Chapter Text
Dream woke choking on cold.
Not the sharp, violent cold of lava shock or revival sickness—this was slow and invasive, sinking into him layer by layer until even breathing felt like effort. Snow crunched beneath him when he sucked in a breath, the sound unnaturally loud in the quiet, and that alone was enough to make him go still.
Quiet meant danger.
He stayed down, cheek pressed into powdery snow, breathing shallowly as his mind came online the way it always did after something catastrophic. Air first—thin, biting. Ground—frozen, uneven. Wind—light, but persistent, carrying the smell of pine and something sharp and mineral underneath.
No clinking of chains.
No bubbling hot lava.
No drip sounds of crying obsidian walls.
The absence hit him harder than their presence ever had.
Dream pushed himself up onto his elbows—and nearly faceplanted when his balance failed him. His body felt wrong. Lighter. Smaller. His center of gravity sat lower than it should have, and when he shifted his weight, something heavy dragged behind him with a faint scraping sound.
He froze.
Slowly, he looked down.
His hands, slimmer than he remembered, fingers shorter, the skin pale enough it almost blended with the snow. The scars were gone. All of them.
No cuts.
No burns.
No evidence of Quackity’s work or the prison’s cruelty—except, faintly, the dull ache of cannon-death scars that never truly left.
He doesn't know if he should feel relieved or not that those scars remained through whatever XD did to him.
Dream flexed his fingers once, twice.
They moved easily, but felt somewhat wrong to him.
He twisted at the waist and looked behind him to glimpse at what had moved before.
A tail lay half-buried in the snow, thick and scaled, tapering into a long, heavy length that curved slightly on its own. White—not furred, not feathered. Smooth scales faintly reflective where the light hit it.
Dream stared at it for several seconds.
“…Okay,” he muttered hoarsely. Compartmentalizing the discovery for further analysis later.
The sound of his own voice grounded him. Same voice. Same weight. No change in tone or cadence. Just him.
He pushed himself fully upright this time, bracing for the shift—and immediately noticed something else was wrong.
Everything was slightly taller than it should be.
The trees towered over him, dark pine trunks stretching higher than they should have, branches heavy with snow, like the world had been scaled up and he hadn’t.
Dream took a step forward. His boot sank deeper into the snow than expected.
He stopped.
Shorter, then.
That settled uncomfortably in his chest.
He forced himself to breathe and took stock properly.
Assess. Adapt. Move.
The rules hadn’t changed.
He looked down at what he was wearing—familiar, at least. Loose green hoodie, no mask, layered clothing built for speed and movement, not insulation. His manhunt gear. Good for running. Terrible for snow.
Cold seeped into him fast. Not just uncomfortable—wrong. His body didn’t react the way it should have. No shivering. No spike of heat. Instead, his movements began to slow, joints stiffening as if the cold was dragging the energy straight out of him.
Dream frowned.
That wasn’t normal.
He hugged his arms to his chest and immediately felt it—his body conserving rather than fighting. Slowing instead of compensating.
“Cold-blooded,” he murmured, the realization settling heavily.
Not human, then. That explained… a lot.
Snow dusted his shoulders, melting slowly against his clothes before chilling him further. Long-term exposure like this would be bad. Lethal, probably.
Shelter came first.
Dream turned in a slow circle, scanning the terrain. Snowy and dense pine forest. Limited visibility, muffled sound. Good cover. Bad warmth.
He picked a tree and went to work.
His hands knew what to do before he consciously thought about it. He punched into the bark, ignoring the sting in his knuckles, watching the block fracture in familiar patterns until it popped free. The log vanished into his inventory with a soft, intangible pull that made his shoulders loosen despite everything.
Okay. Good. That still worked. Dream was not sure how much XD had changed about the server, how far rewriting history went.
He moved quickly after that, breaking more logs, converting them into planks without looking, his inventory filling with resources he couldn’t physically see but could feel—weightless, present, reassuring.
Crafting table. Sticks. Wooden pickaxe.
Routine steadied him.
Dream dug into the side of a small hill, carving out a shallow alcove. Stone cracked beneath the pickaxe, each block popping loose and disappearing into his inventory. He worked fast, movements efficient despite the creeping sluggishness in his limbs.
Cobblestone. Enough.
He placed a furnace against the stone wall and fed it wood, hands shaking slightly as he did. After finally grabbing some flint from gravel and finally managing to find a single piece of raw iron, he made a flint and steel. Setting the wood on the furnace ablaze.
He was immensely thankful flint and steel worked just as well with raw iron as processed iron, otherwise he would be doomed. As rubbing two sticks together until it starts a flame is not as easy as it may seem.
Perhaps he should have saved the iron for another tool such as a shield, but what mattered the most now was raising his temperature, Dream could easily find more iron later if he's not frozen to death.
When the flames caught, the difference was immediate. Heat washed over him in a wave so sharp he nearly sagged forward in relief.
Dream exhaled slowly and sat back, tail curling instinctively closer to the warmth, coiling around his legs without conscious thought.
He stared into the fire.
The first path will rewrite history.
XD’s voice echoed in his mind, light and mocking.
“What about this situation is a rewrite,” he muttered to himself as he stirred the flame, he really couldn't understand the god's reasoning. “Dropping me somewhere cold and unfamiliar just to see if I figure it out.”
No memory loss. No mercy. Just displacement.
He fed more wood into the furnace, letting the heat seep into him, watching as feeling gradually returned to his fingers. His thoughts sharpened as his body warmed, fog lifting inch by inch.
Outside, snow continued to fall.
That was when he noticed it.
Smoke.
Thin and dark against the pale blue sky, rising in the distance beyond the trees. Too straight, too steady to be natural.
