SISTER
(1) Water... water.
Torm puts down a vial and quickly fetches her sister water and rushes to her bedside.
TORM
(2) Here it is, here.
Torm gently helps her sister sit up and drink. Her sister takes a small sip and falls back to her pillow.
SISTER
(3) Will this never end?
TORM
(4) Just rest. It will be over soon.
Torm puts down the water and adjusts her sister's vapor machine.
SISTER
(5) I'm so afraid, Torm. I don't want to die.
TORM
(6) Fear is good: it means your mind is working properly .
SISTER
(7)Please, get this out of me.
TORM
(8) I am, little sis, we just need a little more time.
Torm checks a few spots on her sister's body for black veins.
SISTER
(9) What if the mixtures stop working? What if they start having the opposite effects and I start getting worse again?
TORM
(10) Just a few weeks ago you couldn't even talk. And now I see the black veins growing smaller. You have nothing at all to worry about.
Torm takes out a small dripper and a glass plate.
TORM
(11) Okay, a few dream samples.
Torm collects a few of her sister's tears and drops them onto the glass plate.
TORM
(12) Your dreams are getting more colorful.
SISTER
(13) The dreams are the only thing good about the fever.
TORM
(14) I've read that some people give themselves Shadow Fever just to have the dreams.
SISTER
(15) I CAN ONLY REMEBER PARTS OF THEM.
Torm puts a dry white mixture into the vapor machine that is at the side of her sister's bed. Torm adjusts a few parts of the machine and soon it releases vapors.
TORM
(16) I will show them to you when you are better. Now get some more sleep so I can go back to work.
Torm tucks her sister in and returns to her work.
............................................................
In a golden field at dawn, 17-year-old Avio launches a homemade air balloon — stitched together from his grandfather's old shirts — determined to reach the top of the Great Falls, a feat no one from his village has ever survived. His best friend Bex helps him load supplies while cycling through sarcasm, worry, and reluctant acceptance. Avio insists there is something waiting at the top beyond just a water source, a feeling he can't explain but can't ignore. The two part ways with Bex's affectionate insults echoing as the balloon lifts off — but as Avio shrinks to a distant speck in the sky, Bex's jokes fall away and he quietly tears up watching his best friend disappear. As Avio floats over towns he's only ever seen in photos, he radios Bex to check in, asks him to watch over his grandparents, and promises he'll return.
4. BOOK ARM
In the Dreamer Village hospital, kind young nurse Lilix tends to Felsik, a 25-year-old man who has been paralyzed and unresponsive his whole life. Her colleague Nurse Rina is dismissive and cruel, believing Felsik has no inner awareness — and when she discovers Lilix has been treating him with an illegal root mixture sourced from a restricted northern province, she throws it away. What neither nurse notices in their argument is that the mixture is already working — Felsik's eyes are moving and his fingers reaching. Then, cutting through the silence, he calls out Lilix's name. The Head Nurse — Lilix's mother — arrives to find Felsik awakened and is moved to tears, having delivered him 25 years ago. Lilix declares she will find more of the root regardless of trade laws, and her mother, rather than stopping her, straightens her collar and tells her to be safe and not get caught.
3. GOLDEN FIELDS
2. WATER WATER
In a dimly lit one-room house in Dreamer Village, Torm tends to her sister who is dying of Shadow Fever — a brutal illness that burns the skin with painful black veins. Torm has built a makeshift chemistry lab and is close to finding a cure using minerals extracted from a nearby river. She pauses her work to bring her sister water, calm her fears, and collect tear samples to analyze her progress. The black veins are shrinking, and Torm reassures her sister that she is improving before tucking her in and returning to work.
5. RAIDS
High in the clouds, the Gold Mother — a powerful woman whose upper body is fused to a hovering machine — runs a floating pirate outpost where hundreds of steam-punk pirates line up to have their plundered goods weighed and paid out in rations. She is shrewd and ruthless, casually disintegrating a pirate who tries to pass off a fake gold bar. When a nervous pirate presents a bag of rare blue crystals, her machine identifies them as matching a jewel-skinned man. She immediately redirects her entire ship toward the West Desert and dispatches a fleet of small cute robots to track him down — which inadvertently leads them to Torm in the caves. Her weatherman then freezes in fear at his instruments, and when the Gold Mother investigates, she sees what he sees: a Shadow Cloud on the horizon. Dismissing it as sailor myth, she looks through her telescope — just in time to watch a flock of birds scatter in terror before the massive darkness fills her view. She screams the order to move the ship, and the entire vessel lurches desperately into the clouds to escape.
