The room beyond was not a room. It was a feeling .

And the sleeping cat on the door would open one brass eye, just a slit, just for a moment—watching him leave.

He lay back. The pillow cradled his skull like a hand. The aurora above dimmed to a softer hue, something between candlelight and dusk. The tea cup refilled itself beside him. A faint music began, or maybe it had always been there—a lullaby played on a music box far away, or maybe inside his own chest.

Just this.

Leo’s eyes grew heavy. He thought of the elevator waiting in the corridor, its silver doors patient and cold. He thought of level 397, unknown, probably ugly. He thought of the rules: Do not sleep in the dream rooms. Do not let the quiet fool you.

In the center of the moss floor, a bed. Not a cot or a bunk. A real bed, huge and rumpled, with blankets that looked knitted from clouds and sheets that smelled like laundry dried on a line in spring. And on the bed, a window—but the window looked into nowhere. It looked into elsewhere : a field of wheat under a crescent moon, then a city rooftop at dawn, then the bottom of a clear sea where fish like stained glass swam past.