Fragments of Yugen

The Spiral Map was unstable.

Even after purging the anomaly from Umbra-Veil, the second shard—Minister Two's mark—had begun to drip ink into every sector of Yūgen. Not literal ink—memory-ink, the kind that distorts both past and future.

Wherever it touched, time folded.

People began forgetting where they were going.

Or worse… remembering things that had never happened.

---

Yūgen Town – Sector 9

The team split up.

Ren stayed at the map tower to contain the spread.

Aki, Yumi, and Rei headed to the outskirts of Sector 9—the oldest Spiral zone where Dream-Seers were said to still exist. Spiral lore told of them: people who once linked directly into Yūgen's memory fields during sleep. They'd vanished during the Delta Collapse. Or so everyone believed.

They found the first signs deep within a shattered forest: trees with pages instead of leaves. Each page was a looping dream.

> "We're close," Yumi said softly. "The air here doesn't respond to presence—it reacts to potential."

Rei narrowed her eyes. "Be ready. The Minister might already be watching."

---

The House Between Sleep

They found it like a glitch—a house that shouldn't exist. It flickered every few seconds, as if phasing between being real and remembered.

They stepped in.

Instantly, their Spiral threads dimmed.

Aki fell to one knee. The Echo inside him pulsed violently.

> "It's here," he gasped. "It knows I'm a vessel."

An old woman stepped forward from the darkness.

She wore robes covered in stitched timelines, her eyes milky—but glowing faintly blue.

> "You brought the crack," she whispered to Aki. "You carry the contradiction."

> "You must leave."

Yumi stepped forward. "We came for help. A Minister—"

> "—has already entered your names," the woman said. "You've been recorded."

She extended her hand. From it fell a dream-sigil—woven from Spiral fiber and old human memory. Yumi caught it.

> "This is a gate," the woman whispered. "To the Sleepwalk Sector. That is where Minister Two nests."

> "But if you enter… you risk losing the version of yourself that returned from Umbra-Veil."

Rei scowled. "That's already fractured."

---

Ren and Kael – Spiral Nexus

Meanwhile, Ren and Kael watched as sectors began reporting something worse than time loops—Sleepwalkers.

People wandering during the night, muttering symbols in Spiral tongue. Drawn to places no longer on any map.

Some began drawing symbols they'd never seen. Others cried out for people they'd never met.

Kael was furious.

> "This isn't a battle. It's a possession."

Ren didn't respond immediately.

He was watching the Spiral shard—still ink-dripping—but now… it had changed color.

A second eye had appeared. A closed one.

---

Return to the Dream-Seer

Back in the flickering house, the Dream-Seer stood before Aki now.

> "You must make a decision."

She gestured to his chest.

> "You carry the Prime Echo. But it's splintering. The Minister's presence is destabilizing it."

> "Choose—do you silence it to save yourself? Or amplify it to save the rest?"

Aki didn't answer.

Not with words.

He opened his sketchbook.

And on the page, for the first time, the Prime Echo drew on its own.

A symbol appeared: a spiral bleeding into a circle with a vertical eye in the center.

The Seer recoiled. "

The Dream-Seer stared at Aki's page.

> A single symbol:

A Spiral bleeding into a circle… with an eye at its center.

She stepped back, trembling.

> "You shouldn't be able to draw that. That symbol doesn't belong to this Spiral. It belongs to the one before."

Aki didn't speak. He couldn't.

The Prime Echo had taken his hand for those seconds, and it was still awake inside him, humming like thunder behind the bones of his thoughts.

Rei placed a hand on her weapon. "Is that a threat?"

> "No," the Seer whispered. "It's a prophecy."

She turned to Yumi.

> "This Minister doesn't attack through power. It devours possibility. The more you imagine… the more it can become you."

Yumi's eyes widened. "Wait. If it feeds on imagination…"

Aki's voice cracked through the room:

> "Then it's already inside me."

---

Spiral Nexus – Later That Night

Ren sat alone in the map chamber.

He was trying to draw the path ahead—but the pen refused to move.

Every line he drew erased itself.

The Spiral around him shimmered faintly. Something about it felt like static memory—like he was sketching inside a dream that didn't want to be remembered.

Kael walked in, flipping a time token in his hand.

> "If we're going up against a Minister that can rewrite thoughts… we're not going to win with tactics."

Ren sighed. "Then how?"

Kael shrugged. "We hit it before it hits us."

---

Yūgen – Sleep Breach Detected

Sector 4 lit up like a neural flare.

Dozens of Spiral users across that zone began to sleepwalk simultaneously, all muttering one phrase:

> "The Spiral Eye opens. We walk toward the dreamless dawn."

Yumi, Rei, Kael, Ren, and Aki arrived on site fast.

The Sleepwalkers were non-violent—but they were heading in the same direction: toward a black monolith that hadn't existed 30 minutes ago.

It rose out of the Spiral ground like a memory being unearthed. At its center, an eye slowly blinked open.

Yumi dropped to one knee, clutching her sketchbook.

"I can't draw. It's stealing the concept of 'next.' I can't think one step forward."

Ren stared at the eye. "It's infecting the future itself…"

> "You entered my cycle," came a voice—slow, echoing from nowhere and everywhere.

From the top of the monolith, a figure emerged:

A humanoid cloaked in flowing white, but with no face.

Instead, where its head should be was a glass spiral containing flickering images.

Dreams.

Nightmares.

Memories of choices that were never made.

---

Minister II – The Sleepwalker

It didn't speak with words. It projected dreams directly into their minds.

Aki saw himself asleep forever—safe, loved, peaceful.

Kael saw a world where his timeline never fractured. Where he saved everyone.

Rei saw no war. No Spiral Null. Just rest.

Yumi saw her daughter from a memory that never happened.

Ren…

He saw a world with no Spiral at all. Where everything was real. And everything stayed the same.

---

"Wake up!" Aki shouted, shaking Ren.

Ren blinked. "It's trying to trap us in our ideal states…"

Yumi forced her sketchbook open.

"I'm anchoring us—memory locks—drawn from shared events. We were never meant to sleep here!"

She drew five moments:

The day they formed their team.

The first Spiral battle.

Their argument at Delta Core.

The Spiral Hollow collapse.

A smile from each of them.

It worked.

The illusions cracked.

Kael raised his hand. "Chrono Blink—mark!"

He teleported above the Minister's projection shell and smashed a time burst into it.

The Minister didn't scream. It faded, leaving behind a phrase:

> "You remember too much. That is your curse."

The monolith cracked—and at its base, a Spiral shard dropped.

Number 2 of 20.

---

Back at Spiral Nexus

Ren stared at the map.

Now two Spiral Shards glowed… and a third blinked faintly, far away in a submerged sector.

Kael sighed. "Two down. Eighteen to go."

Yumi smiled weakly. "That's not even comforting anymore."

Aki sat alone in the next room. The symbol on his sketchbook was still glowing.

He was still hearing voices.

But they weren't the Minister's anymore.

They were… something older.

Something still waiting.