1. OPENING MONTAGE
6. DAILY ROUNTINE
An opening montage introduces the vast world of Arch Valley, showcasing massive waterfalls, deep canyons, flying ships crossing the skies, farmers working their crops, bustling sky harbors, and villages built throughout the valley cliffs. A bellboy pilots a small plane toward the harbor as glimpses of life aboard the airships reveal the world’s vibrant aerial culture. The sequence ends with the title Dreamer in the Falls and the director credit, Directed by Jim King.
Torm gathers plants, butterflies, water, and mineral powder while maintaining the collection machines she built along a nearby river. Using spare parts and an old glass chandelier converted into a waterwheel housing, her advanced gathering station produces thick white mineral resin at a greatly increased rate. After collecting her daily supply of herbs, roots, plants, and other materials, she heads toward the Professor’s house.
7. GRAVE LILIES
Near the Golden Fields, Bex discovers a steampunk guitar Avio left for him beside Avio’s grandparents’ graves. Using the guitar and a radio, Bex contacts Avio, who is traveling through the night sky in his air balloon toward the Falls. Their conversation reveals Bex’s loneliness and resentment over Avio leaving, while Avio explains his overwhelming need to follow his dream. During the call, Bex meets Lilix, a nurse from Dreamer Village searching for “grave lilies,” rare roots that grow around graves and can heal a patient. As they gather the flowers together, Bex opens up about hiding the truth that his entire family died from Shadow Fever, admitting Avio is the only family he has left. Avio accidentally overhears the confession through the radio and realizes how much pain his friend is in. Both boys have a change of heart — Bex desperately tries to stop Avio, while Avio abandons his journey to return home — and the two race blindly toward each other, unable to reconnect over the radio.
8. SHADOW HARBOR
At Shadow Harbor, enormous Legacy Ships arrive beneath the towering Great Falls as tug crews, pullmen, and dock workers guide the massive vessels safely into port. The harbor is alive with airships and river traffic when strange winds begin sweeping through the area. Tower watchmen spot a growing black cloud in the distance as Storm Engines descend from the skies, attacking ships and stealing supplies before vanishing into the storm. Moments later, the waterfalls abruptly stop flowing, exposing the cliffs behind them as alarm bells ring across the harbor. A horrifying black crust spreads through the air like living tar, freezing water and consuming everything it touches. Dock workers, ships, and entire sections of the harbor are overtaken as panic erupts. Nearby, a farmer working beneath the beautiful arches of the Falls suddenly feels his body go numb before the same shadowy plague rapidly encases him in black crust, revealing the terrifying spread of the Shadow Death.
9. 2ND FIDDLE
Torm and her professor guardian are running Shadow Fever experiments in his home lab when their easy rapport leads to a warm conversation about her late parents — he shares that her sharp-witted mother always outmatched her impatient father, and that Torm herself is the most brilliant mind he's ever known. When Torm expresses guilt for enjoying the work while her sister suffers, he reassures her that her enthusiasm is a gift to the world. Just as they reach a potential breakthrough — sample 111, a sunlight butterfly compound that appears to eliminate the ghost cells — a village bell rings, one the Professor hasn't heard since Torm's parents died, and he sends her home at once while he re-runs the tests.
10. HEART WALTZ
With the village in chaos over the mysteriously dry river, Torm scrambles to find water for her experiments — exhausting every hub, going door to door, and finally accepting a small container from a kind Head Nurse who believes in her work, while a cruel nurse had already turned her away. Along the way, Torm helps an Elder fix a dead message box using berry acid as a solar charge, only to learn the devastating news that the Great Falls itself has stopped flowing. Back home, she finds her sister awake and frightened by the bells, and soothes her fears with a quiet lie about crop villages before the girl breaks down in guilt for getting sick. Torm silences her with love, winds the music box, and plays their parents' wedding waltz on her violin while her sister closes her eyes and dreams of them dancing — then sets the violin down and goes back to work.
