My eyes snap open, and I realize that I'm dreaming.

I'm in a parking lot, late at night, no cars. The air smells of asphalt and gasoline. The lights of downtown Atlanta sparkle like Christmas lights around me. It's cold, and there's a wind blowing. I know this is nothing but a dream, and I wonder if this is the Yumeka.

Then something breathes next to me, and I jump in surprise.

It's a dark shape, and as my eyes settle in on its enormity, I realize it's a Shadow Ka. Something tells me it's not Raspy—that it's not even a real one.

“This is a dream,” I say. “I don't get it. Is this the Yumeka?”

“No,” the Ka says with the same unusual voice as Raspy. “The difference is hard to understand.”

He screams a shrieking cry like the one heard back in my uncle's house. The silent thunder passes over me again, and the air around me seems to bend.

It snaps back like a whip and …

I wasn't dreaming anymore. I still stood in the same parking lot, looking at the Ka, cold in the dark of night. But the same feeling washed over me that I had when I first met Inori. It felt real—nothing like the hazy, vague feeling of a dream.

It was the Yumeka. The place where dreams and reality met in a world that was more than each one could be by itself. The place where the Stompers thrived and conquered.

“I don't know what you've done,” the Shadow Ka said. “But it's in the hands of my masters now.”

He reached his huge, clawed hands forward and grabbed my shirt. He pulled me close to him then wrapped both arms around me in a tight grip. His wings snapped in the air and we took flight. I knew this was part of it from the stories I'd heard from Joseph and Rayna. I knew where we were going.

The parking lot shrunk as we quickly gained altitude, passing up and over the tall buildings of Atlanta. My stomach jumped into my throat as the Ka banked hard and flew toward the east. His wings thumped with each flap, and a strong wind blew against us as he gained speed.

“Why does the Yumeka look just like my own world?” I yelled to the Ka.

“Because it is one and the same,” he said back. No one ever seemed to give me an answer that made the least bit of sense.

The sun broke through the plane of the horizon, a sharp ray of light piercing my vision. The sky was cloudless, but instead of the purples and blues of early morning, it was gray and black, like watching an old TV show. I looked below and was shocked to see that we were over the ocean, its waters dark and ominous. How had we gotten this far? I wondered.

It was then that I first saw the big face of myself, looking back at me.

This too I had expected.

It appeared out of nowhere—not there one second, there the next. It was massive, as large as any building I'd ever seen, and floated in the air above the ocean. The structure was a perfect replica of my face, carved out of the black gooey stuff that I had seen so often in my many adventures. It bubbled and boiled like Jell-O gone berserk, great spouts of it shooting out into the air before being sucked back in.

It grew and grew as we flew closer. Soon it took up my whole vision, and I lost the ability to discern the features of the handsome face as it got too big. Except for the eyes. We flew straight toward them and then veered to the right eye.

It loomed before us, growing until all I could see was a flat expanse of black goo, any curvature lost in its sheer size. The Ka did not slow down.

Just before we slammed into the eye, the Ka reared to a stop like a horse, pulled me back with its huge arms, and slung me toward the wall of blackness.

With a great sucking sound, I entered the Stomper nightmare.