The RV screeched to a violent, teeth-rattling halt.
The tires howled against the warped ground beneath them — some textureless dreamlike grass and gravel hybrid — and everyone inside lurched forward like puppets yanked by invisible strings. A chorus of startled gasps, thudding boots, and the brittle creak of shifting bones filled the interior. No one spoke. No one needed to. They all felt it.
A pressure. A change in air that wasn't wind. A dream turning lucid.
Something was outside.
Aiden was the first to move, the first to unfreeze, stepping toward the door with a hand instinctively gripping the frame. He opened it slowly — cautiously — and squinted into the unreal shimmer of the landscape.
What they saw through the open doorway made the world feel even less real.
There, standing as still as a painting in the middle of an impossibly white, perfectly flat square — a 2D impossibility imposed over the gently rolling dream-hills — was a woman. Or, at least, that's what their minds tried to make of her.
Her silhouette was fractured. Stained glass submerged in water, bending light, collapsing definition. A constantly shifting prism of color and geometry, pulsing like a living kaleidoscope. She had no face — just a softly rotating mosaic of iridescent shards, a light show where human features should have been. Her hair flowed as if submerged in the deepest oceans — lavender one second, mint the next, then electric blue — flickering between shades like it couldn't decide which reality it wanted to belong to.
She wore a collared coat, but it defied logic. It didn't drape or fold with gravity. Its buttons hovered just above the fabric, suspended like artifacts in a void. Her boots didn't press into the dirt. Her shadow was cast in the wrong direction — twisted like it belonged to a different scene, in a different dimension, lit by a different sun.
She raised one hand.
Not threatening — no aggression in it. Just a slow, silent gesture. The kind a teacher makes when asking for quiet in a room full of children who don't yet understand the lesson about to be taught.
"Welcome to the Reverie Verge," she said, her voice folding over itself. Three tones: one soft and maternal, one amused and sing-song, and one ancient — so tired it bordered on dead.
"I am Gloss. The Rule Giver. And you are now playing by our laws."
The group stood frozen.
Nick tilted his head like a predator spotting movement, the corners of his grin sharpening like the edge of a blade.
Nika narrowed her eyes, brain already analyzing — disassembling Gloss's logic, cataloging anomalies, studying her presence like a riddle with too many answers.
Ethan raised his sniper out of instinct, eyes flicking down the scope for a heartbeat — then hesitated. He wasn't sure it would even matter here.
Only Gloss moved.
She stepped off the white square, and the shape folded into itself, flattening and curling away into nothing like a dismissed memory.
"Don't bother running," she added, her voice echoing in the air despite the absolute silence — not a single breeze, not a whisper of life.
"There's no end to where you are. Only layers."
Nika took a step forward.
"You're the Rule Giver, of this endless expanse... So you're not the ruler. But that brings a question to mind." Her tone was sharp. Curious. Cutting.
Nika paused, watching Gloss like a scientist watching a chemical reaction.
"Why didn't they greet us themselves?" she asked, voice dry but laced with suspicion.
Gloss replied smoothly, like the question had been asked a thousand times before.
"Ruler would mean owner. The Reverie owns itself. Now may you be silent so that I can give you the rules of its world?"
Nika said nothing more. She listened. Everyone did.
Gloss's voice became silk threaded with rust.
"There exists a place you only reach when reality stops watching," she said.
Her words wove themselves into their thoughts like invisible tattoos — cutting into their subconscious with the weight of a forgotten lullaby laced in blood.
"Usually between 3:30 and 3:33 a.m. But not always. Clocks lie here."
She stepped forward again. Her silhouette shimmered. Her shadow didn't match. Her fingers twitched like they were wired wrong — warped marionettes pulled by mismatched strings. When she spoke again, the sound peeled the silence like old wallpaper.
"Now, the rules. You must understand the rules."
Rule One:
"Do not touch the white flowers. They're not for you. Not for anyone."
Her tone dropped into something old. Dangerous. Like she'd seen someone try and fail.
"No matter how soft they look. No matter if they call your name in your mother's voice. They'll root in your skull. Bloom in your lungs. You'll choke on petals, and still think it's beautiful."
Do
Not
Touch
The
Flowers.
There was a smile in her voice — but it wasn't kind. It wasn't even human. It sounded nostalgic, like she remembered someone dying slowly.
Rule Two:
"If you see the Tallylong, you keep walking. He's tall. Faceless. All limbs and absence. Do not stop. Do not stare. He notices being noticed."
Gloss turned her head slowly toward the hills. Everyone followed her gaze.
"He'll unravel you like thread. Stitch your thoughts into his own. You'll move like him. Grin like him. Empty and echoing."
