“This is a bad idea,” Luke said flatly.

“Correction: this is the best idea,” Sen grinned, turning one of the Dreamland Devices over in his hands.

Hakari glanced between them, as always, caught in the middle of their back-and-forth. “I mean… it would be the fastest way to figure out what these things actually do.”

Luke crossed his arms. “Or the fastest way to fry our brains.”

Sen scoffed. “C’mon, man, we already used these in school. It’s not like they’ll kill us.”

Luke shot him a sharp look. “We used them in controlled settings, and look where that got us—school shut down overnight with no explanation.”

Sen rolled his eyes. “And that’s why we have to try them! What if the answers are inside?”

Hakari rocked on her heels. “He’s got a point.”

Luke let out an exasperated sigh. “I hate that you’re siding with him.”

“Yeah, yeah, me too,” Hakari half-heartedly admitted. “But we won’t know anything unless we actually test them.”

Luke pinched the bridge of his nose. “Fine. But we’re doing this my way. Carefully. If anything seems off, we pull the plug immediately.”

“Yeah, yeah, Professor Luke, we got it.” Sen smirked.

Luke shot him a glare before turning to the devices, begrudgingly picking one up. “Let’s get this over with.”

The moment they put on the devices, reality melted away. It wasn’t like falling asleep. It wasn’t like waking up. It was something in between, a slow, weightless pull that stretched their consciousness into a new, unfamiliar space.

When they finally arrived, it was breathtaking.

The world around them was vast and shifting—an endless horizon of color and light, bending and warping like liquid glass. The sky had no sun, yet everything glowed. The ground rippled like water but was solid under their feet. Structures formed and collapsed in the distance, as if the landscape was deciding what to be.

Sen let out a low whistle. “Okay… this is awesome.”

Hakari laughed, twirling in place as the world shifted around her. “It’s like a dream! Like a dream, but real.”

Luke, however, was less impressed. “This isn’t real. It’s an illusion,” he muttered, scanning the surroundings. “We need to focus.”

Sen ignored him, throwing a punch into the air and watching his fist stretch unnaturally far before snapping back into place. “Dude, this place has zero rules.”

Hakari grinned. “We could do anything here.”

Luke rubbed his temples. “Or we could do what we actually came here for.”

Despite the limitless possibilities, they forced themselves to focus.

Luke searched for files, data logs—anything that could give them a lead. But there was nothing. No accessible records, no stored information, no hints about the school’s closure. It was as if the devices had been wiped clean.

“Nothing,” Luke muttered, growing frustrated.

Hakari and Sen took a different approach. Hakari wandered through the environment, looking for signs of other users, memories, messages, traces of people who had been here before. Sen experimented, trying to manipulate the world itself. If this was a dream, then maybe it had rules. Rules that they could bend.

But no matter how deep they dug, they found nothing. No evidence. No clues. No past users. It was like they were the only ones who had ever been here.

Luke scowled. “This is pointless. If there was anything here, it’s either hidden or already erased.”

Hakari sighed. “So much for finding answers.”

Sen crossed his arms. “Maybe we just aren’t looking in the right places.”

Luke shook his head. “We won’t find answers inside the Dreamland. If there’s anything left, it’ll be in the real world. We need access to whatever computer is running this place.”

Sen opened his mouth to argue,

Then the world glitched.

It was subtle at first. A flicker. A ripple. A brief distortion in the horizon. Then it happened again. And again. The structures in the distance warped unnaturally, stretching into jagged shapes before snapping back into place. Colors inverted, then corrected themselves. The air itself stuttered like a broken video file.

Luke’s stomach dropped. “We need to leave. Now.”

Hakari took a step back, suddenly uneasy. “Yeah, uh… I don’t like this anymore.”

Sen hesitated, watching the distortions curiously. “Wait—”

The world collapsed. The sky shattered like glass, revealing a dark, empty void beneath it. The ground beneath their feet rippled violently, sending shockwaves through the space. The distortions grew worse, tearing holes in reality, repeating objects and landscapes like a corrupted game.

Luke grabbed Sen’s wrist. “Take it off!”

Sen clenched his jaw, reluctant—but the sight of the world breaking apart around them finally made him listen. They ripped the devices off.

They gasped awake, the real world snapping back into place around them. Sen’s heart pounded in his chest. Hakari clutched her head, disoriented. Luke was already sitting up, breathing hard. None of them spoke for a moment.

Then Luke stood up. “We’re never doing that again.”

Hakari exhaled, still shaken. “That was… fun, but… yeah. No thanks.”

Sen, still catching his breath, finally admitted, “Something was wrong in there.”

Luke shot him a look. “You think?”

Luke took a deep breath. “We’re done today. If we want answers, we need to access the supercomputer running them.”

Sen and Hakari exchanged glances, then nodded. They turned to leave the room, but just before stepping out, Hakari’s breath hitched. She swore, for just a moment, she saw something. A shadow. A flicker. A presence standing among the Dreamland Devices. Watching them. She blinked, and it was gone.

“…Nothing,” she muttered, shaking it off as they walked away.

Tomorrow, they would return.