring to populate itself." He forced a laugh, but it landed hollow.

"No," I corrected him, though my voice was low. "Not boring. Abandoned. Someone walked away from this one. Or worse—woke up."

That silenced them.

We pressed on, weaving through streets swallowed in vines, the neon overhead stuttering faintly like dying stars. Storefronts gaped open, their insides stripped bare. A cracked holo-display buzzed faintly in the corner, projecting half a face—frozen mid-advertisement—before sputtering into static.

V, ever restless, darted ahead of us, his cloak brushing broken glass as he scanned a stairwell that led to the skybridges above. "Nothing. Collapsed halfway up." His eyes narrowed. "I don't like this. Every rung had a rhythm, a logic. Something to push us upward. Here? No gates. No pathways. Just…" He waved vaguely at the green-choked skyline. "Decay."

Fallias had been strangely quiet, until now. "What if that's the point?" she murmured. "Maybe not every dream builds. Maybe some are just… endings."

Her words seemed to settle into the city itself, as if absorbed by the cracked pavement.

We searched for hours—or what felt like hours. Time in Morres's dominion was never quite trustworthy. We scouted alleys and rooftops, bridges and towers. Nothing. No stairs. No gates. No people, no shadows, no monsters, not even the subtle hum of dream logic that had guided us before. Just vines, rust, and flickering neon signs.

Eventually, we regrouped in the shell of what must once have been a park. A fountain stood at its center, bone-dry, filled only with weeds. A statue loomed above it, half-buried in ivy—what might have been a woman, or perhaps a crowned figure, the features too eroded to tell.

Wallace leaned against the statue, setting his shield aside with a sigh. "We can't climb up if there's no way up."

"Not yet," Cordelia corrected softly.

Sven groaned. "Please don't tell me this is one of those times we just 'have faith' and the world will open a staircase for us. Because if it is, I'm going to lie down and die in this stupid park out of spite."

"Faith doesn't move stairs," I said, staring at the statue. My words tasted heavier than I expected. "But maybe grief does."

The others turned toward me.

"This rung… isn't about desire, or escape, or ambition. It's about what happens when dreams die. When you give up. When the dream is forgotten." I gestured around us. "That's why it's empty. Not because it was never populated—but because it was left behind."

Fractal's face crumpled, like the thought physically hurt. "Then… what are we supposed to do?"

Before I could answer, the neon above us flickered, and for just a second, I swore I saw shapes moving through the broken signs—shadows of people that weren't there.

Not gone. Not entirely. Just waiting.

And the air grew colder.

***

Before the silence of the city could gnaw too deeply at us, we decided to make camp. The abandoned park's cracked fountain offered enough cover to anchor ourselves, its ivy-strangled statue looming overhead like a forgotten guardian. The neon signs in the distance still flickered weakly, casting intermittent color across the foliage, but otherwise the world was swallowed by quiet. Too quiet.

Sven, sitting cross-legged on a fragment of stone, was polishing his ring. I found it odd—he usually left the trinket alone unless tinkering with his guns. Fallias, in contrast, had her Gloss spread across her lap, the pages shimmering faintly as she practiced threading mana through its shifting script. Wallace leaned against the base of the statue, reading through our supply list by lantern light, calling each item aloud while Sven half-heartedly argued over which rations we could afford to burn for tonight.

Ten had claimed the highest vantage she could find, perched on a collapsed walkway, chains jingling softly whenever she shifted her stance. Her eyes never stopped scanning the perimeter. V had already set up his little minefield—traps and proximity wards buried in grass or hidden in rubble. He finished by strolling past Ten, giving her a mock salute before vanishing into the shadows to check the far side.

That left Fractal, Cordelia, and myself with little to do. Cordelia sat beside me on the edge of the fountain, the glow of her flowers faint around her hands, while Fractal sprawled across the cracked stone like a cat, watching the others work with an amused tilt to her head.

"What?" Fractal finally piped up, her grin sharp in the dim light. "No tea for your prince tonight?" Her eyes flicked between me and Cordelia, voice lilting with mischief.

I rolled my eyes. Cordelia gave a long, put-upon sigh.

"We don't have enough leaves to brew every night," she explained, a faint whine in her voice. "Alex and I agreed—once every three nights. It stretches the stock."

"I do drink other things, you know," I said, trying to sound dignified.

That earned me several pairs of skeptical eyes. Even Ten, from her perch above, tilted her head slightly to listen in.

"Oh come on! I drink water. Milk. Chocolate. Cider…" I trailed off under their stares.

"I have yet to see you drink anything other than tea," Wallace rumbled, folding his arms with finality.

"I'll back that," Sven said, lips quirking. "I was told to keep your fief stocked with leaves of every variety and let Cordelia handle the infusions. Not once did anyone mention cider."

"Yeah, boss," V called from somewhere in the dark, his voice carrying a grin. "Hate to say it, but you REALLY love your tea."

The firelight—small, carefully shielded, barely more than embers—flickered over everyone's faces as the laughter spread. Even Cordelia's lips twitched despite her attempt at a scolding frown.

For a moment, the emptiness of the city receded. The vines and broken glass, the haunting absence of people, the unsettling silence—all of it felt further away. What we had left was the sound of friends trading barbs, of chains jingling above as Ten shifted in place, of Fractal's quiet giggles and Wallace's gruff exhale of amusement.

It wasn't much, but it was enough to remind us that we weren't alone in this forgotten dream.

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