Year 2030
The rain came down hard, drowning the city in gray. Beneath its weight, a lone figure staggered out of a narrow alley, blood scenting the air.
Williams Kendle. Eighteen years old, too young to carry that much exhaustion in his bones. His steps were unsteady, his breath jagged, yet he moved with a strange purpose, as if fear itself was pushing him forward.
Behind him, something dissolved. A shriveled hand lay on the cracked pavement—dry, ashen, twitching once before breaking apart into dust. The stench of rot seeped into the street, swallowed quickly by the storm.
Williams pressed on. His soaked clothes clung to his trembling body. By the time he reached his apartment building, his teeth were chattering from more than the cold. The keys nearly slipped from his fingers, but finally the lock clicked and he stumbled inside.
Light filled the small space. Relief washed over him for a heartbeat before pain surged back like a tide. He rushed into the bathroom and braced himself against the sink.
The mirror showed a stranger.
A young man with pale skin and blonde hair matted to his forehead, stained red. His delicate features twisted with fear and confusion. Pupils blown wide, shoulders quivering, lips bitten raw. He looked like prey that had just escaped the predator's jaws.
And in truth, he had.
It started on the walk home. The storm had rolled in without warning, but Williams wasn't worried—his apartment was only a few streets away. Familiar ground. Safe ground.
Until it wasn't.
From the shadows of a narrow alley, a withered hand shot out and dragged him in. He barely had time to gasp before his eyes met the nightmare.
An ???.
A body shriveled like old leather, a head carrying two twisted faces fused into one. Hollow eyes darker than the storm above. Its mouth opened with the scrape of bone against stone, spilling gibbering whispers into his mind. Words he couldn't understand but felt—like knives scraping across his soul.
Williams's eyes burned. Blood welled from the corners. His legs locked in place as if unseen chains bound him. This wasn't fear anymore; it was despair consuming him as he stared.
The creature's claws tore into his side, its rotten jaws lunging for his throat.
Something broke inside him.
Not courage—something stranger.
A surge of heat, like liquid fire running through veins he didn't know existed. His arm swung, bone meeting brittle flesh. The crack echoed through the alley. He struck again, and again, driven by desperation more than strength, until the creature's skull shattered. Black ichor pooled, thick and oily, staining the pavement.
And then—silence.
Back in the bathroom, Williams lifted his shirt with shaking hands. His ribs should have been torn open. His shoulder should have been mangled. But there was nothing. Not even a bruise.
He laughed weakly, the sound closer to a sob.
"Of course. Why wouldn't the nightmare vanish with the wounds?"
But when he looked up, his reflection didn't laugh with him. It stared back with dull, lifeless eyes. Watching. Waiting.
Williams stumbled from the mirror, pretending not to notice.
He collapsed onto his bed. Exhaustion smothered the adrenaline, and before he could think of what it meant—or what that thing in the alley had been—sleep dragged him under.
[Dream???]
The world fell away.
An abyss stretched around him, swallowing sound and light. Countless hands reached out from the void, grasping at his arms, his legs, his face. Cold fingers tore at his flesh. He tried to move, but fear weighed him down like chains.
Whispers filled the dark. Inhuman. Familiar. Endless.
Then— one voice rose above them. Clearer. Sharper. It was his own voice, but wrong.
Wake up.
Again and again, the command hammered into him. The hands pulled harder, dragging him deeper. He screamed soundlessly—until the void cracked.
Williams jolted awake, drenched in sweat. His lungs seized as if he had been drowning. The memory of those whispers clung to him like a sickness.
Something had changed inside him. He could feel it.
[Elm Street — The Alley, Later]
The corpse of the Anomaly was gone. Only its tainted residue lingered, staining the air.
Two figures stood in silence.
A man in a long coat crouched to the ground, gloved fingers brushing the wet pavement. Beside him, a woman in a black dress tilted her head, pink eyes glowing faintly in the shadows.
"Someone got to it first," she murmured, almost amused.
The man frowned. "Not a Mystic's work."
The woman's lips curved into an eerie smile. "Then a human killed it? Heheh… how delightful."
She laughed softly, a sound that didn't belong in the living world. The man ignored her and picked up a shard of black stone glimmering faintly in the rain.
"Report it," he said flatly.
The woman pulled out her phone, humming to herself as if the night's horror were nothing more than gossip.
The storm drowned out her laughter.
[Williams's Apartment]
In the quiet of his room, Williams stared at the ceiling, unable to sleep again. His body trembled with every heartbeat, but not from fear alone. Something pulsed within him.
A strange current. Heavy. Alive.
The whispers from the dream still rang in his head, and he understood, at least dimly, what it meant.
He had touched the edge of a ???.
And once touched, it never let go.