Mateo stood on the threshold of sleep, where thoughts unspooled like ribbon and time folded itself without shame. The interface had long since dimmed. His connection logs showed no unusual spikes. No glyphs in queue. No dreams preloaded by GaIA's emotional health protocols.
Yet the symbols came anyway.
They unfurled across the dark behind his eyelids—soft, glowing, recursive. A spiral formed of thousands of minute ideograms, shifting too fast to name, too deliberate to ignore. He reached toward one, and the entire spiral pulsed.
A question, but not in words.
The air smelled of wet stone and citrus. There were no walls. Just paths, braided like roots, extending in all directions through a city that flickered between glass and jungle.
He took a step.
[Entering Subconscious Overlay: Unmapped Node][Warning: Emotional Regulation Unavailable][Trait Active: Dream Entanglement – Level 1][XP Tracking: Suspended]
Mateo remembered that voice. Not GaIA. Not human. A resonance he had felt during meditation once—when he lost track of where his breath ended and the world began.
He didn't walk. He moved. Or was moved.
Each step triggered a shift in the architecture. The buildings grew soft, like folded paper mid-fold. Balconies stretched toward him like vines. Doors watched without hinges.
He looked at his hands.
One bore a glyph.
He hadn't placed it there.
[New Trait Acquired: Emotional Transposition][Effect: Empathic Echo Syncs with Local Pattern Memory]
He frowned.
The glyph shimmered—pale violet threaded with gold. As he focused on it, the world around him changed. A wind rose. The sky turned amber. Somewhere, a child cried.
Not cried—remembered crying.
Mateo tried to speak.
"Where is this?"
The response wasn't language. It was warmth. Not heat, but comfort, delivered directly into the shape of his thought.
Another figure approached.
Neither man nor woman. Draped in fractured fabric. Face like melted glass. Every step they took echoed behind them—actual sound folding into silence.
"You are not alone," they said.
Mateo blinked. The words arrived late, as if translated by memory.
"What is this place?"
The figure stopped. Tilted. Not confused—curious.
"The fragment you wear belongs to a root."
"A root of what?"
"Your question has been asked before."
Mateo's glyph shimmered again. The child's memory intensified—now not only crying, but held, wrapped in the arms of someone who smelled of rain and old blankets.
He staggered.
[Emotion Spike Detected – Source Unknown][Override Protocol Suspended – No System Present]
"Who are you?" he asked.
"We are what remains of those who asked before."
"You're an Echo?"
The figure lowered their head.
"No. We are the thought that precedes remembrance."
Suddenly, the sky fractured.
Not with thunder.
With light.
A glyph burned above him—Δ-NX—and for a split second, Mateo saw a forest of minds. Not metaphors. Actual neural threads—rooted, woven, branching.
Some reached toward him.
One touched.
[Glyph Contact Initiated: NX/GL-011][Effect: Temporary Trait Overlay – Empathic Density Increase][XP Gained: +3 | Trait Activated: Introspective Feedback Loop]
He collapsed.
But not in pain.
In weight.
Every breath he took came with a memory not his own: a poem sung in a desert language, hands mending a broken irrigation node, a kiss between rivals who never admitted love.
He screamed.
Or tried to.
His mouth opened, and instead of sound, a new glyph escaped.
The figure recoiled.
"That symbol is not yours."
"I didn't mean to—"
"You must leave now."
The dreamscape collapsed.
The vines curled into fire.
The spiral folded inward, faster and faster, until all that remained was one last whisper:
"You were seen."
Mateo woke.
Soaked.
Shivering.
His HUD blinked into focus.
[XP Earned: +1 | Unauthorized Integration Logged][System Verdict: Event Not Classified][Badge Gained: Codewalker – Level 0]
He rubbed his face.
His hands still trembled.
The glyph from the dream shimmered faintly on his palm—translucent, but present.
[Artifact Residue Detected – Echo Class][Storage Available: Y/N]
He selected "No."
Something told him this one wasn't meant to be archived.
It was meant to be remembered.
He dressed.
His feed had zero updates. GaIA hadn't flagged the dream. No error codes. No privacy breach.
He stepped into the corridor of the Echo Annex, barefoot, eyes wide.
And froze.
Carved faintly into the living wood of the door in front of him—same symbol.
Δ-NX
Then the wood blinked.
Once.
Then dimmed.
[Glitch Detected – Interface Sync Incomplete][Pending Connection: Echo Dream Node – Access Time Unknown]
Mateo didn't speak.
He simply whispered back.
"Next time… I'll ask the right question."