The wind hummed as it passed through the edges of the dream.
Lin Yuan was falling again.
He had lost count of how many times it had happened.
The gravity of dreams was like the tide — pulling him deeper each time, drowning him quietly in the weight of memory.
Light fractured beneath his feet, scattering into shards that rearranged themselves into a street flowing in reverse.
The air was cold, but carried the faint scent of rain-soaked earth.
When he landed, the city slowly revealed itself through the fog.
It was a dead city.
Streetlights floated midair, flickering sluggishly. The buildings looked like drowned memories — their surfaces rippling with broken images. Every sound came with a few seconds’ delay: footsteps, breathing, even the heartbeat.
“Where... is this?” he murmured.
“The City of Echoes.”
Li’s voice came from behind him.
She still held her lantern — dim, trembling, yet somehow warmer than any neon glow.
“Every sound you hear here,” she said softly, “was once spoken before. Dreams remember everything — only people forget.”
Lin Yuan looked at her for a long moment.
“How do you know that?”
Li raised her eyes, gazing through the mist.
“Because I’m one of the ones left behind.”
Her voice quivered slightly.
“When a dream can no longer carry a memory, it becomes a city. Names that couldn’t be forgotten, wishes that were never fulfilled — they all stack up and build this place.”
Lin Yuan frowned. “Then why am I here?”
Li turned toward him, and in her mismatched eyes — one gold, one blue — light rippled like water.
“Because you’re still looking for an exit.”
She paused, her tone softening.
“But some people don’t dream to wake up. They dream... to see someone again.”
Lin Yuan froze.
The air between them seemed to hold still.
A faint wind moved through the cracks of the ruined street, bringing with it the sound of something breaking.
At the far end of the street, a digital billboard flickered.
Its images twisted, blurred, then reshaped themselves into a line of text:
LY-021, return to reality. Signal interference detected.
It was Dr. Su’s voice.
“He can see us?” Lin Yuan whispered.
Li shook her head. “It’s not him watching you. It’s the dream borrowing his voice.”
She lifted her lantern, the faint light brushing across the cracked ground.
Reflections shimmered beneath their feet — countless of them.
It felt like standing over a sea of eyes, all watching.
They were moving.
“Don’t look at them,” Li said sharply, tugging at his sleeve.
“They’re the ones who were swallowed by the dream. What’s left are just echoes of consciousness, forever repeating.”
“Will I... become one of them?” he asked quietly.
Her expression flickered — pain, almost invisible.
“If you keep falling,” she whispered.
The wind rose again. The lantern light trembled, illuminating a distant tower that had partially collapsed. Its surface was made of mirrors — cracked, bending, and alive.
“What is that?” Lin Yuan asked.
“The heart of the dream,” Li said softly. “The source of the echoes.”
They walked toward it.
Their footsteps echoed through the empty streets, but Lin Yuan couldn’t shake the feeling that something else was walking beside them — a half-step behind.
The closer they came, the heavier the air became.
Each breath felt like drawing through water.
The mirrored tower rippled like a lake.
Lin Yuan reached out, touching the surface.
In that instant, a face appeared — Han Zhekai’s.
He was in the real-world monitoring room, expression tense, lips moving rapidly.
“Yuan... can you hear me? You’re—”
The voice fractured, devoured by static.
Lin Yuan stumbled backward, a chill crawling up his spine.
“He’s calling me?”
Li stared at the mirror, her face unreadable.
“He’s trying to wake you. But it’s not really him. The dream is mimicking his voice.”
“Mimicking...?”
“The dream copies everything that might make you stay — voices, memories... even people.”
Her voice fell to a whisper.
“The more you want to wake up, the more it wants to keep you.”
Lin Yuan looked up. In the mirrored surface, another him was standing there — same face, same expression, except for the empty eyes.
“Who is that?”
Li gripped the lantern tighter. Its light flared violently.
“That’s the version the dream is creating.”
“What do you mean?”
“The dream hates emptiness. When someone tries to leave, it creates a new version of them — to take their place.”
Wind howled.
The mirrored faces on the tower all turned toward him, mouths opening in unison.
“You shouldn’t wake up.”
The words overlapped, breaking into a thousand distorted voices.
Light shattered.
The world tore open.
Lin Yuan’s vision was swallowed in white, the ground splitting beneath him.
He reached instinctively for Li’s hand — cold, almost without pulse.
“Li—!”
She looked back through the glare, as if seeing something far away — something beyond the dream itself.
“Don’t forget me,” she said.
The lantern went out.
—Fall.
The dream collapsed.
Reality.
Han Zhekai stared at the monitor, his fingers pressed hard against the console.
“Signal lost!”
Dr. Su didn’t look up.
“Not lost — redirected.”
“Redirected? To where?”
Su’s eyes were fixed on the fluctuating waveform.
His voice dropped. “To a deeper layer.”
A second line of pulse data appeared, syncing perfectly with Lin Yuan’s.
Two heartbeats.
Identical rhythm.
Han Zhekai’s voice cracked. “What the hell is that?”
For the first time, Dr. Su’s expression hardened.
“Another consciousness.”
Dreamscape.
Lin Yuan opened his eyes.
He lay among ruins, light and shadow trembling above him.
The city was collapsing backward, like time reversing.
Li was beside him. Her fingers glowed faintly.
“Do you hear it?” she whispered.
“Hear what?”
Her lips moved — and when she spoke, the voice that came out wasn’t hers.
“Lin Yuan, return to reality.”
It was Dr. Su’s voice — coming through her.
Pain flashed in her eyes.
“The dream... has started remembering them.”
Wind swept through.
The city went silent again.
