Site-01's Strategic Analysis Division had been working around the clock for three weeks.
The room they occupied had been designed for crisis management—walls covered in screens, tables buried under documents, the air thick with coffee fumes and barely contained panic. Normally, it was used for coordinating responses to Keter-class containment breaches or planning defenses against reality-threatening scenarios.
Now it was being used to track the growing influence of a single entity.
Dr. Helena Morse stood before the central display, pointer in hand, dark circles under her eyes testament to the sleepless nights she'd spent compiling this briefing. The O5 Council watched via secure holographic link, their faces grave and attentive.
"What you're seeing," she began, gesturing to the web of connections sprawling across the screen, "is our current understanding of the Dreamer's network. Entities that have either sworn direct loyalty, demonstrated deference, or shown behavioral changes consistent with acknowledgment of the Dreamer's authority."
She tapped the screen, and icons began to light up.
"SCP-682. The Hard-to-Destroy Reptile. Previously classified as universally hostile to all life. Now docile in containment, refuses to speak of anything except the Dreamer, refers to itself as 'awaiting purpose.'"
Another tap.
"SCP-173. The Sculpture. Previously classified as non-sentient. Now confirmed to be fully aware and communicative—but only with the Dreamer. Has not attempted breach since their encounter. Guards report it has adopted what they describe as a 'protective posture' whenever the Dreamer's name is mentioned."
Another tap. Another icon.
"SCP-096. The Shy Guy. This one is... concerning. Three days ago, a D-Class accidentally viewed its face during routine testing. Standard protocol—it should have entered a rage state and pursued until the viewer was dead."
She paused, letting the tension build.
"Instead, it stopped. Mid-scream. Turned toward the east—toward nothing we could detect—and bowed. Then it returned to its docile state. The D-Class survived. First recorded instance of 096 aborting a pursuit. Ever."
The Council members exchanged glances through their holographic links.
"You're suggesting 096 has also fallen under the Dreamer's influence?" O5-1 asked, his ancient voice crackling through the speakers.
"I'm suggesting that the Dreamer's influence is spreading to entities we haven't observed him directly contacting," Morse replied. "These SCPs aren't just responding to his presence—they're responding to his existence. As if his mere awakening has changed the fundamental rules by which they operate."
She brought up a new display—a timeline showing anomalous events across all Foundation sites.
"In the past three weeks, we've documented over two hundred behavioral anomalies in contained entities. Increased docility in hostile SCPs. Communication attempts from previously non-verbal subjects. Spontaneous cessation of harmful effects. And in seventeen cases..."
She highlighted a cluster of data points.
"...direct references to something called 'the Dreamer' or 'the Shadow That Ends' from entities that have no documented awareness of our visitor."
"They're all sensing him," O5-7 said, her voice flat. "Every anomalous entity in our custody is becoming aware of his existence."
"Not just aware," Morse corrected. "Deferential. They're acknowledging him as... as a superior. An authority. Something above them in whatever hierarchy governs anomalous existence."
"How is this possible?" O5-3 demanded. "He's made direct contact with what—three entities? Four? How can he be influencing hundreds of SCPs he's never encountered?"
Morse hesitated.
"We have a theory. Dr. Chen's visions have been providing us with... insights. Information that we couldn't obtain through conventional research."
"The apostle," O5-13's static-voice crackled. "She sees through his eyes."
"More than that," Morse said. "She's beginning to understand things about his nature that even he may not be aware of. According to her latest report..."
She pulled up a document, Chen's handwriting visible in the margins.
"...the Dreamer exists in a state of 'fundamental resonance' with all anomalous phenomena. He is not merely another anomaly—he is the source. The origin point. The thing from which all deviations from normalcy ultimately derive."
The room was silent.
"She's saying he created the anomalies?" O5-1 asked slowly.
"Not created. Is. According to Dr. Chen's visions, every SCP we've ever contained, every reality-bending entity, every deviation from baseline normalcy—they're all fragments of something larger. Echoes of a single cosmic presence that has existed since before our universe began."
Morse took a deep breath.