11. BLACK FIELDS
Bex has a change of heart and rushes to the golden field where Avio launched, piling his gear and waiting for hours, trying unsuccessfully to reach him on the radio. To kill time he shyly strums his guitar and even attempts a song, embarrassed when the nearby squirrels bolt — until he realizes they weren't fleeing his singing but a black shadow cloud devouring everything in its path. He runs but is frozen solid mid-stride, encased in the same dry black crust. Seconds later, Avio is shown in the sky desperately trying to reach Bex on the radio — cutting back down to the golden field where Bex's body lies stiff in the blackened earth, his radio silent beside him.
12. SKY HARBOR
Gold Mother arrives at Sky Harbor to find it completely destroyed, and while studying the wreckage she grows increasingly curious about what force could have caused such total ruin. When her navigator urgently warns her of an approaching shadow cloud, she snatches the telescope from him with a dismissive laugh — the shadow cloud is a bedtime story, she tells him, a myth cooked up long ago to scare sky pirates and keep superstitious sailors in line. She puts the lens to her eye intending to prove him wrong, and instead falls silent. The black mass is real, it is enormous, and it is swallowing everything between it and them. She lowers the telescope slowly, then snaps the order — full speed, now, every bit of power the ship has — and for the first time, Gold Mother runs.
13. ELDER'S VOTE
The Elders meet and face the grim reality that water reserves are half gone after just one week on quarter rations, and every one of the 111 known villages is suffering the same fate. With every solution exhausted, they vote to order a village-wide slumber — putting the population into a deep dream state while search parties go out for water, buying months or even decades of survival time. The Head Nurse reluctantly nods her agreement. Back at the hospital, the slumber order rolls out: nurses administer dream drops to patients ward by ward while messengers carry the order through the village, and soon the streets fall completely silent. Lilix tenderly puts Felsik under last, apologizing for leaving him alone and promising she won't let him stay trapped forever, moved to tears when he manages to whisper a thank you. The cruel Nurse Rina, eager to escape, demands two drops against Lilix's warning — and gets exactly what she asked for, earning a quiet moment of shared satisfaction between Lilix and the Head Nurse. Finally, mother puts daughter under with the words "beautiful dreams," then settles into her own chair and self-administers the drop, and the hospital goes still.
14. INTO DREAM
A slumber order arrives by scroll, and when Torm tells her frightened sister she won't be going under herself — she'll keep working — her sister's biggest fear is that the Elders will find out and separate them. Torm puts her at ease, delivers the dream drop, and watches her sister dissolve into a deep, beautiful slumber. Standing over the nearly empty water supply, Nurse Rina's cruel words echo in her head — get the river flowing or say goodbye — and in that moment Torm decides she will do exactly that. She connects the remaining water tanks to the vapor machine, buying her sister two months, packs her gear, kisses her sister's forehead, and slips quietly past the sleeping village and its guards into the night. At the river's edge she finds a search party heading north toward the Great Falls, but something deep and instinctive pulls her in the opposite direction — and trusting that instinct the way she trusts her science, Torm goes south.
15. IVAN THE EATER
Days into her journey, Torm gets lured through the woods by a butterfly — the same species that sparked her lab breakthrough — until she follows it into a graveyard clearing where she passes out from its poison. She wakes up tied to a tree in the open-air kitchen of Ivan the Eater, a cannibal gypsy who cheerfully argues philosophy with his pet butterfly Igor while sharpening his blade and assembling ingredients from blood lemons, bear hairs pulled from his mother's skull, electric root, and a black rose he grows on the spot with focused sunlight. When Igor tries to stop him from harvesting Torm's heart, Ivan delivers a unhinged lecture about how eating books is a greater sin than eating people — then marches toward her anyway. Just as his blade reaches her chest, a mysterious Old Man appears from nowhere, drives a blade into Ivan, and cuts Torm free before vanishing without a word. Torm sheds the ropes, grabs her things, and notices a unique vial that has fallen from the Old Man's neck into Ivan's dead hand — she takes it and runs into the forest after him.
