Chapter 1- The Night Everything Changed
Ethan had never been lucky. He wasn't rich or especially talented, and nobody in his family could have lent him a favor, let alone a fortune. He was an ordinary man in a city where everything cost slightly more than he had.
None of that had mattered much until Mia got sick.
He sat in the hospital corridor with his hands clasped so tightly the knuckles had gone pale, staring at a white wall he had memorized weeks ago. The lights overhead hummed. A few minutes earlier the doctor had given him the answer he'd heard too many times: there was a treatment, there was no guarantee, and the cost was far beyond anything he could pay. The doctor had said it kindly and then walked away, because there was nothing else to say.
Ethan had already borrowed from everyone he could think of. He had sold his laptop, his camera, and the watch his father had left him. His savings were gone, and two of his credit cards had stopped working at a pharmacy counter last week, in front of a line of strangers.
Through the window of the ward, he could see her propped against the pillows. She noticed him looking and smiled, the small, tired smile of someone who was still trying to comfort him. He smiled back, badly, and raised a hand. She lifted hers.
Neither of them could have said anything through the glass that was worth saying.
He walked home. The streets were bright and full: a restaurant with its door propped open, a group of friends laughing about something he couldn't hear, a woman carrying a birthday cake in both hands as if it might break. Ethan watched them the way you watch a train you've missed.
He wasn't asking for much. He wanted to complain about the rent. He wanted to argue with Mia about what to have for dinner, and to lose. He wanted to book a holiday they would probably cancel.
In the apartment, he didn't turn on the light. He sat on the edge of the bed with his phone glowing in his hand. The bank app was open, and the number on it was small enough to be embarrassing. He looked at it until the screen dimmed itself, and then he looked at the dark.
"I'll find a way," he said. It came out as barely a whisper. "I have to."
He lay down in his clothes. Exhaustion took him before the thought could finish.
The room was not his.
It was huge, with dark wooden floors and a wall of paintings he couldn't make out. At the far end, a tall window looked onto nothing at all, just a flat, total black. The air was perfectly still.
"Ethan."
He spun around. There was no one behind him. The voice had been low and oddly gentle, the way you'd say the name of someone you already knew.
"Ethan..."
He took a step toward the sound, and the silence in the room seemed to tighten. Then a thin blue light bloomed in front of his face and stretched itself into a transparent screen.
[Unknown energy detected.]
[Dream System initializing...]
Numbers began to climb. 1%. 27%. 64%. 99%. The screen flashed once.
[Dream System awakened.]
[Host confirmed. Welcome, Ethan.]
He should have laughed. Part of him was waiting to, because this was the kind of thing a tired brain invented at three in the morning. But the screen didn't flicker or fade the way dreams did when you looked at them too hard. It simply waited for him.
[Ability unlocked: Dream Manifestation.]
[The Host may bring objects from dreams into reality.]
[Dream Level: 1]
[Manifestation Limit: 1 object per dream]
[Reality Limit: Common]
Ethan read the lines twice, then a third time. Objects from dreams into reality. It was absurd. It was also, he realized slowly, the first thing anyone had offered him in months that wasn't a bill or an apology.
He didn't understand any of the terms. But one thought had already formed, so simple it almost embarrassed him.
If this is real, then maybe I can save her.
The moment her name crossed his mind, the floor shuddered. The painted walls rippled, the window's black swelled inward, and the blue screen guttered like a candle. One last line burned itself into his vision before everything went dark.
[Your first dream begins tonight.]
