Gradually, eerie music drifted faintly from the depths of the Mist. It sounded like singing from across the sea, or fragments floating up from the depths of distant memories.
He involuntarily walked toward the music, every step carrying a bewildered anticipation.
The music seemed to be a thread, drawing him deeper and deeper into the edge of this dream.
His eyes began to grow vacant, the anticipation that had flickered in them gradually giving way to numbness.
He saw fragmented pictures unfold and close before his eyes. They were neither his memories nor those of "Dreamweaving Person-HX-S-023," but seemed to be fragments of the painful experiences of certain Lost Ones. Those painful experiences became visualized memories, surging toward him wave after wave like a raging tide within a boundary stripped of matter and time, drowning him in an Abyss of despair.
He saw disease, horror, strangeness, and even sinister things beyond description slip like ghosts into this living world, devouring its once-vibrant strength bit by bit...
Then that world began to decline, its functions gradually shutting down like an aging machine...
His breathing unconsciously grew heavy, as though he, too, were experiencing the painful process of this life approaching death.
He could feel the warmth of life slowly fading, his consciousness gradually shrouded in darkness, like the last glow of sunset being mercilessly swallowed by night...
At this dream boundary, he witnessed the cold face of death. Death was no longer an abstract concept, but a silence, an ending, the disappearance of all sound and color...
"I tried to wake myself up, tried to tell myself this was only a dream, but my consciousness seemed trapped in a solid cage. No matter how I struggled, I couldn't break free..."
"I shouted, but my voice was swallowed by this endless Mist