16 FORREST OF DOUBT
Still searching for the Old Man, Torm chases the shadow of his black cape through the forest, only to watch the vial in her hand rot into maggots as haunting visions and the sound of her sister’s screams lure her deeper into the woods. The forest twists her mind with illusions, whispers, and phantom creatures until she breaks completely and awakens in a horrifying nightmare realm. There, she descends through a grotesque underworld filled with living flesh, demon castles, rivers of tortured souls, and monstrous beings that force her through unbearable trials. Stripped of hope and memory, Torm endures a brutal climb across collapsing walls of bone before being rescued by bizarre creatures that carry her onward through the abyss.
Torm awakens shackled inside a floating iron prison in a black void, surrounded by demons holding the chains of her cage, while the cries of her suffering sister echo through tunnels below. A terrifying Dark Queen — a manifestation of Torm’s buried guilt and emotional repression — rises before her and confronts her about her obsession with curing Shadow Fever. The Queen reveals that Torm’s guilt is the true prison preventing her from saving her sister. As visions of her dying sister, metallic souls, and monstrous machines torment her, Torm admits her deepest fear: that her curiosity and fascination with solving the fever may outweigh her love. The Queen urges her to let go of guilt and embrace the joy of discovery, insisting that the cure can only come if she stops allowing her sister’s pain to consume her focus. Torm forces herself to drown out the cries and concentrate on the machinery, formulas, and scientific processes filling her mind. When she finally releases her guilt, angels appear and destroy the demons, freeing her from the cage as the prison transforms into a vast surreal laboratory where she can work freely on the cure. But the guilt quickly returns, reimprisoning her as horrifying visions of her sister decaying and demons closing in overwhelm her. Desperately repeating that her sister is safe within the “power of a dream,” Torm clings to sanity until a sudden warmth clears the nightmare, transporting her peacefully into the Garden of Souls.
17 GUILT
18. GARDEN OF SOULS
Torm's nightmare of failing her sister reaches a breaking point until she repeats like a mantra that her sister is safe in the power of a dream — and the darkness clears. She opens her eyes in a warm, glowing place called Evenoight, a Garden of Souls, where a Faerie guide leads her through a breathtaking world of crowned spirits, light animals, glitterfalls, and ancient trees that feed on light. When she puts on her star glasses, the full world reveals itself — and then she no longer needs them. A touch from the Faerie triggers a vivid memory of her sister on Catcher's Peak, full of laughter and ruined daydreams about worm-warmed spas and fly-glass beaches, where her sister urged her to stop hiding in their small village and go show the world what she could see. Coming out of the memory, Torm is led to a Child of Light who welcomes her, honors her love for her sister, and sends her onward with a crystal-powered soul transport high above the garden valley to a vast library of light bulbs spread across grand wooden decks — each bulb the soul of a living thing, shaped like the creature it belongs to, glowing or dark depending on their state.
Among the countless bulbs Torm finds one shaped like her mother — cold, cracked, and unlit. Using her perfect pitch and the Harmonic Series she recognizes in the bulbs' tones, she calculates exactly where her father's bulb must be, counts eleven decks down and eleven in, and finds it: unlit, cracked, shaped just like him. When she holds the two together a dim spark passes between them. Desperate to repair the glass, she experiments with catching molten overflow from growing bulbs, but every soul has its own glass and nothing foreign will bond. She follows the wooden decks to the constellation harbor where a sea captain spirit tends the great wheel of creation, and before she can even ask, two socket rods rise from molten sand and receive her parents' bulbs — the cracks seal, the figures glow bright. Then the bulbs dissolve to sand in her hands and Torm takes one step as the entire harbor shatters in a flash of light.
Among the countless bulbs Torm finds one shaped like her mother — cold, cracked, and unlit. Using her perfect pitch and the Harmonic Series she recognizes in the bulbs' tones, she calculates exactly where her father's bulb must be, counts eleven decks down and eleven in, and finds it: unlit, cracked, shaped just like him. When she holds the two together a dim spark passes between them. Desperate to repair the glass, she experiments with catching molten overflow from growing bulbs, but every soul has its own glass and nothing foreign will bond. She follows the wooden decks to the constellation harbor where a sea captain spirit tends the great wheel of creation, and before she can even ask, two socket rods rise from molten sand and receive her parents' bulbs — the cracks seal, the figures glow bright. Then the bulbs dissolve to sand in her hands and Torm takes one step as the entire harbor shatters in a flash of light.