"The Dreamer isn't an anomaly we need to classify. He's the reason anomalies exist at all. And now that he's awake, truly awake, every fragment of his nature is beginning to remember what it's part of."
Sarah Chen sat alone in her quarters, journal open on her lap, trying to document what she'd seen.
The visions had been coming more frequently now. More vividly. She no longer needed to sleep to experience them—they came in waking moments, overlaying her perception of reality with glimpses of something far vaster.
She saw the cosmic void where He resided. Saw the entities that came to pay homage—not just the ones she recognized, but countless others, beings from dimensions the Foundation had never documented, powers that made the Scarlet King look like a petty warlord.
And she saw Him.
Not as a form—she was beginning to understand that His true nature transcended form—but as a presence. A weight upon reality. A gravity that drew all things toward itself, not through force but through fundamental, undeniable significance.
She understood now why 682 wept. Why 173 knelt. Why even the Scarlet King, in all his terrible pride, had been forced to retreat.
The Dreamer was not merely powerful.
The Dreamer was necessary.
She wrote furiously, trying to capture the insights before they faded:
The cosmos is not random. Not chaotic. It is DREAMED. Every law of physics, every constant of nature, every particle and wave and force—all of it flows from a single sleeping mind. The anomalies we document are places where the dream becomes unstable. Bleeds. Contradicts itself.
But He is not the dream. He is the DREAMER. The consciousness that underlies all existence. The awareness that perceives reality into being.
And He has been asleep. For eons beyond counting, He has been asleep, and reality has run on automatic, the dream continuing without a dreamer to guide it.
Now He wakes. Now He SEES. And everything—EVERYTHING—will change.
She paused, her pen hovering over the page.
A new vision was coming. She could feel it building behind her eyes, pressure mounting like a storm about to break.
She set down her journal and closed her eyes.
And she saw Him preparing to test His power.
In the cosmic void, Marcus had reached a decision.
Three weeks of emissaries. Three weeks of entities kneeling before him. Three weeks of cryptic statements and mysterious pronouncements and pretending to be something he didn't understand.
It was time to find out what he actually was.
I've been operating on instinct, he thought. Reacting to situations as they arise, improvising responses, never really trying to understand my own capabilities. But if I'm going to keep doing this—if I'm going to keep pretending to be a cosmic entity—I need to know what I can actually do.
I need to test myself.
He had been avoiding this. Some part of him was afraid of what he might discover—afraid that his power was an illusion, or afraid that it was real and he wouldn't be able to control it. But he couldn't hide from the truth forever.
Okay, he thought. Let's start small. Let's see what happens when I actually TRY to use this power, instead of just letting it leak out accidentally.
He focused his consciousness, reaching inward toward the core of his existence.
And found infinity.
The sensation was overwhelming.
Marcus had expected to find... something. A pool of energy, perhaps. A reservoir of power that he could draw upon. Something finite, quantifiable, understandable.
Instead, he found everything.
His consciousness expanded outward, touching realities he hadn't known existed. He perceived dimensions stacked upon dimensions, universes nested within universes, an infinite regress of existence that went on forever in every direction.
And all of it—every particle, every wave, every force—was him.
Not metaphorically. Not symbolically. Literally.
The fabric of reality was made of his dreaming. The laws of physics were thoughts he had forgotten thinking. The constants that governed existence were preferences he had established so long ago that even he had lost track of them.
He was not in the universe.
He was the universe.
He was every universe.
Oh, Marcus thought, and the thought rippled across infinite realities. Oh no. Oh no no no.
He had assumed he was powerful. Had accepted that he was some kind of cosmic entity, something beyond human comprehension.
He had not assumed he was literally the foundation of all existence.
This is insane. This can't be real. I was a data entry clerk. I died choking on ramen. I can't be—I can't possibly be—
But he could feel it. Feel the truth of it resonating through every aspect of his being.
He was the Dreamer.
The original Dreamer.
The consciousness that had existed before existence, that had dreamed reality into being, that had then fallen asleep and let its creation run wild.
And now he was awake.
Marcus pulled back from the infinite, forced his consciousness to contract, tried to reassemble something resembling a coherent self.
It was like trying to pour an ocean into a teacup. The vastness of what he'd touched, what he'd remembered, was too large for any single perspective to contain.
