Wah wah wah, the mousey is not a useless mess TAT
The thoughts looped in Caleb Ross's head like a bad ringtone: the snake talks, the snake uses a phone, the snake is Ollie Blake's uncle. He couldn't tell which idea was worse.
"Hello? Hello? You still there? If it doesn't work I can have Bobby call you tonight."
Humans were so complicated. If you were a spirit you could look once and know what someone was, but Caleb wasn't a spirit. He was a manager with an expensive car and an even more expensive sense of denial.
"No… no problem." He hated that his heart was pounding, but the person on the line very clearly sounded like a relative of Ollie's—otherwise they wouldn't have his number. "Send me a pin. I'll come pick you up right now."
He had to be insane. He was terrified of the supernatural, and yet here he was, about to drive out to pick up a venomous talking snake.
Was this… normal?
"Wait—are you near Easton Village? Do you want me to book you a ticket?"
The snake had been on the live stream just a second ago! How did you pick that up? Did Caleb have to drive out there himself?
"No, no need. I'll be at the Ashford City outskirts in ten minutes. Come pick me up here—plane tickets are so expensive."
Fast wasn't just a convenience—it was the only sane option. Humans couldn't match that speed. Caleb mumbled agreement and forced himself to ignore the paranormal bits in the stranger's voice. He would treat it like picking up a regular relative of his talent.
Ollie had no idea how much trouble Quinn's call had caused his manager. Meanwhile Ollie and the others were following the stream of a little creek, spotting marked trees as they went. To everyone's surprise, Mason Yu could climb—the man had more agility than anyone gave him credit for—but he still couldn't match Jade Hayes. Some marks were too high, so they left them, but overall their progress was better than expected.
"Is this stream this long? We've been following it an hour and it still doesn't end…" Grace Jiang frowned.
Everything around them seemed deceptively peaceful—except the air felt heavy, like a cold blanket pressed down on the world.
"I don't think this is right. We've already passed this spot at least four times," Mason said. "See that vine on the tree across the way? It's shaped like a snake. At first I didn't think much of it, but I've seen that exact vine four times now."
Mason had nearly had a heart attack the time Mira scared him when he was eating grilled fish, so he had become hypersensitive to anything snake-like. The first time he saw the vine he'd startled and kept quiet to avoid teasing. The second time he figured he'd misremembered. The third time he was sure the vine matched the same twists he'd been tracking. Now he was convinced they'd been circling.
"Maybe you're just imagining it? It's a wooded hill—vines are normal," Grace said, shivering and clutching Anna Lang's hand.
"If it was only once or twice, maybe. But I consciously tracked those twists. It's the same vine. Ollie, do you have the walkie? Should we ask the production crew?"
If this were the usual kind of getting-lost drama, they wouldn't call the crew this quickly—getting lost was part of the show. But this felt off. Mason remembered that after the first time passing that vine they found marker points; since then there'd been nothing.
"Look—when I took the five-point marker, I came down and didn't watch my step. I stepped on some flattened grass right here. We were moving forward, right? So why are we back here?"
Grace went quiet. She'd helped steady Mason when he nearly twisted his ankle and had noticed the flattened grass then.
"I tried the walkie. No signal."
"What? That's impossible—walkies are radio. If those don't work, then the stream…" Anna looked at the live-stream gear on her shoulder and found, to her horror, that it had shut off without warning.
Everyone checked their equipment. One by one, the devices were dead. The small patch of sunlight they stood in did nothing to ease the sudden, bone-chilling cold that rose from the ground and stiffened their limbs.
Ollie blinked, baffled.
This wasn't right. He'd been moving just fine—how could he have missed anything wrong? Standing in the sunlight, the heaviness in the air actually seemed to fade a little. The hamster of a man sank into a pit of doubt.
He walked to the creek and blew a clear, rhythmical whistle—an oddly hollow, resonant sound. Even though they weren't in a gorge, the whistle echoed away, fading into the distance.
"What are you doing?" Mason asked. The three of them were starting to edge toward panic, but Ollie remained calm in a way that unnerved them.
Ollie whistled a few more times. He had woven a bit of his aura into each note. If Aunt Mira had stayed to see what her brother could do, she wouldn't ignore the call. If that whistle didn't reach her, then either all sound and energy had been trapped inside some great formation… or they were inside a dream.