Torm travels alone through abandoned valleys and dry trails until she reaches the mysterious Eklipse Stones, where she discovers symbols matching the Crystal Grid Stone. She places the stone into a cubular slot, triggering a locking mechanism, but nothing else happens. While trying to solve the mystery, a strange wind erases all of her notes and drawings, frightening her with an unexplainable force beyond science. Exhausted, she falls asleep inside the stone circle, causing the Crystal Grid Stone to activate. The Eklipse Stones awaken, multiply into massive cosmic patterns, and reveal three giant Eklipse Masters beneath eclipsing suns. Torm witnesses mystical reincarnation rituals and is guided through three sacred puzzles — a pyramid, sphere, and cube — which she solves through instinct and intuition. As a reward, the Eklipse Masters fill her body with glowing ancient energy, covering her in luminous symbols while tuning her chakras. The skies then open to reveal a magnificent white palace in the heavens, and Torm crosses a sky bridge toward it before the giant palace doors close behind her.
19. EKLIPSE MASTERS
Torm enters the White Palace, a massive shifting museum filled with stolen treasures and forgotten knowledge, where she discovers a dream-recording machine that reminds her of an invention she once created with her sister. She meets the Infinity Mother, an old woman trapped in the palace searching for her son Ori, who was imprisoned by the Queen of Collections because of his rare “Infinity Blood.” Guided by her compass, Torm enters a golden chamber containing a mechanical violin that triggers a deadly musical trial, forcing her to survive increasingly impossible performances using both classical and futuristic instruments. After mastering the machine, she reaches the Throne Room, where she uncovers her father’s hidden research and learns he was building a machine capable of making dreams physically real. When the Torch Guard attacks, the Infinity Mother saves her, and Torm uses the Queen’s preserved eye to replay memories revealing the truth about her parents’ deaths: the Queen tortured them into building the dream machine, but her father sabotaged it, sacrificing himself and Torm’s mother to stop the Queen from unleashing a nightmare upon the world. Devastated but finally understanding their sacrifice, Torm destroys the Queen’s body, receives comfort from the Infinity Mother, and activates a Rainbow Stone throne that dissolves her into light, sending her onward on her journey.
20. WHITE PALACE
21. GIANT FORREST
Torm arrives in the Giant Forest via a rainbow stone and must cross a 500-yard rope bridge so decrepit that a test rock breaks straight through the planks. She talks herself across by sheer distraction. Inside the forest, she forages for food and water using her knowledge of local flora, then witnesses a tiny creature called an Imifur lose his mate to illness — a moment that moves her to tears and turns her thoughts to her own sister. She tends to wounded creatures along the way, finding small comfort in being useful. A swarm of Endglows then trigger a vivid memory of the day her sister first contracted Shadow Fever — a bittersweet flashback of the two of them catching fireflies together that ends with her sister collapsing in pain. Snapping back to reality, Torm leans on a railing that breaks and she falls into a mossy swamp, only to be rescued by a community of strange forest creatures who clean her, dry her, and return her belongings before she passes out from exhaustion. When she wakes, her compass shows a cave entrance, and her repaired Leaf Fly friend leads the way — guiding her through the forest with a breathtaking living light show of Endglows and Glow Ertels. She reaches a broken bridge over a dark chasm and, by whistling a missing note to a group of Whistlestick creatures, inspires them to form a living musical bridge that carries her safely to the cave entrance.
22. CAVE
Torm fights her way through a treacherous cave full of collapsing infrastructure, electric hazards, and improvised puzzles before accidentally trapping herself in a shifting stone room. There she encounters the Jewel-Skinned Man, a deeply traumatized figure who has spent his life being harvested for the crystals his body produces. Through patient compassion, Torm earns his trust, treats his pain, and reveals she is searching only to save her dying sister. Moved by her sincerity, the man gives her his Heart Jewel — the very symbol she has been following — then sends her on her way and quietly dies, his body crystallizing before his soul is peacefully led away.
