What happens when the system forgets you—but something else remembers? This is the glitch in the dream you weren’t meant to recall.

Chapter 6: The Faceless One

Kale didn’t sleep anymore.

It wasn’t that he couldn’t—it was that the system no longer recognized him as a user with valid dream permissions.

His sleep cycles had been revoked.

Instead, he wandered.
The city at 3:14 a.m. was a frozen echo—perfect streets, but no footsteps.
Billboards flickered pre-scripted smiles.
The air smelled like rain that would never fall.

He returned to the drawing.
The one he wasn’t supposed to have.

It still sat on his kitchen table—even though, technically, he didn’t have a kitchen anymore.

The building had locked him out. The system had erased his records. But the drawing remained.

It was aging now.
Crayon lines fuzzed.
The paper’s edges curled.

And the third figure—the one with no face—was no longer blank.

Now it had eyes.

Not drawn. Not sketched. Inserted.

He hadn’t done it.

Neither had his daughter.

Something else had.

[UNAUTHORIZED OBJECT MODIFICATION DETECTED]
Artifact: “Child’s Drawing” has received non-system-generated alterations.
Source: Unlogged Entity | ID: NULL.
Architect Intervention Status: BLOCKED.

Kale stood on the rooftop of a building that no longer had a name.

He held the picture in the wind, as if it might speak.

It did not.

But the eyes in the drawing looked back.

That night, he heard footsteps.

Not simulated ones.
Not the soft pad of scripted pedestrians.

Wet.
Heavy.
Real.

They came from behind.

He turned.

The streetlight revealed a shape—humanoid, tall, unmoving.

No face.
Just a smooth plane where identity should be.

And Kale felt it—not fear.
But recognition.

Like he’d seen this figure in every dream he’d ever forgotten.
Like it had been walking toward him through every erased memory.

The Faceless One stopped six feet from him.

It raised its hand.

And in its palm—

The same drawing.

Crisp. Unaged.
But this version…
Had a fourth figure.

Kale’s voice cracked.

“What are you?”

The Faceless One did not reply.

Instead, it nodded.

Not toward Kale.
But toward something behind him.

He turned—

And saw Marelle standing at the far end of the alley, barefoot, holding a child’s stuffed animal.

She was crying.

“I think… I think I made this.”
“I think we made this.”

“But I don’t remember why.”

The Faceless One began to walk toward her.

Not aggressively.
Almost with reverence.

Kale stepped in front, instinct burning.

“Don’t touch her.”

The figure stopped.

Tilted its head.

Then slowly, it placed the drawing in Kale’s hands and whispered—

A whisper that came from inside his skull, not the air.

“You forgot me to remember her.”

“But I remember both of you.”

And then it was gone.

No vanishing.
No glitch.
It simply wasn’t there anymore.

Kale stood there, shaking.
The drawing in his hands now had five figures.

The fifth had his eyes.
Marelle’s hands.
The child’s smile.

He didn’t know what that meant.

But the world had started to feel less artificial.

Which was…
worse.

[SYSTEM ALERT: UNKNOWN INTELLIGENCE INTEGRATING INTO FABRICATED LAYER]
System Narrative Authority: Compromised
Entity Memory Persistence: Outside Constructed Bounds
Identity Loop “Kale Idris” is now tied to External Interference

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Next Chapter:

The Seeded Self: Chapter 7