Aiden's eyelids fluttered open to the harsh glare of sunrise slanting through his bedroom blinds. His head pounded, and every inch of his body felt heavy—an affirmation that his midnight excursion in Lab 7 had not been a simple fever dream. He swung his legs over the side of the mattress and stared at the device on his bedside table, its sleek black surface still faintly pulsing with residual light.
He picked it up, heart racing. His fingers traced the circuitry etched into its casing, a pattern that seemed vaguely familiar, as if he had seen it before—in a dream. Memories of the obsidian arch, the swirling runes, and the stranger's solemn invitation all collided in his mind. He shivered, wondering whether other aspects of the dream might fade with the dawn, but one certainty remained: he had witnessed something that defied conventional science.
Downstairs, his mother called for him. At the kitchen table, a half-eaten bowl of cereal sat abandoned, and his father's chair remained empty. Aiden slid in beside his mother, maintaining a calm exterior. "Morning," he mumbled. His mother offered a concerned smile.
"Aiden, you look like you haven't slept. Everything okay at the lab?"
He nodded quickly, recalling the technician's admonition not to discuss the experiment with anyone outside the project. "Just… late night project work."
His mother frowned but didn't push further. Aiden poured himself a glass of water and excused himself, returning to his room. He placed the device in his backpack and glanced at his laptop, where dozens of open tabs displayed schematics of neural interfaces, EEG waveforms, and blueprints of a "psychonautics" research paper he'd saved months ago. He typed "shared dreaming technology" into his search engine and realized the field barely existed—just obscure forum posts and pseudoscientific theories.
Whatever Aiden was dealing with, he would have to figure it out on his own.
In another hemisphere, Lin Xi awoke on the tatami mat floor of his ancestral courtyard. Moonlight still filtered through the shoji screens, which he had never managed to close fully before falling asleep. He sat up, rubbing his temples to dispel the remnants of that dream-world clarity. The inked runes on his dream journal lay smudged, as if they had been traced by invisible fingers in the night.
He rose quietly so as not to disturb his grandfather's slumber. In the hallway, he found the old man seated in meditation, breathing slowly under a flickering oil lamp. Lin Xi bowed lightly. "Grandfather, thank you for staying up."
His grandfather's eyes opened, clear and steady. "You encountered the mist again."
Lin Xi hesitated. "Yes. I saw the arch, and… the stranger."
His grandfather nodded gravely. "The call has begun. You are among the chosen."
Lin Xi felt a surge of resolve. "I must learn more—about the dream realm, and about my role as a Guardian."
His grandfather bowed. "At dawn, I will teach you how to stabilize the Qi imprint you brought back. Rest now. We begin training before the next moonrise."
Morning Aftermath
Aiden arrived at the campus library, determined to find any record of similar events. He slipped into a secluded alcove and logged into his university's restricted archives, where he found a handful of anomalous incident reports: "Mass hysteria linked to collective dreams"—dated just the night before. Each report was filed under "Classified," and each was unsigned. Someone in the administration had noticed the sleepers, but the authorities had apparently suppressed the details.
His pulse quickened. He printed a single copy of the incident summary and packed it alongside the neural interface device. He needed allies. The only person he trusted enough to share this with was his friend Maya—a neuroscience major who'd hopped from lab to lab, chasing any research that dared to challenge established paradigms. If anyone could make sense of the device's output, it was her.
He tapped a quick text: "Meet me in Neuro Lab 2B in 20 minutes. Urgent."
A few minutes later, Maya bounded into the lab, goggles perched on her forehead and a laptop under her arm. She slid the printout across the table. "What's this?"
"Something weird happened last night," Aiden said, showing her the device. "They're mapping dreams, but… it's more than mapping. I think it's broadcasting them. And there was a shared element—an architecture I recognized."
Maya studied the device's schematic. "This chipset… I've only seen it in military prototypes. Quantum resonance coupling. If they're using it on human subjects, it could theoretically sync brainwaves across participants." She tapped her laptop. "But nobody's got the software to control a network at this complexity. Who's behind this?"
Aiden shook his head. "Lab 7, but beyond that, I don't know. I need to see the data."
Maya's eyes gleamed. "Let's see if we can bypass their firewall."
As they worked to extract the subject's EEG recordings, Aiden felt a mixture of excitement and dread. The results would either explain everything—or confirm that reality itself had been manipulated.
Across the Pacific, Lin Xi sat on a tatami mat in a low-ceilinged room lined with scrolls. His grandfather guided his hands through a series of slow movements, each meant to weave the dream's energy into his Qi meridians. A faint glow formed at Lin Xi's dantian, and he focused on stabilizing it. The runes from his dream journal shimmered on the scroll, as though illuminated from within.
"Good," his grandfather murmured. "You've anchored the imprint. Tomorrow night, when you reenter, the gateway will open more easily."
Lin Xi bowed his head. "Thank you."
He spent the rest of the morning practicing calligraphy, copying the shimmering dream runes until his fingers ached. Each symbol carried meaning—a directive, a warning, or an invitation. He did not yet understand them all, but the act of writing them felt like piecing together a lost language that spanned both dream and waking worlds.
Summoning to the Mist
That night, students across campuses and youths in towns around the world felt the same pull—a throbbing in their temples, the tintinnabulation of cosmic bells that rang only at the boundary between sleep and waking. Aiden blinked at his alarm clock: 11:59 PM. He sat up, clutching the neural interface. It hummed to life, as if responding to an unseen signal.
