Steven_WL

Dreammark Chronicles follows the parallel journeys of Aiden, a curious American teenager, and Lin Xi, a perceptive Chinese youth, who are unexpectedly drawn into a shared dream realm. Each midnight, they and twenty-one other adolescents from around the globe are summoned by an ancient “dream law” to solve a series of escalating trials set within a shifting city shrouded in mist.

In this latent world, participants must cooperate to navigate memory mazes, logical battlegrounds, and simulated crises that mirror real-world threats. With each successful challenge they recover a fragment of a hidden “mind core,” but overuse of these dream-granted abilities risks triggering unpredictable temporal feedback into waking life. As Aiden applies his scientific ingenuity and Lin Xi draws on his ancestral Qi techniques, they forge an uneasy alliance that bridges cultural divides and resonates with universal themes of trust, sacrifice, and resilience. Their discoveries soon reveal a dire conspiracy.......

Dreammark Chronicles

Clearing Jupiter's orbit was like exhaling a storm.Contrapunctus sailed in darkness pierced only by far-sun starlight and the slow wink of patched sails.The crew drifted in semi-weightless calm—bruised, caffeinated, certain the next crisis was at least a nap away.

So naturally the probe slammed them five minutes later.

1 Junk from the Dawn of Robots

The collision alarm mewled, more confused than panicked.Aiden reached the window first: a splotch of copper-green metal no bigger than a suitcase had lodged in the port radiator array, trailing flakes like oxidised glitter.

Maya scanned it."No transponder. Composition: pre-fusion alloys… 22nd-century steel?"Cassie cocked an eyebrow. "A five-hundred-year-old Earth probe way out here?"Lin, already fastening an EVA harness, dead-panned: "Either we're unlucky or destiny loves dad jokes."

2 Suit-Step into History

Outside, the probe looked moth-eaten. Stencilled letters on one plate read "ARGUS-ARC-α" beneath a faded UN emblem.Aiden pried a hatch; dust puffed out like grey snow.Inside lay a single data crystal crusted with verdigris.

Lin's voice crackled through helmet comms: "Fragile.""Like your tea ego," Aiden shot back, but he tucked the relic gingerly into a shield bag.

Back inside, Maya isolated the crystal in a nano-sandbox. "Corrupted sectors everywhere—except one."The surviving file was audio, eight seconds long.

3 The Kernel Speaks

They crowded around the speaker.A hiss.Then a child's voice older than any of them, speaking in archaic Esperanto:

"Ĉiu sonĝo estas pordego. Trovu la Mythweave en silento post la kvardek-sepa primo."

("Every dream is a gate. Seek the Mythweave beyond the forty-seventh prime.")

Dawn-Core's facets flashed 47 in hot indigo.

Solayna's constellation pupils dilated. "The parent web."Nephis folded his arms. "Our cadence woke bigger prey."

Aiden felt equal parts dread and electricity. "Coordinates?"Maya overlaid star-charts: the vector passed Saturn, Uranus, Pluto—ending in Kuiper darkness, 120 AU away.

Cassie whistled. "One-third to the Oort Cloud. We'll need a gravity whip off Neptune and a prayer."

Lin shrugged. "I'm fresh out of prayers, but I can brew motivational hojicha."Maya groaned. "If the universe ends to the smell of socks, I quit."

4 Team Vote—No Heroes Left Behind

They floated in the galley. No speeches; just glances.

Cassie spun her lantern. "Kid-voice asked. We answer."

Nephis unfurled a cloak seam. "Shadow is curious."

Maya tapped the map. "I've never debugged the edge of reality—bucket-list item."

Lin raised his pouch. "To forty-seven."

Aiden looked at Solayna—envoy, friend, maybe the last link to Quiet-Weave.She nodded once. "The Loom's children finish what the Ancients began."

"Then," Aiden said, "let's set sail before the tea goes cold."

5 Burn for the Kuiper

Contrapunctus re-trimmed its ugly sails, shadow panels trembling with wrong-beat pulses.Maya plotted a three-stage burn chaining Jupiter's gravity, sundiver slingshot, and Neptune aerobrake.Lin calculated prime-timed course corrections to dodge known Null-echo pockets.Cassie stocked emergency cocoa; Nephis stitched heat-seams for deep-space cold.Glitch and Chip rehearsed forty-seven in tap code until it sounded like a rave in a tin can.

Aiden took the pilot cradle, Dawn-Core glowing steady.He keyed ship-wide:

"New horizon, same contract: anybody freaks out, we mock them until courage returns."

Lin chimed, perfect timing: "Starting with your thruster singing."

Engines flared.Contrapunctus surged sunward first—counter-intuitive but necessary—ready to sling behind the star and fire outward faster than any patched-together dream-ship had a right to travel.

The rusted archive fragment floated in the lab viewport, its mission finally passed on.Ahead, the Mythweave Gate waited in black silence, counting primes.

The Rusted Archive