Page 16 of GlitchBorn Heart

The earth hums beneath my feet.

I should be afraid. But I’m not, because it’s just a dream. An extension of the DreamNet’s veil, where the only thing that can truly hurt me is waking up.

The dragon lowers his head, this time smoke curling from its jaws like whispers, like words I can almost understand. Its scales ripple with light, flickering between man and beast, as though Kael himself can’t decide what he is.

He leans in close. His breath warming the air, a single word forming like thunder in the distance, he speaks in a tone so deep it’s almost a seductive growl. “Lyra...” Mist trails from his words. “You shouldn’t be here.”

But he doesn’t move. Doesn’t run at me or harm me.

I take a few steps closer. The ground ripples like water beneath my feet, reflecting my face in brittle, broken shards as I look down. My words come out slow and syrupy, like the dream is fighting to hold them together. “Neither should you.”

“I told you I’d find you.” His wings flap, and the warm breeze blows the strands of my hair across my cheeks, tickling them.

Lightning cuts the sky, but it’s not real lightning. I can see corrupted code peeling across the horizon, like the dream itself is glitching. My magic. I’m corrupting it. I’m doing this.

No, I can’t. I refuse to ruin this.

Behind him, data streams fall upward now, instead of down, carrying fragments of memories, mine, not his. Eli’s sweet boyish laugh, my father’s smile, the bonfire on our beach, my mother’s arms wrapped around me. They all flood back into my dream.

Kael pauses as if he sees them too. The softness surrounds him, and he morphs back into the beautiful, dark human he is. He walks past me looking into the distance, his hand lightly brushing mine. The shock is immediate. Light pulses from the contact, climbing up my arm and over my shoulder creating a living dragon tattoo of white fire down my spine. I gasp. It’s almost pleasurable. Confusion clouds my thoughts.

Kael looks over his shoulder at me, eyes dark as an abyss, hungry and haunted. The storm inside me swells to meet the one swirling across the dream-sky above us. The dreamscape ripples and shudders. I step toward him, but something snaps tight around me. Suddenly I’m not just in the dream.

I’m trapped by it.

A flickering pocket of gray static forms around me, heavy and suffocating like the snowfall of TheKast each night. The dreamworld dims, glitching at the edges. Kael’s features blur, fuzzing into fragments of code as I reach for him. He looks confused, or lost, like he’s trying to piece together my memories and understand what’s happening.

He turns and looks right into my eyes, head cocked like he should understand but can’t, like he knows more about this dream than I do.

I claw at the static walls closing in, my fingers slipping through digital snow that freezes at my touch. My breath begins to crystallize midair and panic sets in as I realize I can’t break through. I can’t get to him.

The more I fight it, the more my magic spills into the dreamscape, creating mayhem in the code. I realize that DreamNet isn’t visualizing my dream anymore, it’s bowing to another master. It’s rewriting itself to Kael, to his dreamscape, his desires.

But before I can call to him, before I can touch him again, the dream peels apart like wet paper being torn in half. Why the fuck is my power glitching the dream right at the best part? Or was it him?

My body jerks, feeling like free fall. I blink my eyes a couple of times, the neon lights flashing on the ceiling of my bedroom coming back into focus slowly. I can hear the noise of the morning commuters outside the windows, faint at first, but then to normal volume. I let out a breath as if I’ve been holding it and finally realize I’m back in my own bed. The DreamNet band is silent metal once more. No vibrations, no illumination. Only the phantom warmth of his hand lingers on my skin.

I feel a bucket of emotions being poured over my head. Why Kael? What is this about him that makes me want to surrender all at once, to tear myself free, yet get closer, as if danger itself has become irresistible. My heart races with the overwhelming dread and anxiety—no not anxiety...doom, impending doom that floods over and through me.

There’s no doubt in my mind he easily found me. It was like my location in DreamNet was a glowing trail only he could see. But somehow he hijacked my dream. My memories, my emotions, the entire dreamscape bent around his presence like it recognized him.

I sift through everything I know about U21 magic, searching for any ability tied to dreams, illusions, anything that could explain it. But there’s nothing.

Which means either Kael is using a kind of dream-magic the world has never seen...or he’s something far more dangerous.

I stare down at the DreamNet band, it throws a tiny golden spark. Instead of the band sending signals to me, I sent another high-voltage emotional spike into it. It’s happened before, an electrical feedback loop that destroys the internal circuitry, and ends up in a dead, fried DreamBand...again. Damn this thing.

The realization hits home with the weight of a physical blow. My power isn’t just glitching anymore. It’s evolving and tech is starting to notice.

7

DarkMarket

Playlist: Concrete Jungle - Bad Omens

Lyra

Ads flicker across the wet streets as I leave VikkCorp for the evening, another day in paradise.