Li turned toward him, her voice fragile, barely carried by the wind.
“Yuan... if dreams start to remember—
then they’re no longer dreams.”
Dream boundary.
The wind carried echoes, soft whispers that sounded like someone murmuring from far away.
Lin Yuan opened his eyes again.
Light shimmered beneath him — a city reflected upside down.
Skyscrapers hung in the air, streets floated like glass, and neon lights pulsed backward through the clouds.
He saw himself walking down that same road — from the opposite direction.
“Where is this?” he murmured.
Li turned, her silver-gray hair brushing against the lantern’s glow.
“The City of Echoes,” she said. “Here, dreams fold back on themselves — like voices hitting a wall and coming back distorted.”
He stared at the mirrored street, where his reflection looked up — meeting his eyes.
“Did I die here?” he asked.
Li smiled faintly.
“In dreams, no one truly dies. They’re just... forgotten.”
Her steps were light as she walked across the glass-like street.
“I’ve been here many times. Each time, the city changes. But this lantern—”
She lifted her hand, light blooming in her palm, “—never goes out.”
Lin Yuan looked at it, and felt his heartbeat match its rhythm.
Not warmth — but pain, buried deep.
“Li,” he said softly, “I remember your smile once. By the sea. You were wearing a blue jacket.”
She stopped.
The wind stilled.
Her gaze lingered on his face, long enough to make him question everything.
“That wasn’t your dream?” she asked quietly.
“I don’t know,” he said with a weak smile. “But it felt real.”
She said nothing more, only continued walking toward the tower ahead.
It stood tall and trembling — built entirely from mirrors. Each surface reflected a different scene: someone crying, someone laughing, someone falling.
Every reflection looked exactly like him.
“This is the core,” Li whispered. “It’s copying you.”
“Why?”
“Because you’ve started to doubt yourself.”
The wind screamed. The mirrored tower fractured.
Thousands of his faces turned toward him — all speaking at once.
“I... who am I?” Lin Yuan’s voice echoed — multiplied, distorted, terrified.
Li reached out, touching his forehead. Her fingers were cold, but the air loosened around him.
“You’re the one who hasn’t woken up,” she said gently. “And I’m the part the dream refuses to let go of.”
“You’re lying,” he said. “You’re not a dream. You’re—”
The ground shook violently.
The entire city twisted, layers of mirror collapsing into darkness.
Li pulled his hand. “Run! They’re coming!”
“Who?”
She didn’t answer — only glanced back.
For the first time, fear flickered in her eyes.
Lin Yuan turned — and saw them.
Figures forming in the smoke. Blurred, half-finished, moving a split-second behind his every gesture.
Each one looked like him.
Echoes.
His own consciousness reflecting back at him.
“Don’t stop!” Li shouted.
They ran into the heart of the tower.
The light dimmed, reflections floating around them like shards of memory.
Each shard replayed something — his childhood bedroom, the research lab’s corridor, Dr. Su’s desk, and that first night he met Li beneath a streetlight in the rain.
“You’ve met me before,” he murmured.
Li’s grip tightened.
“Don’t remember,” she whispered. “The dream can hear.”
“The dream... can hear?”
“Every time you recall something, it comes closer. Memory is the doorway.”
Cracks spidered across the walls. Something was stirring beneath the mirrors.
Li stopped, shut her eyes, and raised her palm.
The lantern’s light burst outward, refracting between the mirrored walls, creating a spiraling tunnel of light.
“Go!” she yelled. “Now, before it closes!”
Lin Yuan hesitated, then stepped toward the light—
A low, mechanical voice thundered through the air.
“LY-021, identification error. Terminate synchronization.”
Dr. Su’s voice.
Reality slicing through the dream.
Li turned sharply, terror flashing across her face.
“No! They found us!”
The light collapsed. The tower shook violently.
Shards rained down.
Lin Yuan lunged toward her, clutching her hand.
“Come with me!”
“I can’t.” Her voice broke. “They’re going to erase me... I belong here.”
“No! You said we could wake up!”
Li smiled — the faint, fleeting kind that hurt to see.
“For a dream to wake... something has to stay behind.”
He shook his head, gripping tighter.
But her body was already fading — transparent, dissolving into the air.
“Remember,” she whispered, her voice barely there, “it’s not the dream finding you... It’s you who keeps creating it.”
Her lantern fell.
Shattered.
Light scattered like dust.
—Collapse.
Darkness swallowed everything.
Reality.
“Signal interruption! LY-021 is unresponsive!”
Han Zhekai slammed his hands on the console.
Data spiked across every monitor, waves of unstable dream frequency.
“Doctor! External interference detected!”
Dr. Su didn’t look away.
The main screen flickered — broken images forming and vanishing.
Then, Li’s face appeared.
Smiling.
“That’s impossible,” Dr. Su muttered. “She’s a construct. She shouldn’t have self-delay.”
“But she’s looking at us,” Han whispered.
The image zoomed in.
Li’s lips moved.
“Can you hear me?”
The feed imploded.
Every monitor went black, alarms blaring.
Only a single heart rate remained — spiking wildly.
Dr. Su’s fingers froze in midair.
He whispered to no one:
“The dream... is beginning to watch itself.”
Dreamscape.
Lin Yuan opened his eyes once more.
He was lying in the ruins, the wind whispering through broken glass.
Far ahead, a faint light floated in the air.
The lantern was still burning.
He reached out — almost touching it.
And from somewhere impossibly distant, Li’s voice came through, soft and fragile:
“Yuan... can you hear me?”
He froze.
His heart started to beat again.
Somewhere, deep within the dream,
something had begun to wake.
ns216.73.216.13da2
and then Add to home screen.