Note: Protective Mask is a NPC in Lachelein that the player interacts with for the main questline. I've replaced the player with Kao for the purposes of this drabble.
In Lachelein, the dreaming city, a festival constantly transpired. It was to never end, nor were the townspeople's happiness. The entire city was an everlasting dream, an absolute utopia free of adversity – or so it appeared.
The grim reality of Lachelein was that all the joyous festivities were just a mere illusion created by the dream manipulator, Lucid. Most of its denizens never realized they were trapped in a torturous, eternal prison. Here, they were forced to feign exhilaration, lest they be evaporated into nothingness by Lucid and the Dreamkeepers.
Among the residents, a select few have come to the grave realization of their situations. The "Awakened Ones," as they were called, lived in seclusion away from those that were still dreaming. They must constantly be on the run from the Dreamkeepers, as their revelations were considered threats against the sanctity of the dream Lucid had created.
The Awakened Ones realized that the perpetual stream of euphoria was not true happiness, and so they wished to leave the city of dreams. Try as they might, it was impossible to leave for they were also mere illusions that were part of Lucid's dream. Outside of Lachelein, they did not exist, thus they were forever imprisoned in the never-ending false exuberance.
Although Lucid was deemed a formidable foe and exceptionally powerful, there was something that had frightened her. The entity of such apprehension and dread was none other than the nightmare within her dreams, which had taken on the form of Protective Mask – he was the anomaly in Lachelein that defied all of Lucid's attempts to devise the perfect utopia. His very existence in the dream threatened to break the residents of the delusion they were in.
Protective Mask was among the Awakened Ones, but there was something that differentiated him from the others. After a series of events with a traveler, the two of them had fallen into the Arcane River, which is said to dissolve humans and illusions into component Erdas. However, neither of them had disappeared, thus lead to the conclusion that Protective Mask was the nightmare that Lucid could not control.
To Protective Mask, the traveler, Kao, was a peculiar being; Kao was an outsider, a living being from the real world that was neither human nor an illusion. The encounter with Kao had left Protective Mask wondering just what it meant to be alive and whether he himself had a soul.
Is having a soul proof that one is alive? But then, what does it mean to have a soul? Is struggling to live a sign that I have a soul? Protective Mask shifted in discomfort at his introspection after the revelation of the meaning of his existence.
He then recalled the traveler's words: "The fact that you fight so valiantly to protect those people is proof that you do have a soul." He didn't quite understand, but he hoped Kao was right.
From the duration of his subsistence, Protective Mask had not pondered much on his purpose, and instead focused on escaping the everlasting delusion. A chance meeting with Kao, someone from the outside world, had shaken up his perception of life. He wanted to reassure himself that he was alive as well, but he knew he was just a nightmare in a dream. If the traveler were to successfully defeat Lucid, the dream would end, and so will the "lives" of the residents of Lachelein.
It was quite the dilemma: to live in an eternal dream, unable to move on and to forever endure the nightmare; or to simply stop existing but be relieved from the illusion. Neither were pleasant choices, but Protective Mask knew something had to be done to stop Lucid. He wanted to save others from having the same fate as those in Lachelein, and so he resolved to help Kao on the pursuit to end Lucid's dream.
When one wakes from a dream, do the people within it dissolve into nothingness? He had hoped that perhaps the people of Lachelein would still be remembered even when the illusion is someday broken.