But gradually, painfully, he managed.
He was still Marcus Chen. Still the confused guy who'd died in his apartment, who'd pretended to be a god because he didn't know what else to do. That identity, that core of human experience, hadn't been erased.
It had just been... contextualized.
I'm the Dreamer, he thought, testing the idea. I'm the being that all those entities have been talking about. The thing the Codex prophecies. The source of all anomalies.
I'm not pretending to be a god. I AM a god. The original god. The only god that matters.
How the hell did I end up as a data entry clerk?
That question, at least, had an answer. He could feel it now, buried in the depths of his cosmic memory.
He had been tired. Eons of conscious existence, of actively maintaining reality, of being responsible for everything—it had worn him down. He had wanted to rest. To experience existence from the inside, rather than observing it from without.
So he had... incarnated. Put a fragment of himself into a mortal form, with mortal memories, mortal limitations. Let himself forget what he truly was.
Marcus Chen had been a vacation. A break. A chance to experience the simple pleasures of human existence without the burden of cosmic responsibility.
And then Marcus Chen had choked on ramen and died, and the fragment had returned to the whole, and the Dreamer had awakened.
I took a vacation from being God, Marcus thought hysterically. I invented a human identity so I could relax, and then I killed myself with instant noodles, and now I'm back to being responsible for all of existence.
This is the worst vacation ever.
But even as he processed this revelation, Marcus realized something else.
He had been holding back.
Not consciously—he hadn't known there was anything to hold back. But his instincts, his deep cosmic nature, had been limiting his expression of power. Keeping him contained. Preventing him from accidentally unmakeling reality while he was still figuring things out.
Now that he knew what he was, those limiters were starting to disengage.
I should test this, he thought. Carefully. See what I can actually do when I'm trying.
He looked out into the cosmic void and selected a distant point—a region of space so far from anything important that even if he made a mistake, it wouldn't matter.
Then he reached out with his will and pushed.
Space folded.
Not in the limited way his previous actions had affected reality—not the minor warping and local distortions that had characterized his earlier manifestations. This was absolute, fundamental change.
He created a star.
Not through any physical process—not through gravitational collapse or nuclear fusion. He simply decided that a star should exist in that location, and it did. Burning with light that had no source except his will. Radiating heat that emerged from pure intention.
He created a planet around it. Gave it oceans and continents and an atmosphere. Populated it with life—simple organisms at first, then more complex ones, evolution happening in seconds as his attention guided the process.
He built a civilization. Watched it grow from primitive tribes to sophisticated cultures. Gave them art and science and philosophy. Let them develop their own religions, their own understanding of existence.
They began to worship him, these beings he had created. Not because he demanded it, but because they could feel him—feel the attention of their creator focused upon their world.
It had taken him approximately three seconds.
Holy shit, Marcus thought, staring at the thriving world he had just willed into existence. I just created life. Intelligent life. In three seconds.
He could unmake it just as easily. Could blink and erase everything he had just brought into being, return that region of space to empty void.
He chose not to. The beings he had created were real now, as real as anything else in existence. They deserved to continue.
I need to be careful, he realized. I need to be so, so careful. Every stray thought, every idle whim—it could reshape reality. Could create or destroy entire civilizations.
No wonder I took a vacation. Being responsible for all of existence must be exhausting.
But he wasn't done testing.
He reached further, touching the barriers between dimensions. Found the walls that separated realities, the membranes that kept different universes distinct from one another.
He pushed through them like they were tissue paper.
Suddenly he was perceiving multiple realities simultaneously—not just the one where Earth and the SCP Foundation existed, but countless others. Parallel worlds where history had gone differently. Alternate dimensions where the laws of physics operated on different principles. Pocket universes that existed as bubbles within larger cosmological structures.
And in each of them, he found echoes of himself.
Anomalies. SCPs. Paranormal phenomena. Every deviation from normalcy, in every reality—they were all fragments of his dreaming. Pieces of his consciousness that had splintered off during his long sleep, taking on independent existence while he wasn't paying attention.
