BREW

T-minus 0.

The fog never lifted.

It deepened.

No one knew how many were lost. Not anymore. Names scrawled across field tablets vanished mid-sentence. Identification tags disintegrated. Some Lucid teams never returned—not killed, not transformed. Just gone.

Civilians, too, had become impossible to track. No records such as birth certificate, house permit. This felt like this town don't have much living in it to begin with. Being killed by the other anomaly was better than being erased by this janitor.

Commander Ran's ritual barriers strained at their anchors, glowing faintly with layered glyphs that pulsed like veins under a fraying skin. Merry, bloodied and pale, stood silent amid the quiet ruins, watching with cold resolve as the fractured town twisted inward. Streets looped. Buildings flickered. Some turned into structures with no geometry.

Then—WHUP-WHUP-WHUP—rotors.

Above the endless mist, a black helicopter cut the sky. Its hull shimmered faintly with woven sigils. It descended with reverence, guided by ethereal runes known only to Echo-class Lucids—those capable of imposing will on even the fabric of the dream-world.

Fifteen stepped out.

They did not speak.

They did not need to.

They were Echo-class operatives—Lucids who left behind psychic imprints that shaped terrain. Dreamwalkers who altered zones merely by existing within them. Each bore weapons not forged, but bound. One Echo carried a horn of bone that hummed with every heartbeat nearby. Another wore a mirror-faced mask slung at their hip, weeping black tears.

"Commander Merry. Commander Ran," one greeted with a curt nod. "We've come for tactical scrubbing and to anchor the ritual lattice."

"You're late," Ran muttered, voice rough but steady. The tension behind his eyes softened—only slightly.

Merry turned her eyes to the haze. "The Janitor's still there. It hasn't moved. It's waiting."

There, beyond the mist, stood the anomaly.

The Janitor.

It had not advanced. Not since the last erasure.

But now, something was different.

The broom lay discarded beside it.

Thin vines had begun growing from its arms, curling like veins beneath its pristine suit. The tendrils pulsed subtly, their color somewhere between moss and obsidian. The surface of the Janitor's back bulged. Leaves began to split through the seams of its shoulders—wide, sharp, almost metallic. Small fruit pods formed rapidly along the vine. They twitched.

SQUELCH

A fruit burst open briefly, spilling a wisp of black steam.

"What in the hell is that…" murmured one Echo.

"That's not native to any recognized plant phylum," another said, examining. "It resembles coffee vine, but… it isn't. The resonance is warped."

Ran narrowed his eyes. His barrier shimmered, reflecting flickers of cursed light. "It's feeding it. Or worse… guiding it."

A chill passed through the team.

A corrupted Dreamroot variant—unregistered, unclassified—was growing inside the Janitor like a parasite.

The Echoes fanned out. Formation triangles snapped into place. Light twisted at their feet as they deployed battle sigils, dream-anchoring spikes, and resonance-triggered barriers. Some tore into the air like paper, revealing ancient glyphs. Others plunged relics into the ground, awakening buried scripts.

The fog pulled back slightly—almost recoiling.

Then the Janitor moved.

But it was not clean. It twitched.

Its hands, once unnervingly precise, were trembling.

The vines slithered across its shoulders, up to its neck, as if puppeteering the thing from within. One pulsed visibly with a heartbeat.

An Echo knelt, cranking open a music box wrapped in thorns. A lullaby escaped, slow and disjointed.

The Janitor shuddered.

Merry's scissors buzzed violently at her side. "Now!" she barked. "Move in! Don't let it finish—whatever that thing is doing."

As they surged forward, the town pulsed.

Reality cracked—not violently, but with eerie precision.

The Janitor stood still. Watching.

But above, one fruit from the vine darkened. It bulged. Then—POP!—burst open, not with seeds, but with ash and luminous dust.

The air shifted.

And the next phase began.