Chapter 1: The Pearl in the Alley
The soft glow of her phone’s screen bathed Sora’s face in pale light as she scrolled through the same recycled cycle of videos, memes, and messages she’d already seen more than a hundred times. The ceiling fan above her spun lazily, as if mocking her insomnia. It was past 2 a.m., and her eyes should have been heavy. But…they weren’t.
They never were.
She sighed, thumb hovering over the next post when-
Thump!
Her phone flew from her hands, skidding across her bedsheets before tumbling to the floor with a dull crack.
“What the...?”
Perched on the edge of her shelf, her cat, Momo, stared down at her, unbothered and smug. His silvery fur glowed faintly in the phone’s light, and his eyes, bright and full of mischief, blinked slowly.
“Are you serious right now?” she groaned. “You couldn’t wait until morning to be a fucking menace?”
Momo didn’t answer...obviously. He turned without a sound and leapt to the floor with pure grace, padding with silent confidence toward the window. With a flick of his tail, he sprang up to the sill.
Then, without hesitation, he jumped.
Sora lunged out of bed “Hey...hey! You’re not allowed outside!”
She scrambled to the window and shoved it open. The night outside was unusually quiet, bathed in a pale blue haze. Down the block, barely visible in the dim streetlight, Momo was trotting away like this was just his usual midnight stroll.
“You never go out,” she muttered, already pulling on her hoodie. “What are you doing, furball?
The streets were damp and empty. Her breath fogged slightly in the cool air as she jogged after Momo.
“Momo! You’re going to give me a freaking heart attack!”
She spotted him again, his tail flicking as he slipped into an alleyway.
She stopped at the alley entrance, heart thudding. The shadows felt heavier here, thicker. A faint glow pulsed in the distance...dim, soft, violet…beautiful.
Sora hesitated. “Momo?”
She stepped inside.
But Momo was…gone.
In his place, nestled on a patch of cracked concrete and moss, hovered a pearl. It pulsed with light, almost like it was breathing...soft violet waves that shimmered outward and then pulled back in.
Her chest tightened. Something felt... wrong…out of place.
But her curiosity was stronger.
She knelt, reached out, and...
Touched it.
And then…
The world around her collapsed.
The ground disappeared beneath her. Gravity twisted, flipped, then vanished entirely. Sound dulled into silence as colors smeared into streaks of violet, blue, and shadow. Her body spun...or maybe didn’t move at all.
One thing was certain, she was falling…falling through nothing.
Through the Void.
She landed hard on something soft and cold.
Black petals scattered around her as she gasped, clawing at the air, lungs struggling to catch up.
The sky above wasn’t sky...it was a swirl of stars and static, spiraling too fast, too far. The ground beneath her shimmered, and trees with glowing roots arched into the air like veins of light…nothing made sense.
And then, she heard it.
A low growl rolled through the air.
She turned.
It emerged from the fog...lurching, grotesque, hunched over itself with tendrils dragging behind it. In shape of a wolf, barely solid, flickering like a nightmare half-remembered. Its many eyes opened one by one, locking onto her.
A Nightmare.
Sora stumbled back. The creature let out a loud screech and surged forward.
She ran. Fast.
The world bent and folded under her steps. Her breath tore through her lungs. The Nightmare was faster. She could feel it getting closer...she could hear it, smell it.
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A root caught her foot and she hit the ground hard. Her clothes ripped. Bruised knees.
The Nightmare screamed.
It lunged at her.
And then-
Light.
A silver blade slashed through the air, slicing through the Nightmare with a burst of sparks. The monster howled and recoiled, vanishing into the mist like smoke in wind.
Sora blinked through tears.
A figure stood in front of her, backlit by the flickering sky. Tall, cloaked in dark gear with a cracked moon emblem across her shoulder, the girl turned toward her.
Short silver hair. Calm, cold eyes scanning Sora like a puzzle piece that didn’t fit.
The girl tilted her head. “You didn’t bring any gear. No sign of weapon... no defense...”
“You’re not supposed to be here,” the girl said.
“I don’t even know where here is” Sora choked out. “What was that thing?!”
The girl crossed her arms, unimpressed. “You don’t know what a Nightmare is?”
Sora shook her head wildly.
A long silence followed. Then the girl took a step forward.
“Did you…by any chance…touch a pearl?”
Sora nodded weakly. “It was just...glowing. I was looking for my cat...Momo...and then I found it and it was just...is this a dream? ...it has to be...”
The girl exhaled sharply and ran a hand through her hair. “Figures. A Void Pearl.”
She offered her hand. “The name’s Maya. And no, you’re not dreaming. You’re in the Void now.”
Sora’s mouth opened slightly, but nothing came out.
“And unlucky you,” Maya continued, “you dropped into the worst side of the void, the Nightmare Realm. Usually people start off easy...in the Dream Realm. So…you sort of skipped the whole damn tutorial.”
“I didn’t mean to...”
Maya helped her up. “Not your fault sweetie.”
She paused, then gave Sora a sideways look.
“Well, I guess all I can say is "welcome to the Void, Insomniac."”
They both walked in silence at first.
The strange velvet glowing trees of the Nightmare Realm thinned with every step, their flickering shadows giving way to something gentler. The stars above swirled in lazy, distant orbits, painting the sky in hues Sora had no names for...amber, violet, green-gray, like forgotten dreams smeared across the firmament.