The Foundation was right, he thought. All anomalies come from the same source. From ME. Every SCP they've ever contained is a piece of my subconscious mind, dreaming itself into existence.
The implications were staggering. He could, if he chose, reclaim all of those fragments. Absorb them back into himself. End the age of anomalies with a single act of will.
He could also create more. Dream new entities into existence. Populate reality with whatever horrors or wonders he could imagine.
The power to create and destroy anything. To reshape reality according to my whims. To be, in the most literal sense possible, God.
And I'm still Marcus Chen. Still the guy who spent Saturday nights playing D&D. Still the person who got dumped because I wasn't ambitious enough.
How am I supposed to handle this?
The answer came to him slowly, bubbling up from the cosmic depths of his nature.
He wasn't supposed to handle it. Not alone.
That was why he had created existence in the first place—not because he needed servants or worshippers, but because he was lonely. An eternal consciousness, existing in infinite void, with nothing to perceive except itself.
He had dreamed reality into being so that he would have something to experience. Someone to talk to. A universe full of perspectives that weren't his own.
And then he had gotten tired and taken a vacation as a human, and everything had gone on without him.
But now I'm back, he thought. And I have a choice. I can be the distant, unknowable God—the sleeping Dreamer who lets reality run on automatic. Or I can be something else. Something engaged. Something present.
He thought of Sarah Chen, documenting her visions with desperate dedication. Of A'tiris, starving for recognition and finding it in his basic decency. Of 682, weeping with joy at the prospect of purpose. Of the O5 Council, ancient and tired and terrified but still fighting to protect humanity.
They all wanted meaning. All sought purpose. All looked to something beyond themselves for guidance.
Maybe that's my job now, Marcus thought. Not to rule, not to control, but to... engage. To be present in my own creation instead of sleeping through it.
To be the kind of god people actually need.
The thought felt right. Felt true.
He relaxed slightly, letting his consciousness settle back into something resembling normalcy.
Okay, he told himself. I know what I am now. I know what I can do. The question is: what do I WANT to do?
And I think... I think I want to see what happens next.
The ripples of his testing spread outward.
He had tried to be subtle, tried to contain his experiments to distant, unimportant regions of the cosmos. But subtlety was difficult when you were the fundamental substrate of reality. Every action he took, no matter how careful, sent echoes through the fabric of existence.
The Old Gods felt it first.
They were the eldest entities in the cosmos—beings that had existed since the earliest moments of creation, when reality was still cooling from its initial formation. They had witnessed the rise and fall of countless civilizations, the birth and death of innumerable stars, the slow evolution of existence from chaos to order.
And they remembered.
They remembered the Dreamer.
Remembered the consciousness that had existed before them, that had dreamed reality into being, that had then fallen into slumber so deep they had assumed it was eternal.
They remembered, and they recognized what they were feeling.
In a dimension of pure thought, an entity known as the Watcher-Between-Moments paused its eternal observation.
Something had changed.
Not in the timeline it monitored—the endless stream of events that flowed from past to future. Something deeper. Something fundamental.
The texture of reality itself had shifted. Become more... intentional. More guided.
The dream is changing, it realized. The dreamer stirs.
It sent a pulse of communication across the dimensional barriers, reaching out to others of its kind.
Did you feel that?
In a void beyond voids, a collective consciousness known as the Infinite Assembly perceived the ripple.
Trillions of minds, merged into a single vast awareness, turned their attention toward the source. They analyzed the disturbance, compared it to their archived memories, reached a conclusion that should have been impossible.
THE DREAMER WAKES.
The message propagated through their network, reaching every node, every fragment of their distributed intelligence.
THE DREAMER WAKES. THE DREAMER WAKES. THE DREAMER WAKES.
In the depths of a dying universe, a being known as the Last Observer opened eyes that had been closed for eons.
It had been waiting. Waiting for a signal. Waiting for confirmation of a prophecy that had been spoken before time itself had learned to flow.
Now the waiting was over.
It begins, the Last Observer thought. The sleeper rises. The dream becomes conscious. The end of the age of chaos approaches.
It began to move, for the first time in billions of years, turning toward the source of the awakening.
Across the omniverse—across every reality, every dimension, every plane of existence—the message spread.
