The Wake
Sky didn't sleep the next night.
Not because he was afraid of dreaming.
Because he didn't need to.
No exhaustion. No hunger. No reflection in his bedroom mirror.
It was like something in him had been replaced with silence.
At school, the others noticed the same.
Jess said she hadn't blinked since the morning.
Max's shadow moved slightly out of sync.
Eli's voice echoed faintly, even when he whispered.
Nori's hands left no fingerprints.
And Lumen—Lumen didn't cast a reflection at all.
They gathered in the art room during lunch, where the lights flickered every time they got too close to each other.
"We came back," Max said, pacing, "but not alone."
Sky nodded. "The dream... it took something, but it gave something back."
Jess held up her phone. Every photo she took now showed someone else standing just behind her—him. The boy in the chair.
"Maybe we broke the mirror," she whispered, "but we didn't break him."
Lumen finally spoke. "I think we brought him out."
That night, Nori sat alone in her room, flipping through her childhood sketchbook—one she hadn't touched in years.
Every blank page had been filled.
Drawings she never made.
Children. Circles. Eyes. Always watching.
And on the last page, written in black ink:
"I never left. You did."
The others began to notice new cracks—subtle ones:
Teachers saying things they never remembered.
Friends forgetting conversations they had hours before.
Clocks ticking backwards for a second. Just once.
Reality had a splinter now.
And deep down, all six of them felt it:
They may have broken the dream…
…but they didn't wake up alone.
In the final scene of the chapter, Sky returns home, only to find a note on his bed.
No handwriting.
Just typed words:
"There's still one mirror left."
He turns—
And sees it.
A full-length mirror, leaning against the wall.
Not his.
Not from his house.
It wasn't there this morning.
And inside it—
He's smiling.
But he isn't.