The wasteland around the Black Cradle had ceased pretending to be part of any world Kaela Wong recognized.
The skies boiled, a churning sea of bleeding black and poisoned violet, torn by lightning that crackled silently across distant clouds.
The ground itself was a corpse — cracked, bleeding rivers of shimmering ash that hissed when the wind screamed across them.
Reality here was no longer something solid, but something wounded — and dying.
Kaela stood at the head of the remnants of humanity: a broken army stitched together from the ruins of old alliances, desperate oaths, and final hopes.
Soldiers in tattered armor. Mercenaries who had buried too many friends. Survivors who had no reason left to fight but the stubborn refusal to die quietly.
Behind her: Arin, his jaw set tight, one eye swollen shut, armor scorched.
Beside him: Elise, a veteran whose gaze burned with something beyond rage — something closer to despair sharpened into a weapon.
Their numbers had once been thousands.
Now, barely a few hundred limped forward through the madness, drawn toward the nightmare that pulsed like a rotting heart at the center of the world.
And around them — the Cradle whispered.
---
The Land That Screamed
The march toward the Black Cradle felt endless.
Each step was a defiance of nature itself.
Gravity bent sideways.
The sun and moon hung together in a sky that wept blood.
Shadows moved on their own, reaching for ankles, whispering ancient names.
Some soldiers simply… dropped.
They would scream once — then crumble to dust, as if erased from existence by some unseen verdict.
Others went mad.
Kaela watched, horror clawing her gut, as a man in Echo insignia turned his rifle inward, weeping, whispering a mother's name before pulling the trigger.
There were no bodies.
The land swallowed them.
> Stay close, Kaela told them, voice ragged.
Few answered.
But they obeyed.
They had seen too much.
Felt too much.
And somewhere ahead, the Sleeper waited — almost awake.
---
Crossing the Obelisks
At the final ridge, the earth dropped away.
The Cradle's mouth yawned wide: a canyon that plunged deep into the earth, exhaling foul vapor that glittered like dying stars.
Guarding the entrance were the Obelisks: towering monoliths of black stone, each one covered in shifting runes that squirmed like worms beneath the surface.
Approaching them felt wrong.
Kaela's heart hammered against her ribs.
The Genesis Core strapped to her chest pulsed faintly, like a dying heartbeat — or a warning.
> "Eyes open," Arin barked, voice cracking.
Kaela nodded once — and stepped forward.
The moment her boots crossed the invisible threshold between the Obelisks, the world screamed.
A thousand voices tore into her mind at once.
Whispers. Screeches. Laughs.
Promises. Threats. Lies.
> Little spark... little fool... come closer... come closer...
Soldiers behind her cried out.
Some dropped their weapons, clutching their skulls.
Some fired blindly into the air, screaming about things no one else could see.
The Obelisks fed them visions:
Loved ones calling from the ash.
Cities burning with silent fire.
Futures that had already died.
Kaela felt hands — unseen but heavy — clawing at her coat, at her soul, pulling her down.
> You cannot win, the Cradle breathed.
> You were never meant to.
Her legs buckled.
Only Arin's hand — bruised, bleeding — grabbing her wrist kept her upright.
> "Move!" he snarled.
And somehow, dragging themselves through the vortex of madness, they crossed into the mouth of hell.
---
Inside the Nightmare
The Black Cradle was not a structure.
It was a dream given mass — and that dream was dying violently.
The "floor" shifted underfoot: cracked obsidian slick with some viscous black fluid that hissed when touched.
The "walls" were rivers of bone, constantly reshaping themselves, flowing like water.
Faces — human, animal, alien — bloomed from the surfaces, screaming silently before melting back into the flesh-stone.
Gravity fluctuated.
One moment Kaela felt like she weighed nothing; the next she was crushed to her knees by invisible pressure.
Worse were the creatures.
Shadows moved at the edges of vision: hunched things with too many arms, too many mouths, dragging themselves through the corridors like spiders made of sorrow.