Ten thousand miles away, Lin Xi lay on his tatami, breathing deep. At 00:00, he felt gravity shift beneath his body, and the room dissolved into drifting mist.
Both teens found themselves standing on slick cobblestones wet with dew. The air was cool, with a sweet undertone that spoke of distant flowers. Streetlamps cast pale halos in the haze, illuminating the towering silhouette of an archway in the distance—the same obsidian arch they had each seen before.
But this time, they were not alone. Twenty-three figures stood scattered along the street, each dressed in the garb of their homeland—hooded jackets, school uniforms, tribal beads. Faces blurred by the mist, but the tension was palpable. Two groups eyed one another warily: Western participants on one side, Eastern on the other.
Aiden recognized Maya among the crowd, goggles pushed up on her head. He took a cautious step forward and called, "Maya?"
She turned, relief flickering in her eyes. "Aiden!" She raised her voice so others could hear. "Are we… all in this dream together?"
Lin Xi stepped beside Aiden, bowing his head in greeting. The assembled teens fell silent as he raised his voice in halting English: "We are Guardians. We must recover the heart fragments hidden within the City of Echoes."
Murmurs rippled through the group. A tall boy with an Australian accent spoke first: "Heart fragments? What's that about?"
Aiden swallowed. "Last night, I woke up with a fragment in my mind—a piece of a glowing core that felt like… well, like a key."
A French girl with streaks of purple in her hair chimed in, "I saw the same. We share visions."
Maya pulled out her phone, where she had captured runic symbols from the dreaming subject. She held it aloft. "These runes—everyone's dreams show them. They're markers."
A tall Chinese boy—Lin Xi's age—stole a glance at Lin Xi and nodded. "He is Lin Xi. He has studied our symbols."
Lin Xi stepped forward. "The first trial awaits in the Maze of Whispers. Beyond the arch. We must cooperate."
With that, he raised his hand and touched the archway's runes. They glowed in response, rippling outward like a pebble in a pond. A humming buzz filled the air, resonating in everyone's bones. The arch shimmered, a translucent portal materializing at its center.
The teens exchanged apprehensive glances, then, as one, crossed the threshold into a cavernous hall lined with mirrored walls—the Maze of Whispers.
The Maze of Whispers
Inside, every footstep echoed infinitely, and distorted reflections showed not just each person's face, but their fears. Aiden saw himself as a drowned figure in static, while Lin Xi watched his reflection transform into an elder robed in star-filled robes. Whispers swirled like voices on the wind: "Trust…" "Betray…" "Find the core…"
Maya sprang to his side. "We need to locate the fragment chamber. The runes will guide us." She tapped her phone, scanning for luminous glyphs embedded in the walls.
Lin Xi's eyes narrowed. "The energy here… it responds to intention. Focus together." He extended both hands, palms outward. A surge of warmth pulsed through the air, and a faint path of glowing footprints appeared on the floor, leading deeper into the maze.
Aiden exhaled in relief. "Good. Follow the path."
They wove through corridors of mirrors, each reflection whispering doubts—"You're not strong enough," "You'll fail your team," "You don't belong." Every time the whispers grew louder, Aiden and Lin Xi would exchange a resolute nod, and Lin Xi would place a hand on Aiden's shoulder. A calm wave of Qi would fill Aiden's chest, soothing the fear and allowing him to press on.
Finally, they stood before a circular chamber whose ceiling arched into cavernous shadows. At its center hovered a crystalline sphere, a "heart fragment," spinning slowly and emitting a soft, pulsing glow. Around the sphere, floating runes formed a barrier.
Aiden studied the device in his hand. He detached a small module from the neural interface and held it aloft. "The interface can disrupt the rune barrier—if I link it to our combined brainwaves." He closed his eyes, picturing the barrier's frequency as he had seen on the lab monitor.
Lin Xi stepped forward, chanting a low syllable in his mind, channeling Qi into Aiden's efforts. The two energies—scientific and mystical—merged. Maya and the other teens pressed closer, their own determination radiating strength.
With a soft crackle, the rune barrier shattered. The heart fragment floated down gently into Aiden's outstretched hands. Instantly, a wave of euphoria washed over him—memories of every dreamer, every vision, and the urgent plea to "Save the waking world."
Lin Xi placed a hand on the fragment. His eyes glowed briefly as knowledge flooded him: the next trials lay beyond the city's highest spire, where alien architects had embedded runaway algorithms of mind control.
Awakening
In unison, the teens fell into darkness. When they opened their eyes, they lay scattered on lawns, streets, and sidewalks across the globe. Aiden woke on the grass outside the engineering building, the heart fragment—now dormant—resting in his palm. His device beeped softly, indicating data capture complete.
Maya sat beside him, rubbing her head. "That was… incredible."
Lin Xi found himself on a temple's stone courtyard at dawn, the fragment cold and still in his grasp. His grandfather stood before him, arms folded. Lin Xi bowed and placed the fragment at his feet.
Wordlessly, the old man nodded, as if he had expected this ordeal. Now the true journey would begin: forging alliances across continents, unraveling alien conspiracies, and mastering the extraordinary bond between science and Qi.
But for this moment, each Guardian knew only one thing with certainty: they had taken their first, tremulous step toward saving not just their own world, but the waking conscience of humanity itself.