Sixteenth Day Event Prompt:
Dream traverses an enchanted forest
forest of codes
Dream is the Admin of the server.
Few truly understood what that meant.
They heard “Admin” and thought of control, authority, and unchecked power. But to Dream, it meant creation. It meant he had lovingly shaped the server with his own hands, writing line after line of code as if it were poetry, until life blossomed from nothing but numbers and symbols.
Every tree was an old friend, planted in the silence of creation; every mountain ridge was etched by his will; and every river that curved across the land was a decision made by his own design. When the wind moved through the leaves, it carried secrets only meant for him; when the sun rose or the moon sank, he felt their rhythms as if they were his own pulse. This server was alive, and he was not just its keeper, but its creator – its Admin. And that meant something no other player could ever understand.
With a motion of his fingers, subtle and deliberate, he could tug at the World Strings – the invisible strings that created the entire server from scratch. They held everything together. They quivered like threads of a vast spider’s web, singing beneath his touch. With them, he could shift the ground beneath armies, still the flow of time, or call down banishment upon those who defied him. The console itself listened when he breathed.
And yet … he rarely touched those strings.
That was a truth none of them saw.
To the others, he was an oppressor: a tyrant who cloaked himself in green and wore a mask to hide his true self. But in truth, he restrained himself more than any of them could ever know. Dream could have bent the world to his will, written himself as an untouchable god. He could have wiped their rebellions away with a single command, brought silence and order at the cost of their freedom.
He never did.
He believed in choice. He believed in free will. He believed in letting them write their own stories, even when those stories rose up against him. His restraint was invisible, but it was there in every decision.
And still, they hated him. They whispered that he was cruel, manipulative, power-hungry. They only saw the mask, the hand that pulled unseen strings in the background, and never the sacrifice behind it.
But Dream carried their hatred willingly. He chose it, because he understood something that they could not: people were never closer than when they shared an enemy. In fighting him, they grew strong together. In hating him, they forgot to hate one another. And in rallying against the villain he played, they found unity in ways peace could never have offered them.
Dream was reminded of this as he approached the Forest of Codes.
Few knew this place existed, and fewer still had walked within its boundaries. The coordinates were hidden, buried deep in the world’s fabric. To ordinary players, the forest was impenetrable – its trees grew so densely together that light could barely pass between their trunks. Fallen logs piled high, vines knotted into walls, leaves matted knee-deep. To anyone else, it was a barrier meant to repel intrusion. But not for Dream.
The forest knew its Admin.
At his approach, the trees bent aside. The path unraveled. Leaves drifted upward in defiance of gravity, logs rolled back into place, and the canopy thinned to spill silver beams of moonlight upon his steps. The whole forest bowed, a reverence for the one who had written its code into being.
Dream stepped forward once, then again. Midnight wrapped around him.
The air was thick with whispers – leaves that rustled not in wind, but in binary murmurs. Fireflies drifted in lazy arcs, their pulses flashing like command prompts. It was a language only he understood, for the forest was not just alive: it was the Heart of the Server.
He rarely came here.
Maintenance was never a problem – there was little he couldn’t fix elsewhere with a quiet line of code or a small adjustment. But lately, something had tugged at him, a disturbance only an Admin could feel. That was why he had come to the Heart of his creation: to listen.
And for the first time, it felt … wrong.
The Forest of Codes twisted against him. Paths looped back on themselves. Trees leaned forward, branches clawing at his clothes as though to snag him, to keep him from moving on. Roots writhed beneath his boots, threatening to trip him. The world he had crafted with his own hands – his home – felt alien, hostile. An unease coiled in his chest. He had never known fear here, not until now.
At first, he told himself it was a glitch. A bug in the terrain, some oversight to be patched later. But then he stumbled into a clearing he didn’t remember placing.
The moonlight glistened across its centre, where a pool of water lay so still it seemed carved from glass. Around the pool stood trees with bark polished to mirrored surfaces, gleaming like obsidian windows.
He turned toward the first one.
And froze.
The reflection staring back wasn’t him – at least, not the him he knew. His mask twisted into something malicious, its painted smile stretched unnaturally, sharp as teeth. The eyes were hollow voids, blank and cruel. The reflection leaned closer, raising a finger to the smile, hushing him with a soundless whisper: You stole my freedom.
Dream’s breath caught. His chest clenched until he gasped, stumbling back, but his gaze snagged on another mirror.
This reflection was taller, looming. The mask’s lines were jagged, cut deep like scars carved into porcelain. In its hands was a flag, torn and blackened with soot. His own voice whispered from its mouth, low and damning: You stole my country.
Dream turned sharply away, but the next tree caught him. His cloak was stained, heavy with blood. Explosions crackled in the distance, red bleeding into the edges of his vision. The mask was expressionless this time, more terrifying in its blankness. You stole my sanity, it whispered, the sound pounding like a hammer inside his skull.
Each reflection piled upon the next, the voices swelling into a cacophony of accusations. The more he shook his head, the louder they grew.
“No,” he whispered, though his voice shook. “That’s not –”
He stumbled and fell to his knees. His palms struck the ground, and when he looked down, they were drenched in blood that hadn’t been there a moment ago. His stomach lurched. Slowly, almost unwillingly, his eyes lifted to the pool at the clearing’s heart.
His mask stared back at him, but painted red, the smile streaked as though in blood. Desperately, he ripped it away from his face, hoping for clarity, for the safety of recognition. But the water showed him no comfort. The face staring back was not his own. White hair fell like ash around scarred features. Lime-green eyes burned through him, unfamiliar and unkind. A single scar split his face in a great “X” across the bridge of his nose. His hands rose unbidden, trembling, until his fingers brushed skin – skin where the ridge of that scar should not exist, but did.
“This is what you will become,” the forest whispered, though its voice was the voice of every tree, every shadow, every echo. “A villain. A victim.”
Dream squeezed his eyes shut, against both vision and tears. His breath came ragged, but he forced it to still, counting each inhale, each exhale, until he steadied.
They are stronger because they hate me, he thought. If this is what I must become, then so be it.
When he opened his eyes, the reflection had vanished. Only moonlight shimmered across the water, rippling faintly with the truth of his own face: freckles across fair skin, hair like burnt honey curling against his cheeks, eyes green and clear. No scars.
His hands shook as he reached for his mask. He clipped it back into place. The blank smile stared up at him once more.
Dream rose. The path unfolded again, obedient now, the trees parting for their Admin. He walked out of the Forest of Codes. He walked his server like a ghost, both master and prisoner of his creation. The world bowed to him, but he bowed to its people. They would never see it, and he would never ask them to. Their unity was thanks enough.
Even if it meant that, in every story, he would always be the monster at the end.