No two looked alike.
Each one was a failed dream — a broken thought spat out by the Sleeper's subconscious.
And the whispers followed them:
> One of us... join us... free yourself... free the pain...
Weapons drawn, the army pushed forward, tighter and tighter, each man and woman clutching their sanity like a dying candle in the wind.
---
The First Losses
The first death came quietly.
A young recruit — barely more than a boy — stumbled.
He looked up at Kaela with wide, terrified eyes.
And then he was gone.
No scream. No explosion.
He simply folded inward like collapsing paper — and vanished into nothing.
Someone else — a grizzled mercenary — shouted and ran back to help.
The ground beneath him split open like a yawning mouth and swallowed him whole.
There was no time to grieve.
Only to move.
---
The First Proxies
Deeper inside, the dream grew more violent.
Reality twisted into impossible architecture: spirals of bleeding stone, staircases that led nowhere, hallways that screamed when entered.
And then — the Proxies appeared.
Kaela saw her first one rounding a corner, moving in jerky, insectile spasms.
It wore a face she knew — her mother's face, beautiful and kind, stitched grotesquely onto a body made of glass and rusted steel.
It reached for her with fingers like scalpels.
> "K-Kaela... why did you leave me..." it croaked, voice bubbling with static.
Kaela froze.
It smelled like her mother.
It moved like her mother.
But it was not her mother.
Arin was faster.
He lunged, slicing the thing in two with his plasma blade.
It fell apart like a broken puppet, leaking black ichor that hissed against the stone.
> "They're not real!" Arin shouted over the rising screams.
> "MOVE!"
But everywhere — everywhere — the Proxies rose.
Faces of friends.
Faces of enemies.
Faces of the long-dead.
They came with weeping voices, clawed hands, hollow eyes.
The army fought — but the Cradle fought harder.
The walls pulsed, opening into new mouths, dragging soldiers into the stone.
The air vibrated with low, maddening frequencies that made teeth rattle and blood run from noses.
And above it all, the Dreamer's laughter — distant, slow, inevitable.
> Little sparks... dancing at the end of the world...
---
Kaela's Breaking Point
Somewhere beyond the endless battles, beyond the shrieking Proxies, Kaela stumbled into a chamber that felt alive.
The walls pulsed with a heartbeat not her own.
The Genesis Core against her chest burned hotter and hotter, until she could barely stand.
And the whispers...
They changed.
They became seductive.
Soft.
> You can end this, they said.
> Take the Core. Make a new world.
Kaela collapsed to her knees.
Visions poured into her:
A world without pain.
A world without war.
A world where she could bring everyone back.
Her mother.
Her father.
Arin, Elise, Chris.
All waiting for her — just one choice away.
Her fingers hovered over the Core, trembling.
> Take it, the Dreamer cooed.
> It's what you were made for.
But something inside her — something stubborn and wounded and furious — resisted.
She remembered Serin's scream.
Elise's bloodied hands.
Arin's broken gaze.
They were real.
The visions were not.
Kaela screamed, shoving the Core outward — and it answered.
---
The Core Awakens
A blast of pure, blinding force erupted from the Genesis Core.
It wasn't light.
It was truth.
It tore through the illusions.
Shattered the Proxies.
Forced the Cradle itself to recoil like a wounded beast.
For one heartbeat, the Black Cradle was silent.
Only Kaela stood in the center of the living chamber, hair whipping in an unseen storm, eyes burning faint gold.
Arin staggered to her side, blood running from his nose, from his ears.
> "Kaela... what the hell did you do?"
She looked at him — and for a terrible moment, she wasn't sure.
Because the Sleeper saw her now.
Fully.
Completely.
And it spoke, not in whispers, but in a voice that cracked the sky:
> "CHILD OF THE BROKEN DAWN..."
> "COME CLOSER."
> "LET ME THANK YOU PROPERLY."
Ahead, the final barrier shuddered, and a corridor of endless night opened before them — a path straight into the Dreamer's waiting maw.