> “You promised you’d come back before the dream collapsed.” > — Unknown

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  **Episode 1: The Collapse**

  Keiran Vale wakes mid-sprint, rooftop wind slicing at his face, lungs on fire. The skyline bleeds into itself — towers flickering like mirages, neon signs shuddering with static.

  He doesn't remember how he got here. Just that he’s being chased.

  The air vibrates, not with sound, but with pressure. Like a presence pushing against the seams of reality itself. The rooftop beneath him vanishes in chunks, pixelated fragments swallowed by fog.

  He leaps. A heartbeat of nothing. Then impact — a different rooftop, one he’s never seen before, yet somehow remembers.

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  A woman stands there. Mid-thirties, sharp-eyed, wearing a coat stitched with red threads that move on their own. She doesn’t look surprised to see him.

  “You’re late,” she says, and the dream around her begins to fracture.

  “Do I…know you?” Keiran asks, panting.

  “You did. Once. Before the Reset.”

  She hands him a coin. It’s warm, humming slightly. On it: a symbol — a crescent shattered into jagged thirds.

  He blinks. She’s gone. The city dims. The agents are close now — Oneirarch enforcers. Tall, silent, faceplates like black mirrors. They don’t chase. They hunt.

  Keiran runs. But this time, the air bends around him. Time slurs. And for a moment, he’s not in the city. He’s in a bedroom from his childhood. Then a battlefield. Then underwater.

  **Lucid.**

  That word echoes inside him. A key, unlocking something deep and forgotten. He isn’t just awake anymore. He’s remembering. And someone, somewhere, remembers *him*.

  He looks down at the coin. It’s gone.

  Only the symbol remains — burned into his palm.

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