As Andie let her eyes wander around the mindscape, she started to notice something flowing - moving independently of the wind. It was gathering in the center of the mindscape. It was Will to Live, and she wasn’t the only one to notice its flow - all the clockwork birds in the mindscape had turned to watch the Will gather.

It started with a drone - with Cedric’s Trait - phasing into existence. It shimmered and crackled with light as it melted and swirled together into a molten neon orb. Once it had settled into a solid, glassy orb, the entire mindscape seemed to release a familiar slow-motion shiver.

A newborn Dreamheart for a newborn Dream. This marked the second time Andie had been privileged enough to see something this majestically cheesy come to life.

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Next, just as Andie had hoped and expected, a gentle force began to pulse to the steady rhythm of a sleeping heartbeat. A force that pushed through her but not against her. But that was where the birth of Cedric’s Dream diverged from the birth of Dyllan’s. No pieces of the mindscape were being re-purposed, instead water poured in from above and below to form a massive, house-sized shell around the glassy orb-shaped heart - a shell that solidified into a dark chrome television with a clockwork winding key sticking out at an upward angle from the top of its back. Icy purple light flickered on the television’s screen, turning into pixelated eyes. Just eyes - and not very detailed eyes, either. No mouth, no eyebrows, no pupils, no irises… just a pair of pixelated, solid, vertical ovals.

Yet, there was something strangely expressive about how these ovals moved. The way they flickered from place to place - looking all around before slowing down and sweeping the whole area more methodically? It seemed almost… confused. Not worried or alarmed, just a little bewildered.