We did not enter the dream.
We fell into it.
The unmediated dream-field did not open like a door.
It tore.
Reality thinned beneath my feet as the last decimal of the vote climbed toward inevitability, and Kael’s hand tightened around mine with bone-deep certainty. The world’s fear pressed inward like a tide seeking a single drain.
Then the shadow surged.
Not upward.
Outward.
The sky inverted into absence, and the collective unconscious spilled open like an ocean suddenly remembering its depth.
Sound vanished first.
Then boundary.
Then the idea that anyone was alone inside their own sleep.
People across the dominions collapsed into simultaneous dreaming.
Farmers in sanctified corridors. Children in refugee camps. Priests beneath half-lit shrines. Kings in stone halls. Soldiers
