The theory was simple, yet the moment I willed for it to happen, my vision shifted into something akin to a bird's view.
It was as if I existed outside the whole picture and could see everything inside clearly, every movement frozen mid-motion, like I was both the observer and the observed.
Then, the world cracked—literally—like glass shattering into millions of pieces, taking everything I had conjured along with it.
The cracks spread fast, webbing through the air, followed by a screeching sound with no visible source.
It felt as if every particle in the vicinity was producing the noise, vibrating against itself until even the silence screamed.
Everything crumbled upon itself, folding, collapsing, breaking down until nothing remained.
My vision dimmed, pulled back somewhere else.
Somewhere dark.
Somewhere familiar.
I pushed myself upwards, my hands brushing against the cold floor as the distant echoes of that sound still rang faintly in my ears.
I looked forward. There, I saw a figure—a Skin-Stealer—fumbling over itself as if in pain. And truth be told, it was.
Its body was slowly disintegrating into nothing, peeling apart like wax under flame, while the other Skin-Stealers stood frozen, keeping an oddly cautious distance from me.
"What an irony," I muttered under my breath, just loud enough for me to hear.
"To fear limitlessness… truly despicable. Worth dying for."
The words left my mouth like smoke, fading into the air, but even then, none of them dared to move, stepping back in silent dread.
Why wouldn't they be terrified?
Think about it—a person who not only lived through their own hallucination but crushed it completely.
Something that was supposed to reflect their greatest fear, something no one ever came out of unchanged.
And yet, I did. As if the fear itself couldn't even touch me.
They must've seen it too, that the weapon they were so proud of, the nightmare they used to torment others, had failed for the first time.
Anyway, I never expected the previous Rael to have inverse limiphobia.
'The fear of being limitless, unbound.'
I repeated the words in my mind as the thought itself began to gnaw at my sanity.
I guess they said it right—what's someone's treasure is another's grave.
Speaking of that, though, the whole previous scene felt impossibly strange, and for two mind-gnawing reasons.
The Skin-Stealers were supposed to feed on emotions, the essence tied to the soul, completely ignoring the flesh.
And my fear was limiphobia, the opposite.
I should've been reduced to an ant crawling in a world of giants.
Did that mean Rael's soul was still intact inside this body?
But that didn't make any sense either, unless there existed a situation where he inherited my memories and, at the same moment, forgot his.
"Wait," I muttered to myself, "what even is a soul composed of?"
Was it the memories that made up the soul, or was it something entirely different?
I didn't know.
And it frustrated me to no limits.
There was a chance that it wasn't his fear I went through, but that would most probably be an asspull.
And the second reason, the one that didn't frustrate me but instead stirred a strange excitement within.
In the novel, Rael, the extra, was supposed to be possessed by the Skin-Stealers and lose his mind, serving as their bridge into the physical world.
But now, I had managed to overcome the hallucination with ease. My situation was entirely different from the Rael written in the story.
If I had to share my theory, I'd say the book was written as though it were narrating the dream of this world's dreamer.
And with that logic, even Rael's attempt to create a law capable of changing fate was still bound by the grand design, because it wasn't true defiance.
It was merely what had been imagined from above.
Discussions like these had already sparked endless conflict in my previous world, but now wasn't the time to lose myself in philosophy.
Right now, I had already strayed completely from the path that was meant for Rael.
And on top of that, the dreamer couldn't even sense my existence anymore.
When I pieced it all together, it led to a single, heavy truth.
I was a man who had unshackled himself from the chains of imagination—a being unseen by the dreamer, and no longer a part of the dream.
Just knowing something that abstract felt as if a dead weight had been lifted off my chest, as I slowly ran my hand across the enchanted door's surface.
Behind it lay the Dreamlands.
There were two known and proven ways for humans to enter the Dreamlands, and one of them had a hundred percent success rate.
The first way was rather simple. We do it unconsciously, countless times throughout our lives.
It happens when we fall asleep naturally, slipping into the dreamlands without knowledge, guidance, or control.
But that's the problem.
In that state, we are merely subconscious, unaware, and powerless.
It doesn't even matter at all.
And then there's the second one, the method I used to get here.
'Awareness Hiking.'
It's a state achieved when one reaches an extreme peak of awareness and then slips into slumber the very next moment.
In that brief transition, the mind doesn't shut down completely.
It wakes partially, allowing us to cross the boundary that we normally can't while subconscious.
Humans, by instinct, have learned to wake before passing that certain threshold—all thanks to the horrors that dwell along the eidonic line.
But when we remain conscious, we can force ourselves past it, through sheer effort and stubborn will alone.
It's like diving headfirst into an ocean of thought, knowing you might never find the surface again, but still doing it anyway.
'Lots of trouble is coming up ahead,' I thought to myself as I pushed the door with all my might, only for it to creak slightly, as the pale light from the otherside spilled inside.
And then what came into view was not expected at all.