Civilization.
Dream watched it for a long moment, weighing options automatically. People meant warmth, information, resources. They also meant risk. He didn’t know the rules here yet. Didn’t know what hybrids were worth here, what he was worth. Didn't know where he was nor who was there.
The tail at his side shifted slightly.
Dangerous. His subconscious hissed.
Standing still would kill him faster than people ever could. His body may feel wrong, he may have not raised a single weapon since he was locked in Pandora's months ago, but others feared a direct battle against him for a reason.
Dream stood, he stored the remaining wood and the furnace in his inventory and committed the shelter’s location to memory. He could come back if he needed to. Maybe.
Just in case the civilization was hostile, he told himself.
He stepped back into the snow, orienting himself toward the smoke, and started moving.
Always moving.
---
By the time Dream realized how far he’d walked, the light had changed.
Not suddenly—not dramatically—but enough that instinct prickled at the back of his mind. The sky had dulled from pale winter blue to something bruised and heavy, clouds thickening as the sun dipped lower behind the trees. Shadows stretched longer between the pines, dark pooling at their roots.
Night was coming.
Dream slowed, scanning the terrain again. The smoke was still there—fainter now, partially obscured by branches—but undeniably closer than before. Close enough that stopping felt wrong.
He kept moving.
The cold worsened as the light faded. Without the sun’s weak warmth, his body began to betray him again. Movements that had felt fluid an hour ago grew sluggish, joints stiffening as if wrapped in invisible bands. His tail dragged more heavily through the snow now, the muscles along it protesting each step.
Dream flexed his fingers, then clenched them into fists.
Too slow.
That was dangerous.
He broke into a jog, boots crunching softly against the snow, breath puffing white in front of him. The exertion helped—his body warmed marginally with motion—but it burned through what little energy he had faster than he liked.
And then there was the other problem.
His stomach twisted sharply, a deep, hollow ache that made his steps falter.
Hunger.
Not new. Not unfamiliar.
Pandora had taught him exactly how much a body could endure on almost nothing. Two potatoes a day, sometimes less. Enough to barely keep him alive. Never enough to make him feel human. Never enough to grant him strength to fight back.
He hadn’t eaten before taking XD’s hand. Leaving the potato to Technoblade. The piglin hybrid already needed to eat more than a normal human, and while he acted nonchalant Dream knew the hunger was starting to affect the other.
While one more potato wasn't nearly enough, Dream hoped it would help at least a little until Phil came for Techno.
His body still hadn’t caught up to that reality, the reality that he should be skin and bones and suffering from malnutrition.
But there was no dizziness, no weakness. Just a familiar gnawing, insistent emptiness that clawed at him from the inside, sharper now that he was moving, burning energy he didn’t have.
Thirst followed soon after.
His mouth felt dry, tongue sticking uncomfortably to the roof of it. Snow would help—he knew that—but melting it internally would sap heat he couldn’t afford to lose.
Later, then.
He adjusted his pace, conserving where he could, slipping back into the rhythm that had kept him alive through manhunts and wars alike. Move smart. Avoid open ground. Use the terrain.
That was when he heard it.
A low groan, distant but unmistakable.
Dream stopped dead.
The sound echoed faintly through the trees, followed by the soft crunch of footsteps that were not his own.
“Already?” he muttered under his breath.
Mobs didn’t wait.
He shifted course immediately, angling toward a cluster of trees where shadows were deeper, visibility lower. His hand dipped into his inventory automatically, fingers closing around stone.
He crafted as he moved—quick, practiced motions—pulling together a stone sword before the first figure even emerged from between the trunks.
A zombie.
Its skin was bluish in the fading light, eyes dull and unfocused as it dragged itself forward through the snow. Another groan answered from somewhere to the left. Then another.
Dream exhaled slowly.
“Fine.”
He didn’t rush them. Never rushed. He let the first zombie come close enough that he could see the frost clinging to its clothes before he struck, blade flashing up and then down in a clean, efficient arc.
The thing fell.
The second came at him from the side, arms flailing clumsily. Dream ducked under its swing and drove the sword through its chest, twisting instinctively to free the blade.
Too easy.
That was the problem.
He felt it then—the lag between thought and action, the faint delay that hadn’t been there before. The cold was slowing him again, creeping back in now that he’d stopped moving. His tail lashed once behind him, unbidden, striking the snow hard enough to send powder flying.
He forced himself forward, breaking into a run again as a skeleton’s arrow thunked into a tree behind him.
Not worth the fight.
He wove through the forest, letting trees absorb projectiles meant for him, breath coming faster now, chest tight with exertion. The smoke was closer—he could see it more clearly now, rising above rooftops just visible through the thinning trees.
Civilization meant light.
Light meant safety.
The ground dipped suddenly, and Dream nearly stumbled as his foot slid on ice hidden beneath fresh snow. He caught himself at the last second, heart hammering in his chest.
Focus.
He slowed to a fast walk, forcing his breathing to steady. Panic wasted energy. Energy he couldn’t spare.
Another sound reached him then—not a mob.
Voices.
Raised, distant, carried on the wind.
Dream froze behind a tree, pressing himself close to the trunk as he listened. The words were indistinct, blurred by distance, but the tone was unmistakable.
People.
Relief and wariness tangled painfully in his chest.
He glanced back once, toward the darkening forest he’d just crossed. Mobs were beginning to dot the landscape now, shapes moving between shadows, eyes glowing faintly as night took hold.
No going back.
Dream squared his shoulders and moved forward again, keeping to cover as long as he could, toward the warmth and danger of civilization.
Behind him, the snowing forest settled fully into night.
---