"Ghost-wall"—the old phrase for getting stuck in a loop—was basically a lost mind-trap. If this was a dream, things got complicated. Ollie couldn't tell what kind of illusion was swallowing them.
"Give me the little knife," Mason said.
He didn't know what Mason planned, but they were stuck together on this rope. He hoped Mason had some plan. Ollie handed over the small blade without hesitating. Mason—half panicked, half resigned—slit his wrist.
Grace lunged to stop him. But then the three of them watched something impossible.
Where Mason's skin opened, there was no blood, no tissue, nothing but white—like a blank space where flesh should be, as if some line of code were missing from reality. It looked like a cut-out in a screen.
"A dream…" Grace whispered. "That makes things easier."
If one of them had fallen asleep and dreamed this place into being, that dreamer could be made lucid and then wake up, ejecting the rest of them from the illusion. The trick was finding the dreamer.
"We're in a dream someone made, pulling us in. If we can get the dreamer to realize they're dreaming, we'll snap out," Mason said.
Mason felt like he was dreaming just hearing Ollie say all this. It was so ridiculous coming from him—Ollie was a hamster-sized fan of novels—but somehow Ollie had the right instincts.
There wasn't time for debate, and Ollie didn't have time for convincing people who didn't think they were in immediate danger. If he had the ability to take control, he could end this fast. He gave a small, calculating look. Then his eyes slowly turned gold, an alluring, hypnotic hue.
The others' gazes cleared, like someone switching on a light in an empty house. They moved like sleepwalkers—every motion directed under Ollie's influence.
Ollie loved reading. He also loved efficiency. Trying to talk someone into lucid dreaming when everyone's life could be at stake felt like wasting time. He had a blunt solution: find the dreamer and force realization. If that failed, he'd escalate.
But as he took control and pushed the others down, a new problem dawned on him: if everyone died, how would he know whose dream this was? If he killed them all and the illusion persisted, he'd be the only one left—then what?
Keep it simple.
Ollie flicked the knife, tidy and businesslike. The fastest way to make a dreamer wake up was to let them die in the dream. Death would end the illusion if they were the dream center. No time to overthink.
He moved with surgical speed and slit Mason's throat, then Grace's, then Anna's. Each cut revealed the same white void—no organs, no blood, no flesh—just a blank. He waited. The scene didn't change.
So he slit his own wrist. Same result. He sat very still. Had he been the dreamer all along?
This shouldn't be. Humans couldn't tell dreams from reality easily, but he was a yokai—his form wasn't stable, but that didn't mean he was a failure. He slid into a spiral of doubt, then decided he wouldn't accept the verdict.
Sobbing a little at the ridiculousness of it, he did what he had to and cut himself cleanly across the throat.
Ten minutes later, they all respawned in the same place.
Ollie sat up, stunned and very much alive. Mason, Grace, and Anna staggered back to full awareness and glared at him like they wanted to tear him apart.
"You! What did you do? Murder is illegal—do you even know that?!" Mason lunged, but Grace held him back.
"You're not dead, so quiet down," Ollie said flatly. After going through death re-load, they all accepted the explanation quicker. The mere fact they'd just died and rewound removed the need for more argument.
They sat close, gazes darting between each other.
"Uh… Ollie, are you… a yokai? You can talk to animals and come up with solutions to weird stuff. Or are you… a cultivator?" Anna asked, trembling between fear and fascination. His eyes were still gold, but he wasn't trying to control them now, so anyone could look.
Ollie nodded and deliberately let his furry ears poke out. The sight made the two girls' faces light up—something soft and fluffy was an instant mood-lifter. For a moment they forgot that the gray-haired boy in front of them was technically a monster, and in old American legends monsters ate people.
This puppy-faced, fluffy little critter was clearly not the kind to bite.
"Ears! Ears! Can I pet them? So cute!!!" Anna squealed, reaching for the soft tufts.
Grace leaned in too, eyes shining. The cold, ghost-loop terror slipped away in the warmth of something small and adorable—and Ollie, for all his existential wobbliness, took full advantage of that. He was not going to be labeled useless today. He was not a waste.
(End of chapter)