In the following storyline, Dream takes more of a peripheral role as we watch stories that revolve around the dreaming and its inhabitants in The Doll's House. It begins with a story told by an old African tribesman, to a younger nephew, a story that is only told once and heard once. So, it is the older man's first telling and the younger's first hearing. And this is a story told only among the men; there is a women's version that is not told. In this story we see a beautiful princess from the past at the height of her kingdom's glory in a city made entirely of glass. But the princess is bored. She has yet to find a man worthy of her. Then one day Dream walks by and catches her eye and she falls in love. But he has disappeared. She sends out men to find this Mysterious man, but noone finds him. Finally with the help of a small bird who fetches her a magic berry, she visits the Dreamlord in his realm within dreams. Here she discovers that he is one of the Endless, an ancient, immortal and powerful group of entities, and it is forbidden for the Endless to traffic in love with mortals. Needless to say, Dream has fallen in love with the princess as well, but she runs in fear of what may come. He chases her in her dreams and finally they lie together. When the sun rises and sees what has occurred, it sends fire down and destroys the city. So the princess, seeing what she has done, commits suicide. But in death, Dream follows her and she spurns his request for her hand in marriage, and he condemns her to hell. Thus ends the story told by this tribe's men. The two walk back to their village. Following this small prologue we get to meet two more of the Endless (Despair and Desire, who elude to a dream vortex).

The story then revolves around Rose, a young woman, who unbeknownst to her, is the vortex, a person with the power to merge everyone's dreams into one big mess. We are made aware that Dream knows about Rose and is having her watched by a raven named Matthew. It turns out that Rose's Grandmother was a woman who had suffered from the sleeping sickness mentioned in the first storyline, and was raped in her sleep and had Rose's mother in her sleep as well. We then follow Rose as she searches for her family (her brother Jed, is trapped in a gruesome situation, being beaten by foster parents and his mind has been walled off from the Dreaming by two servants of the Sandman who have brought a pregnant women named Lyta Hall into Jed's dreams with them).

Dream, who has been rebuilding his realm after his long absence, is in search of these two and finds them. He frees Jed both in dreams and in the waking world and tells Lyta that she has a child who has been carried in dreams and is his to claim when he sees fit. This leads to Jed being kidnapped by the Corinthian, another nightmare fashioned by Dream who has left the realm in his absence (these coincidences are all explained by the fact that Rose is a dream vortex, so she is pulling pieces of dream to her wherever she goes). The Corinthian turns out to be the source of human serial killing and is a man with two mouths for eyes (mouths that he likes to feed eyes). We get to see the Corinthian attending a cereal convention, a collection of serial killers gathered together to share in their common interests. And Rose just happens to be at the same hotel with a friend named Gilbert. Gilbert, who is actually a piece of land in the Dreaming called Fiddler's Green, is walking the waking world as well. He senses trouble and gives Rose a name to call if she is in danger (Morpheus). She does get in trouble with a serial killer and does summon Dream who comes and destroys the Corinthian and banishes the killers by taking away their dreams that they are special. Rose then falls asleep and begins to break down everyone's dreams together. Dream comes to stop her, which turns out to mean he has the kill her. But Rose's grandmother shows up and says that she was supposed to have been the vortex, but couldn't because she was in a dreamless sleep all of her life (I know it's really twisted...) So, Rose does not have to be killed. Unity dies in her place and the Dreaming is returned to its regular state of flux. Dream then goes and visits Desire in her/his realm (which is a huge human body, because Desire is under our skin). It turns out that Desire is the one who raped Unity and was hoping to have Dream kill Rose (killing a family member and "all that that would entail"). Thus ends the second storyline. In the middle of this arc, there is a tale about a man from 1389 who gets drunk and decides not to die. Dream and Death overhear this and decide to see what it would be like to grant him immortality. With this, Dream approaches the man, Hob Gadling, and offers to meet him 100 years hence. The rest of this story continues with Dream and Hob meeting once every 100 years up to the present day and forming an odd friendship across the centuries as the Dream king and a man who doesn't want to dies, so doesn't, share their stories across the ages.