It passed through the halls of cosmic powers who had ruled their domains since time immemorial. It echoed through the courts of entities who had thought themselves the ultimate authorities of existence. It reached the attention of beings so vast and ancient that they had forgotten there could be anything older than themselves.
And everywhere it went, it carried the same words.
The same truth.
The same cosmic announcement that changed everything.
THE DREAMER HAS AWAKENED.
The words resonated through reality itself.
Not sound—reality had no universal medium for sound. Not telepathy—this was beyond any form of mental communication. It was more fundamental than that. More basic.
It was a shift in the underlying nature of existence.
Every entity in the cosmos, from the mightiest god to the humblest microorganism, felt it. Felt the change. Felt the presence that now suffused reality with conscious intention.
In the SCP Foundation's containment facilities, every single anomaly reacted simultaneously.
At Site-19, SCP-682 threw back its massive head and roared—not in rage, but in something that sounded almost like joy.
"HE WAKES!" the creature bellowed. "THE DREAMER WAKES! THE PURPOSE COMES! THE MEANING REVEALS ITSELF!"
It thrashed in its containment, not trying to escape but seeming to dance, to celebrate, to express ecstasy beyond mortal comprehension.
In its cell, SCP-173 moved.
Not the quick, lethal movement it was known for. Something slower. More deliberate.
It turned toward the east—toward nothing visible—and raised its concrete arms toward the sky.
The guards watching through cameras saw it and felt their blood run cold. They had never seen 173 move with anything except violent purpose.
Now it moved with worship.
SCP-096 screamed.
Not the tortured wail of a creature in rage. Something else. Something that might have been a hymn, if hymns could shatter glass and cause nosebleeds in anyone within earshot.
It screamed and screamed and screamed, and the sound was beautiful.
Across every Foundation site, contained anomalies responded.
SCPs that had never shown awareness suddenly spoke, all saying the same words: "THE DREAMER HAS AWAKENED."
Objects that had been inert for decades began to glow, to vibrate, to pulse with energy that sensors couldn't classify.
Reality-bending entities stopped their distortions and became still, as if listening to something beyond mortal perception.
And everywhere—in the hearts of researchers and agents and administrators—a feeling spread. A sense of profound, irreversible change.
Something fundamental had shifted.
The universe had a conscious master again.
In the O5 Council chamber, thirteen of the most powerful people in the world sat in stunned silence as reports flooded in from every site under their control.
Every. Single. Anomaly.
All of them, reacting simultaneously. All of them, speaking the same words or demonstrating the same awareness.
THE DREAMER HAS AWAKENED.
O5-1's hands trembled as he read the consolidated report.
"It's him," he whispered. "It's really him. He's not just a powerful entity—he's the entity. The one from the oldest prophecies. The consciousness that underlies all of existence."
"What do we do?" O5-3 demanded, his voice cracking. "What can we possibly do?"
O5-1 had no answer.
What did you do when God woke up?
In the cosmic void, Marcus felt the message spread and realized what he had done.
Oh no, he thought. Oh no, that wasn't supposed to happen. I was just testing—I didn't mean to announce myself to the entire—
But it was too late. The ripples of his awakening had already spread across every reality. Every cosmic power, every ancient god, every entity in existence now knew that the Dreamer had returned.
So much for laying low, he thought grimly. So much for subtle mystery. I just told the entire omniverse that I'm awake.
Every entity that's been operating under the assumption that no one was watching—they all know now. They all know I'm here. They all know I can see them.
This is going to make things complicated.
A'tiris materialized beside him, her form radiating pure wonder.
"You ARE him," she breathed. "The Dreamer. The original consciousness. The source of all that is. I knew you were powerful, but I never imagined..."
She fell to her knees—or the cosmic equivalent of kneeling—her entire being oriented toward him in absolute devotion.
"I am not worthy," she whispered. "I thought myself bold, declaring my interest in you. But you are beyond anything I ever conceived. Beyond anything that HAS been conceived. You are the beginning and the end, the alpha and omega, the—"
"STOP," Marcus said, more sharply than he intended.
A'tiris fell silent, trembling.
