When Kaien stepped through the frozen portal, he expected fire or darkness, maybe another fall into the unknown.
Instead, he floated.
No wind. No gravity. Just a slow, spiraling descent through glowing clouds of violet and silver. Around him, lights drifted like fireflies, each one whispering in a voice only half-heard: fragments of lullabies, laughter, sorrow.
He landed gently on cobblestone.
It looked like a city—beautiful, strange, and utterly impossible. Towers floated upside down in the sky. Bridges curved in loops with no end. Rivers ran upward into the air. Music echoed from every corner, even when no one was playing. And the people—if they could be called that—were hazy, shifting figures. Dreamers. Echoes.
He turned slowly in a full circle.
A sign near him read, carved into marble: "Welcome to Somnaris: The City of Dreams."
Kaien took a deep breath.
Another world. Another piece of the trail.
"Lyra," he whispered. "Where are you now?"
---
He wandered through Somnaris for what felt like hours—or maybe minutes. Time here bent like light through water.
The people he met were friendly, but... surreal.
A baker whose face changed with every blink. A painter who used colors from people's memories. A girl with wings who claimed she was a memory from someone else's story.
Each gave him a piece of the puzzle.
"Yes," said the baker, handing him a croissant that smelled like childhood. "Another walker came through. She painted our sky."
"She asked the dreamkeeper how to wake someone trapped," said the girl with wings.
"Strange one," muttered the painter. "Wore grief like armor. Walked with purpose. Left with a whisper."
Kaien was beginning to understand.
Somnaris wasn't just a city. It was a mirror. A place where dreams and fears took shape—and Lyra had left echoes of herself here.
He had to find the Dreamkeeper.
---
It wasn't easy.
The Dreamkeeper lived at the Heartspire, the tallest tower in Somnaris—a spire that floated just out of reach, its stairs spiraling upward from thin air. Most people couldn't reach it. Not unless they dreamed themselves worthy.
Kaien tried to climb.
He failed.
The stairs dissolved under his feet. The tower blurred and vanished, reappearing farther away each time.
"You're trying too hard," said a voice behind him.
He turned. It was a boy—maybe fourteen, wearing pajamas and a crown made of candlelight.
"The Heartspire only appears when you dream without fear," the boy said. "What are you afraid of?"
Kaien hesitated. "Losing her."
The boy smiled gently. "Then dream of finding her."
---
Kaien sat beneath a tree that bloomed with glass petals. He closed his eyes. He stopped thinking. He remembered.
He pictured Lyra as she was—full of mischief, loud laughter, wild hair always tied with string. The girl who drew stars in the margins of textbooks. Who once made him swear to follow her anywhere, "even through time and space."
And slowly, the air shifted.
He opened his eyes.
The tower was there.
Solid. Glowing.
Waiting.
---
The climb was effortless this time. Steps formed beneath his feet as he moved. The sky turned into constellations around him, and at the top, surrounded by floating books and hovering candles, sat the Dreamkeeper.
She looked like no one and everyone.
Her face shifted—Lyra's smile, their mother's eyes, his own reflection.
"You seek your sister," she said.
Kaien nodded. "She was here."
"She was. She left part of herself behind."
From her sleeve, the Dreamkeeper pulled a small vial filled with glowing silver threads. Kaien took it. As soon as his fingers touched it, a voice echoed in his head.
"Kaien. If you're hearing this… you found it. The thread of me I left behind."
It was Lyra's voice. Real. Close. Full of tears.
"I'm heading to the Nexus. The place between all worlds. But it's guarded. I don't know if I'll make it. I need more time—more keys. But you… I know you'll find me."
The voice faded. The vial dimmed.
Kaien's throat tightened. He closed his fist around the vial.
"Where is the Nexus?" he asked the Dreamkeeper.
The Dreamkeeper's eyes softened. "Where all roads lead. But the door remains locked. You will need three keys."
"Lyra mentioned keys," Kaien murmured. "She said she needed them."
"You have one," the Dreamkeeper said, pointing at his heart. "The first is love."
She touched the locket around his neck. "The second, you will find in the world below. A world of forgotten heroes and broken legends. There lies the Key of Purpose."
"And the third?"
"When the time is right," she said, fading, "you'll know."
---
Kaien descended the tower slowly, the vial glowing faintly in his hand.
As he reached the bottom, he found the boy in the crown waiting.
"You passed," he said. "You remembered who you were."
Kaien smiled. "Do you ever dream of being more?"
The boy laughed. "I already am more. I'm every dream you left behind."
With that, he vanished, and a new portal shimmered into being.
Kaien turned one last time to the surreal beauty of Somnaris—the towers, the floating dreams, the whispers of Lyra still lingering.
"I'm getting closer," he said, and stepped into the light.