You called it Ilyor. You gave it a name. You made it real. Now it wants you back.
The road to Ilyor wasn't marked on any map.
No GPS. No records. Not even whispers.
But Serai remembered.
And memory, in this world, was the most dangerous kind of magic.
They took a stolen car.
Beat-up. Glitched clock on the dashboard. Tires that hummed like they remembered chasing something. The radio only picked up one station—voices speaking backwards in a child's tone.
Kai drove.
Elio stared at the horizon like it owed him answers.
Serai slept in the backseat. Her breathing was too even. The kind of stillness that came after bargaining with death too many times.
"How far?" Elio asked.
Kai didn't take his eyes off the road. "It's not a distance thing."
"Then what?"
Kai hesitated. "It's a decision. Ilyor only appears when you're ready to be destroyed by it."
The trees changed first.
Leaves in reverse color—violet to grey, like bruises fading. Bark that glowed under moonlight that wasn't there. Shadows moved faster than the wind. And the road began to crack, not from age—but from memory.
Elio leaned forward. "We're close."
"How do you know?"
He pointed.
Ahead, the air shimmered.
And a town emerged—folding into view like an origami secret: twisted roofs, crooked chimneys, signs in half-written alphabets. The town was unfinished, like the dream that made it hadn't been complete.
Kai pulled the car to a stop.
Serai stirred. "We're here?"
"No," Kai said. "We're back."
They stepped out.
The ground felt too soft. Not muddy—forgiving. Like it wanted to swallow footsteps, erase tracks. Even now, Ilyor didn't want witnesses.
Elio looked around. "This place wasn't like this in my dreams."
"That's the trick," Serai whispered. "It's never what you remember. It's what you regret."
They passed a cracked fountain with no water—only sand pouring upward like reversed hourglasses. A statue of a girl stood in the center, eyes scratched out.
Kai froze.
"Elio… that statue—"
Elio already saw it. "She was in my vision."
"The one the Archive took from you?"
Elio's face was pale. "Her name. I still can't remember it."
The town moaned.
Like something was breathing beneath it.
Shutters slammed. Streetlights flickered, even though there was no power grid. A cat with human eyes darted across the road and vanished into smoke.
"Ilyor is alive," Serai muttered. "And it knows we're not supposed to be here."
Kai nodded. "But we're here anyway."
They kept walking.
And with every step, more of the town filled in.
Houses that hadn't existed a moment ago. Signs that now spelled warnings.
RUN
YOU SHOULDN'T REMEMBER
SHE'S STILL HERE
Elio stopped. "She?"
Serai's eyes widened. "Oh gods. She didn't die in the loop."
Kai whispered: "She's the dreamer. The one who built this."
Suddenly, a scream split the sky.
But it didn't come from a throat—it came from the air.
A ripple of sound that shattered every window in a block radius.
The buildings wept dust.
And out from the church at the town center——She walked out.
Not alive.
Not dead.
Not human.
Just… remembered.
She wore a mirror for a face.
And her voice echoed in every version of themselves.
"You came back.""Now bleed it clean."
They didn't speak as they wandered deeper into the town.
There were no birds here. No dogs barking. Just the creak of abandoned swings and the low hum of something old... and watching.
Every house looked familiar—but only in the way nightmares feel familiar.
One door had Elio's childhood drawings nailed to it.
Another window showed a reflection of Kai sleeping—right now—except he wasn't. Not here.
Serai paused beside a cracked lamppost. "I think... this place is built from our forgotten selves."
Elio squinted at a street sign. The letters kept rearranging themselves.
Then froze.
SERAI DIED HERE
He looked at her. She looked at him. Neither spoke.
Because both of them suddenly remembered the version where that was true.
They reached the old orphanage next. Or what looked like one.
Broken toys littered the porch. A broken music box played a lullaby that shouldn't exist yet.
The sign above the door had been slashed out, but underneath it someone had carved into the wood:
SOME MEMORIES WANT TO BE REMEMBERED.OTHERS HUNT.
Kai reached for the doorknob—
—and it opened on its own.
Inside: darkness.
The kind of dark that has thoughts.
"Do we go in?" Serai whispered.
Kai looked back once. At the road behind them. Already changing.
Already gone.
"Yeah," he said. "We go in."
The air inside wasn't air.It was like breathing ink and smoke and unspoken apologies.
The walls were made of letters never sent.The floor: ashes of promises.
Every footstep echoed twice.Once in the present.
Once in a memory.
Elio brushed against a wall and flinched.
"What?" Kai asked.
"I saw myself," Elio murmured. "As a child. Alone. Crying."
"I think the house is feeding off us," Serai said. "It's rewriting itself with our pain."
"Then why is it still standing?" Kai asked.
And just then——a child laughed.
Not in the house.
In their heads.
Suddenly, the hallway warped.Walls stretched. Doors multiplied. Their shadows separated from them and ran ahead.
"Kai?" Serai whispered.
He was gone.
"Elio?"
No response.
The house was splitting them.
It wanted them alone.
Because that's when the memories hurt the most.
– Kai's Vision
He's 12 again. Alone. His father just vanished into the mirror.The house behind him whispers, "It's your fault."He screams back, "Come home!"But only his own voice returns.And the mirror?It laughs.
– Serai's Vision
She's standing at a burning altar.Her sister's eyes gone white. A ritual gone wrong.The gods turn their backs.The flames spell out her name.
– Elio's Vision
He's holding a blade.Kai's on his knees.He's crying."Please don't make me do it again."
And he does.
The house swallows all sound.
Then—
"Remember me."
The voice doesn't belong to anyone they know.
But somehow...
It knows all of them.
Outside, the sky above Ilyor begins to bleed.
Crimson clouds spiral into infinity.The stars blink in morse code.And from the tallest building, a figure watches:
The Dreamer.
She tilts her head.
"You've almost found it," she whispers.
And the mirror on her face smiles.