Walk
Away
From
The
Tallylong.
The world shuddered for just a second — not with wind, but with pressure. Like the entire atmosphere inhaled and forgot how to exhale.
Rule Three:
"If you're offered tea — decline. If you're offered anything — decline. Especially from the Woman with the Orb Eye."
Gloss's voice twisted into something harsher. A warning. A threat wrapped in memory.
"She serves memories that don't belong to you. Drink, and your mind will become a library with no index. You'll forget your name, remember things that never happened. You'll cry black."
Decline
The
Tea.
And
Run.
If
She
Follows—
RUN.
Her hair flickered into white static. Corrupted light. A warning signal for something unspeakable.
Rule Four:
"Wear a watch. Any kind. Digital, analog, broken — doesn't matter. You just need something that tells time."
She tilted her head — and for just a moment, the sound of ticking filled the air before vanishing.
"Because here, time's not a line. It's a carousel made of mirrors. And if you forget what hour it is, you'll ride forever. Your body will be waiting in one loop, while your mind rots in another."
The RV looked smaller now. Distant. Unreal. A toy in the hands of a sleeping god.
Gloss turned to them fully. Her faceless head somehow reflected all of their worst fears. Each one caught a glimpse of something that turned their stomach.
"I do not save. I do not punish. I simply remind."
She turned her head to Ethan. And though she had no eyes, it was like she saw through him.
"And some of you have already forgotten something important."
Then she walked away.
No fanfare. No warning.
She faded into the ever-shifting hue of the landscape — like she had never been separate from it.
Then, her voice once more, soft as a childhood memory laced in dread:
"Now that the rules are clear… Would you like a snack?" "Or a mirror?" "Or… perhaps a mask?"
The sky blinked. A single frame missing.
Everyone looked to each other, unsure of what to do. Except the twins.
Nick's grin grew. Adrenaline gleaming in his eyes. Nika stayed silent, calculating the dream's mechanics like equations.
But then — someone broke.
"I-I think... This is... We should go back. I'm going back. I can't die here. I don't wanna."
Maya's voice cracked. She trembled — not like a scared child, but like a terrified animal on the edge of breaking. Her eyes welled with tears that blurred the already-warped world around her.
She turned away from the group and began walking back to the RV, her steps erratic. Frantic. Fear pushing her forward.
Aiden followed, calling after her — concerned. Protective. He didn't want anyone to go alone.
Then Maya stopped.
She froze in place, her body locking up like a machine catching fire.
She saw it.
Hovering just above the RV — stretching unnaturally, limbs tangled in the sky, with no face to speak of — was the Tallylong.
Maya stared.
And the moment she noticed it — it noticed her.
The Tallylong began to move — not flying, not walking — just gliding. Wrong. Inhuman. Like physics meant nothing here.
"MAYA!" Aiden screamed.
Jo saw it too. She shouted with everything in her lungs, "AIDEN, GO GET HER!!! QUICKLY!!"
Aiden sprinted.
His legs burned. His lungs tore. But he ran.
'No — not yet! I gotta go even faster! I can't let her die here!'
The Tallylong reached her first.
Maya's mouth opened in a silent gasp as her body began to unravel — like a knitted sweater coming undone — her limbs splitting, her joints dislocating in a blur of skin and shadow.
No blood. No wounds.
But the screams.
"MOMMY!! HELP ME!!" she cried — a broken, primal scream that shattered the silence.
"PLEASE!! MAKE IT STOP!! I DON'T WANNA DIE!!"
Her voice turned into a raw screech, her hands clawing at her own skin, trying to hold herself together, but it was too late.
Her body peeled open like paper soaked in acid — her bones stretching, her spine twitching violently as her torso distorted. Flesh elongated like wet taffy. Her mouth cracked wider than it should.
She screamed again. And again. And again.
Aiden fell to his knees — stopped in his tracks — watching helplessly as Maya's mind was shredded into ribbons of pain. He stared, eyes empty, as guilt swallowed him.
Maya's final scream turned into static.
And then — silence.
The Tallylong was done with her.
Her body kept moving — jerking, spasming, now a mockery of what she had been. Her eyes were hollow. Her limbs too long. Her joints bent wrong.
The others knew not to look. Not to see it too long.
The Tallylong drifted off — fading into the distance. Waiting for its next victim.
Eventually, it was nowhere to be seen.
The others rushed to Aiden.
He was still kneeling. Staring.
They pulled him up, dragging him toward the RV as Maya's remains twitched and wandered behind them, a mangled husk walking on invisible springs.
They got inside. Locked the door.
No one spoke.
And Aiden — slumped, hollow, shattered — whispered one word:
"…sorry."