Insomniac Player

Elder Ren refused to prescribe a sleeping pill outright, which Damien found genuinely disappointing coming from a building stocked with enough pills to bankrupt several governments on their own.

"The Black Coffin Rest Pill guarantees unconsciousness," he offered.

Physician Su stared at him. "Who tried to sell you that?"

"An optimist in orange."

"That pill transports berserk spirit beasts. It’s meant for cargo, not people."

"He left that part out."

"It could stop your heart."

"He did mention the possibility of permanent rest."

Physician Su closed her ledger with more force than the ledger had earned.

Elder Ren raised one hand. "Forced unconsciousness isn’t sleep. Your body already knows how to shut itself down entirely, the comas prove that much on their own. What it clearly cannot do is carry your awareness along into a restorative state with it."

The cracked moon jade sat on the table between them, its center still swallowed in black.

"If we push your body deeper," Elder Ren went on, "your consciousness may stay separated from it. You could slip into a coma the body never recovers from."

"Or die," Healer Orr added, helpfully.

"He already understood that part," Physician Su said, more to Orr than to Damien.

"Patients appreciate precision," Elder Ren said mildly.

He did, actually. Damien preferred his danger clearly labeled, ideally with a warning sticker. "Then what’s the safer path?"

Elder Ren gestured toward the silver lake beyond the open wall, where seven pavilions rose from the water, each holding a circular bed ringed by moon-jade mirrors.

"The Seven-Night Stillness Formation."

Physician Su reopened her ledger. "It lowers mental resistance in stages. The first night builds a shallow constructed dream out of familiar memories. Each night afterward pushes the state deeper while physicians watch the boundary between mind, soul, and body."

"Will it make me sleep?"

"That’s the intended result."

The lights inside Healer Orr shifted again, and Damien was now fairly certain that counted as laughter.

Elder Ren walked him through the structure. Patients wouldn’t share a single dream. Each person’s consciousness would occupy its own constructed domain, built from their personal memories, each one opening onto a shared diagnostic layer called the Dream Corridor. Physicians used that corridor to monitor overall stability without ever stepping into anyone’s private memories. A sealed dream door separated every domain from the next, and no patient could open another patient’s door. No physician could either, without consent, barring a medical emergency.

"If the dreams are private, why link them at all?" Damien asked.

"Efficiency," Physician Su said. "A shared corridor lets one formation stabilize several patients at once and catch irregularities faster."

Efficiency. Still a word that made his skin crawl.

"How many patients total?"

"Seven, including you."

"What happens if one dream goes unstable?"

"Their door closes and the formation ejects them."

"What happens if the door fails?"

Physician Su glanced at Elder Ren. The elder answered instead. "The corridor guardians isolate that domain."

"And if they fail too?"

"You ask questions like someone who’s watched a lot of systems fail on him before."

Damien said nothing to that. Elder Ren’s silver eyes lingered on him a moment longer, but he let it drop without pushing.

The treatment offered him the first genuinely reasonable chance he’d ever gotten at this. It also asked him to hand over his own consciousness to a formation run by people he’d met barely an hour ago, and he distrusted the whole arrangement on instinct.

"The price?"

Physician Su named a figure in high-grade spirit stones.

He waited for the system to convert it into gold, and immediately regretted asking. John could cover that number without noticing it left his account. One call, and Damien would have the funds in minutes, along with several hours of arguments about why John should be standing right there in the formation with him.

That would solve the money problem cleanly. It would also break the one promise he’d made to himself right after their reunion, to reach the top of this without being carried up it.

"I can’t pay that."

The Earthling routine dropped away without him meaning it to. Poverty didn’t get more profound just because it wore a mask.

Mei Lian walked in before either physician could respond. She’d changed into clean pavilion robes, though a line of dried blood still stained one sleeve.

"Then charge the treatment against the Broken Road investigation."

Physician Su frowned. "That call belongs to the Pavilion Master."