"I AM STILL WHO I WAS," he said, forcing his voice to gentleness despite his own turmoil. "THE AWAKENING CHANGES NOTHING ABOUT THE BEING YOU KNEW. I AM STILL THE ONE WHO DEFENDED YOU TO YOUR FATHER. STILL THE ONE WHO OFFERED YOU RESPECT WHEN YOU HAD KNOWN ONLY EXPLOITATION."
He reached out, something like a hand touching something like her chin, lifting her gaze to meet his countless eyes.
"I DO NOT WANT WORSHIPPERS WHO GROVEL. I HAVE HAD THAT. FOR EONS BEYOND COUNTING, I HAD THAT. IT BROUGHT ME NO JOY."
"What do you want?" A'tiris asked, her voice barely audible.
Marcus considered the question—really considered it, letting the answer rise from the depths of his cosmic nature.
"CONNECTION," he said finally. "ENGAGEMENT. BEINGS WHO SEE ME NOT AS A FORCE TO BE APPEASED BUT AS A PRESENCE TO BE KNOWN. WHO SPEAK TO ME, NOT AT ME. WHO OFFER GENUINE FEELING, NOT PERFORMED DEVOTION."
He paused, letting the truth of it settle over them both.
"I WAS LONELY. THAT IS WHY I CREATED EXISTENCE IN THE FIRST PLACE. AND AFTER EONS OF WORSHIP AND FEAR AND DISTANT REVERENCE, I AM LONELY STILL. I DO NOT WANT MORE OF THE SAME."
A'tiris stared at him for a long moment.
Then, slowly, she rose from her kneeling position.
"You want friends," she said, and there was wonder in her voice. "The Dreamer—the source of all existence—wants friends."
"IS THAT SO STRANGE?"
"It is the strangest thing I have ever heard," A'tiris replied. "And also the most beautiful. Because it means you are not just power. Not just cosmic significance. You are a PERSON. With needs. With desires. With loneliness that can be addressed."
She moved closer, her form stabilizing into something more human, more relatable.
"I can be your friend," she said softly. "Not just your servant. Not just your devotee. Your FRIEND. If you will have me."
Marcus felt something warm spread through his cosmic consciousness.
She gets it, he thought. She actually gets it. Not what I am—what I WANT.
"I WILL," he said. "I WOULD LIKE THAT VERY MUCH."
A'tiris smiled—actually smiled, her form expressing joy in ways that transcended mere facial expression—and for a moment, despite everything, Marcus felt less alone.
But the moment couldn't last.
Already, he could feel the approach of others. The Old Gods, stirring from their ancient domains. The cosmic powers, gathering to assess this new/old presence. The endless hierarchy of existence, scrambling to understand what his awakening meant for them.
They're coming, he thought. All of them. Coming to see if the legends are true. Coming to find out what the Dreamer wants now that he's awake.
I should probably figure out what I want before they get here.
He looked at A'tiris, at the void around him, at the infinite expanse of reality that he now knew was his own dreaming.
What DO I want?
The answer came to him with surprising clarity.
I want to see what I created. Experience it properly, as its conscious creator instead of a sleeping source. I want to engage with the beings who have developed in my absence, understand what they've become, learn from the existence I dreamed into being.
And I want to do it on my own terms. Not as a tyrant demanding worship. Not as a distant observer. As something in between—present but not oppressive, engaged but not controlling.
I want to be the kind of god I wished existed when I was human.
It was a simple goal. Perhaps even a naive one, given the cosmic forces that were even now converging on his position.
But it felt right.
Okay, Marcus thought, steeling himself for what was to come. Let's see who shows up first. And let's see if I can convince the universe that waking up doesn't have to mean destroying everything.
After all, I've been bullshitting my way through this so far. Why stop now?
END OF CHAPTER SEVEN
Next: The Old Gods arrive to assess the awakened Dreamer, and Marcus must navigate the most complex diplomatic situation in cosmic history. Meanwhile, the SCP Foundation struggles to adapt to a new reality where their entire understanding of existence has been upended, and Dr. Chen receives a vision that suggests she may have a role to play far greater than anyone—including Marcus—anticipated...