Sora looked around, arms hugging herself. “Where…where are we going?”
Maya glanced back, her pace steady. “Out of here. To the Dream Realm.”
“Okay,” Sora said slowly. “And that is…um where exactly?”
Maya sighed, brushing aside a glowing fern with her blade. “Look…as I said earlier, you skipped the onboarding. Usually, Insomniacs spawn in the Dream Realm...peaceful, safe, structured. They get a weapon, an orientation, a starter set of Echoes. All that. Basically, like a game starter pack.”
Sora frowned. “Insomniacs? Like people who can’t sleep?”
“In our world, maybe,” Maya said, half-smirking. “Here, you’re called that because you’re somewhere you shouldn’t be. Something in your head pulled you into the Void while your body’s still back home, probably curled up in bed.”
“That makes no sense,” Sora muttered.
Maya shrugged. “Sense huh? This place doesn’t care about sense. It runs on feeling. On broken thoughts, unresolved emotions, trauma. People don’t come here unless there’s something inside them reaching out…something that wants to be seen…resolved.”
Sora stayed quiet after that.
They passed through a veil of mist so thin and shimmering, it looked like stretched glass. On the other side, the terrain shifted. Shadows dissolved. Colors bloomed.
Sora blinked.
The Dream Realm was like stepping into a lucid hallucination.
Towering flowers pulsed with bioluminescent light. Floating islands drifted lazily overhead like gentle jellyfish. A silver river ran upward through the sky, defying gravity. Strange creatures, some half-transparent, some made entirely of glimmering threads, wandered peacefully across the fields.
“Whoa,” she whispered.
“Yeah,” Maya said, not slowing down. “It’s pretty. But don’t let that fool you. Beauty here can and will turn on you.”
Still, Sora turned in a slow circle, eyes wide. “This…this is incredible.”
They walked down a curved pathway of floating glass tiles, leading to a bazaar nestled inside the trunk of a colossal tree. The market bustled with surreal life. Stalls folded and unfolded like origami. Vendors hovered, drifted, or had no faces at all. Colors shimmered in the air, impossible to name.
A creature approached Sora. It hovered on no legs, more mist than flesh, with six arms and a mask-like face made of porcelain and ink. Its voice sounded like music underwater.
“You, Dreamwalker. Do you seek a weapon? A cloak? Protective threads woven from long forgotten lullabies? I offer charm-stained daggers, armor stitched from old memories, and most importantly…discounts for the recently initiated…”
Sora blinked. “I… I don’t have any...uh, what is it called??”
The vendor’s eyes flickered violet. “Ah. A fresh soul.”
Before the thing could float any closer, Maya stepped between them, hand resting on her blade.
The creature leaned in slightly, amused. “Ahhh. One of you. Protective. The other. Poor.”
Maya didn’t flinch. “She’s not buying.”
“Hmph,” the vendor snorted, folding two of its arms behind its back. “Come back when your nightmares have earned you something.”
And with a whirl of mist and glittering bells, it drifted away into the market crowd.
Sora exhaled. “What was that?”
“Just a merchant. They can smell fresh minds a mile away.” Maya gestured for her to keep walking. “You’ll need Echoes before anyone treats you seriously.”
“Okay, and what are Echoes exactly?”
Maya led her deeper into the market, past floating scrolls, memory-catchers, dream-birds with ink-stained wings.
“Echoes are currency,” she said. “But they’re more than money. They’re crystallized pieces of defeated nightmares. Pain, guilt, fear...all processed and broken down into some sort of magical shard.”
Sora raised a brow. “So, you fight monsters, get paid in trauma crystals…literarily, and use those to buy magic daggers…to fight more monsters?”
Maya glanced at her. “Basically.”
“Cool…really cool.” Sora said. “Totally not horrifying.”
They crossed a bridge made of stitched-together dreams...soft, warm, echoing with whispers that faded behind them.
Sora looked up at the hanging stars above the Dream Realm. They blinked slowly, like eyes watching her.
“...So, what now?” she asked.
Maya pointed ahead to a spiraling tower, suspended upside down in the air, its reflection rippling beneath it on a pond that wasn’t there.
“That’s where you get registered, The Tower of Threads” Maya said. “After that... you’re on your own, I guess?”
Sora stopped walking.
“Wait. You’re just dumping me here?”
Maya gave her a long look.
“You survived your first Nightmare. You’ve seen the Void. You’ve got the mark now...like the rest of us. I helped you find your footing. But no one holds your hand here…not forever.”
Sora looked down at her own palm.
There, faint and shimmering, was a tiny crescent sigil. Glowing.
“I guess…you’re right,” Sora murmured. “I guess this is goodbye huh? Thanks for everything.”
“Yeah, goodbye rookie…see you later” Maya said as she walked back into the buzzing Lunar Bazar.
As Maya walks away, Sora turned to look at the tower. The spiral tower loomed like an impossible daydream, suspended upside down in mid-air, its mirrored reflection trembling on a nonexistent surface below.
Sora stood beneath it, staring up.
The bridge leading to its mouth was made of stitched clouds, soft but unnervingly silent under her feet. There were no visible supports. No sound of wind. Just the low, humming pull of gravity-defying magic.
Maya was...gone.
And now, it was just her.
She swallowed, took a breath, and stepped forward.