"The moon jade shipment arrived because of him. The courier and the attendant arrived because of him. Four merchants have already filed statements crediting him with keeping them alive."

"One of those statements also claims you buried their leader alive."

"He was still shouting when we left."

Mei Lian turned back to Physician Su. "A very considerate burial, all things considered."

Elder Ren tapped one silver-linked finger against the table. "The attack and his condition may not be unrelated events."

Damien went still. "Explain that."

"The moon jade shipment was part of an investigation into foreign consciousness entering linked dreams. Your mirror produced a result I haven’t seen in two centuries of practice. That doesn’t prove a connection outright, but it makes you worth keeping close."

"You want to study me."

"I want to treat you, and learn whatever the treatment happens to reveal along the way."

Honest, at least. Honesty didn’t automatically make the offer safe.

"What service would replace payment, then?"

Mei Lian set the damaged Cloudstep token down beside the cracked jade. "Help us find out who sabotaged that marker and why they wanted this shipment badly enough to kill for it. You spotted the altered formation before a registered attendant or courier managed to. You read their second ambush without any detection technique at all. That kind of instinct has value."

"You have investigators for this already."

"They think like sect enforcers. You think like a man who expects everyone to try killing him."

"Most men have made a reasonable effort."

Elder Ren nearly smiled at that. Damien weighed the arrangement over in his head. The attackers already knew Earthling had traveled with Mei Lian. They might already suspect the tutorial dagger too. Staying out of the investigation wouldn’t actually pull him free of it either way.

"My conditions." He counted them off. "The mask stays on. My class and origin server stay undisclosed. No memory gets recorded beyond what’s medically necessary. Nobody enters my constructed dream without my consent, unless my life is in immediate danger."

"The formation can’t operate through a physical mask," Physician Su said.

Mei Lian studied him a moment. "The mask can stay. The dream will just use whatever face he actually believes belongs to him underneath it."

He disliked that phrasing more than he expected to. "One more condition, then. If the formation pulls in anything unrelated to treatment, it gets destroyed unread. Immediately."

Elder Ren extended his linked hand, and a system contract bloomed in the air between them. The terms formed in clean text, and Damien read them three times through, checking the definitions buried under each clause before changing "reasonable medical interest" to "direct necessity for treatment."

Physician Su sighed audibly. He changed two more clauses after that just to make it a fair fight.

When he finally accepted, the contract split apart into silver light and folded into both their profiles.

➤[Medical Service Agreement established.]

➤[Seven-Night Stillness Trial authorized.]

➤[Investigation service accepted as conditional payment.]

Preparations ran until evening. Healer Orr measured his mana response while Mei Lian walked him through emergency signals. Every patient’s constructed dream carried a waking anchor built into it, a sound, an object, a place tied strongly to the feeling of returning to consciousness. Triggering it opened that patient’s own exit and alerted the corridor guardians instantly.

"The formation pulls the anchor from your own memories," she said. "Don’t trigger it unless you actually want to leave."

"Can someone else trigger mine?"

"They can’t enter your domain."

"That wasn’t the question."

She hesitated. "If someone were already inside with you, maybe. But nobody will be."

Damien looked toward the cracked jade sitting a few feet away.

Nobody was a confident word to bet on.

The seven patients took their places in separate pavilions once the sun went down. Damien lay back on a circular bed suspended over the silver lake, six moon-jade mirrors floating in a ring around him, thin lines of light connecting his platform to the six others out on the water.

Mei Lian stood by the formation controls. "Try to relax."

"People only say that right before they make it impossible."

"Try anyway."

Elder Ren raised his hand, and the entire silver lake went perfectly still.

➤[Seven-Night Stillness Formation activated.]

➤[Diagnostic depth: First Layer.]

➤[Please allow consciousness to descend.]

Darkness swallowed his vision. Somewhere far off, a bell began to ring.