23. HUNGRY SHADOW
The Shadow Cloud continues its relentless spread, consuming towns, villages, and everything in its path. The Old Woman is frozen mid-escape while returning stolen possessions from the Palace of Collections. A Fianto Shepherd and her glowing animals are swallowed whole. The Professor, unknowingly carrying contamination from earlier, watches the shadow burst from his bag and devour all of Dreamer Village, then the hospital — killing nurses in their sleep and silencing infants one by one, with an ailing Felsik making a desperate last stand to save the final baby, only to be petrified along with it. Finally, with the protective mineral vapor gone from Torm's house, the Shadow Cloud enters and consumes Torm's sister — overpowering even the Shadow Fever itself — killing her both in life and in her dream. Torm's sister is dead.
After escaping the caves into the West Desert, Torm is attacked by Sand Pirates but is saved by the mysterious Old King, who destroys the entire pirate army with the power of his staff. While unconscious, Torm witnesses the Old King’s fading memories of his lost wife, whose face he can barely remember after years of searching the desert guided only by a vial containing her final breath. Awakening in his hidden desert camp, Torm reveals her own mission to save her sister from Shadow Fever and uses dream-tear extraction to restore an image of the Old King’s wife, renewing his hope and earning his loyalty. Together they evade pirate patrols led by the ruthless Gold Mother while searching for clues shown through Torm’s compass. Guided by the Old King’s belief in dreams, Torm enters a vast surreal dreamscape of living deserts, floating kingdoms, and celestial oceans, eventually pulling a real copper leaf from the dream into reality. Their journey leads them to the gigantic Puzzler’s Key, where Torm solves the impossible mechanism while the Old King battles endless Sand Pirates, allowing them to escape underground moments before the pirates can capture them.
24 WEST DESERT
Torm and the Old Man arrive through a hidden gateway at the sacred King’s Pond, an ancient Roman-like sanctuary where kings were once born. Panicked after losing her compass, Torm begins doubting her entire journey, fearing her sister may already be dead and questioning whether any of it is real. The Old Man reveals he was born at the pond as a king raised with love, and explains that the compasses led them there for a reason. As Torm wrestles with the cruelty of death and suffering, the Old Man shares a lesson about journey ants sacrificing themselves for the survival of others. He asks Torm to use the magical leaf from the dream, believing it will fulfill both their destinies. When the golden dust touches the water, life awakens within the pond, and glowing dragonflies multiply around ancient lanterns. Accepting his fate, the Old Man eats his half of the leaf and enters the water, sacrificing himself so the dragonflies may feed and transform. Before disappearing beneath the surface, he declares, “Oh world, break my heart and bring me better dreams.” The dragonflies consume him in a beautiful, spiritual swarm, and from the explosion of life emerges a giant dragonfly waiting for Torm. Realizing this is her next path forward, she climbs inside the creature and flies into the tunnels with the massive glowing swarm.
25. KING'S POND
26. OCEAN LAKE
Torm rides a giant dragonfly to the top of the cursed Great Falls, where she discovers a massive ocean lake trapped behind a dam formed by the deadly Shadow Cloud, the force responsible for spreading death across the world. Surrounded by darkness, frozen waterfalls, and ruined ships, she finds wreckage from Avio’s balloon and realizes he may have reached the lake before her. As the poisonous Shadow begins attacking her, Torm uses the Heart Jewel’s powerful light to push the darkness back and protect herself. After accidentally dropping the torch holding the Jewel into the deep lake, she improvises a breathing device from scraps and recovers it from the bottom. Determined to free the trapped water and save her sister, she builds a small raft and searches for the edge of the Shadow dam. Using the Jewel’s light, she burns a hole through the Shadow, unleashing a torrent of water over the falls, but the enraged Shadow fights back with massive waves and a godlike flood. Despite Torm’s desperate pleas and unbreakable determination, the final wave overwhelms her, knocking the torch away and allowing the Shadow to seal the dam once more. As she sinks lifeless into the dark lake, memories of her sister fill her mind, and with her final apology, the Heart Jewel disappears into the sand while the Shadow spreads across the world, extinguishing all life and hope.
27. GOLDEN KROWN
CONFIDENTIAL