(Mysterious lightning bolt crackles somewhere in the distance)
Welcome to Fearcraft Academy! Dreamsdale's leading institution for elite nightmare crafters.
It was founded by the Council of Horrors (COH), a board of bureaucratic dreadlords who breathed quarterly stats and emotional damage.
They tracked engagement metrics and oversaw the nightmare streaming portals: Screamline Prime, Nightlix, and the Bleed Channel—each with its own rabid niche and leaderboard.
Happy streams had their own cozy platforms, and lust had its private… corners of the net. But nightmares? Nightmares got the big stage. The portals that ran on tears-per-minute were the COH's crown jewels.
Naturally, the Council held power over the other factions like pop stars held scandals. To them, nightmares weren't just art—they were revenue streams.
So, when numbers dipped, when Otherkin viewership graphs started looking like dying heartbeats, the COH birthed Fearcraft Academy. Their golden solution.
They established FCA with four noble, totally-not-sinister objectives:
One: To educate every unemployed and/or underaged nightmare weaver (ages 16–20) on how to professionally whip up terror.
Two: To create a platform for industrial experience throughout the academic session.
Three: To grant top-scorers exclusive job placements and let them swim in Otherkin currency like Scrooge McDuck in trauma coins.
Four: To inflate student reputations until they're shiny enough to attract sponsors (because nothing screams prestige like being backed by an unknowable interdimensional psycho.)
Surprisingly, Fearcraft Academy didn't always exist.
It was born—just a few Dreamsdale years ago—from panic during the dreaded demand–supply dip.
Despite churning out 876 billion nightmares a year, Dreamsdale still couldn't keep up with the Otherkin's twisted appetites.
These ultra-mysterious, couch-bound beings streamed human dreams like premium content. They left comments. They threw digital roses. They reacted with emojis that might've been sentient.
But lately? They'd been bored.
Viewership dropped. Engagement tanked. Terror stock prices plummeted.
The Nightmare Faction's economy started bleeding into everything: restaurants closing because no one was tipping in dream-coins, entire skyscrapers repossessed because "trauma interest rates" went up. Even the banana milk factories were cutting shifts.
So the COH pulled the education card. Train the youth, polish the product, get the streams flowing again.
Fearcraft Academy was less about dreams and more about economy.
Top nightmares got rerun across the portals, merch got minted in the ether, and a single viral dream could refinance a district. Fear wasn't just culture here.
It was GDP.
And so, a well-groomed generation of nightmare artists would definitely close the demand gap and reignite the Otherkin's obsession.
Through this, they predicted productivity would skyrocket from a sad little 100% to a whooping 340%! (Do not ask how the math works. It doesn't. But it looks amazing on PowerPoint slides.)
And thus, FCA was born.
If only the students shared the enthusiasm. And by students, we mean one boy in particular.
Our peculiar, banana milk-loving MC.
— ✚
Gulp.
Zev swallowed thickly as he glanced around his new classroom, carefully avoiding eye contact from all directions.
Welcome to Classroom 1C, Zev's latest spawn point.
It was spacious, organized, and clean enough to feel suspicious.
The black desks and chairs created a visual harmony with the uniforms: red blazers, white shirts, dark red trousers or skirts depending on anatomy preference.
The quiet was so thick you could choke on it. The kind of quiet that said: Breathe wrong and—POP! You'll spontaneously explode.
Zev's palms slicked with sweat. His thoughts spiraled.
'My stomach feels like it's eating itself. When's the teacher coming?? I can't feel my fingers...'
His assigned seat was in the middle row. The cursed borderland between Nerdland and Slacker City. Which meant he was visible to everyone. Anxiously so.
He missed home already.
He wanted his room, the hum of the purifier, the stupid poster he never hung straight. He wasn't made for places that graded you on how well you broke people.
The bell chimed, echoing like the final warning in a horror movie.
Zev, obliviously spaced out, was still peering at the ceiling when something faint and red blinked in the corner.
He stared hard, but there was nothing there. Not even a spec of dust.
He chuckled nervously. 'I must have imagined it. There's no way it was anything else...'
Then—
Wham!
The door slammed open, making him jump in his seat. In walked their presumed homeroom teacher.
Silver hair with cropped bangs. Black eyes that gleamed dangerously. A mole under her left eye. Black tear-shaped streaks running down her cheeks like she'd cried ink. She was beautiful the way fire is beautiful—right before it eats your house.
Zev tried not to gawk.
The lady seemed to be pissed at something or someone because her initial expression was murderous.
Then—flip!
A macabre smile cracked across her face like it was stitched in manually.
Zev froze.
He hadn't even made it past orientation and he was already getting jump-scared by whoever the hell this was supposed to be.
He blankly watched her strut to the board, marker in hand, and scribble her name with terrifying confidence:
N-A-Y-O-M-I.
Then she turned, that stitched-on smile twitching across her face.
"I want to officially welcome you all to Fearcraft Academy," she said, her voice smooth and predatory. "I am Nayomi. Your homeroom teacher and course adviser—for this semester, and for the many semesters of psychological unraveling to come."
A few students blinked. Someone coughed. Zev thought the air itself tasted like doom.
Nayomi wasted no time. The orientation kicked off.
"Being seated here today means only one thing: The Board of Education has seen potential in you. Well, that or…" her smirk sharpened, "you're related to someone of terrifying reputation in the industry."
Zev shrank into his chair, certain invisible fingers were pointing at him.
She began scrawling six components on the board:
𖤐 MEM 101: Memory Echo
𖤐 EMO 102: Emotional Catalyst
𖤐 DIS 103: Distortion Agent
𖤐 SEN 104: Sensory Amplification
𖤐 AVA 105: Avatar of Dread
𖤐 ESC 106: Escape Doors
"These six pillars form the backbone of your training. They'll stalk you for all nine semesters. Year after year, your difficulty rises. Semester after semester, your sanity thins. Consider it… character development."
Zev's hand shook as he scribbled: Memo Ecco???
'No, no, that can't be right. Ecco? It should be Erco?'
Yeah, safe to say he was currently scatterbrained.
The student beside him had perfect notes already. He looked smart too. Black hair draped like blackout curtains, tired black eyes, and ears with subtly pointed tips peeking through his bangs.
His pen moved smoothly, turning the syllabus into a crime scene of underlines and arrows. He tapped the pen in a precise three-beat pattern between lines; once, a defeated sigh fogged the page before he kept going.
He never looked up, not even when Nayomi's smile jump-scared the room; he just kept writing, as if the exam had started three years ago and he was still catching up.
Zev wanted to cry into his notebook.
'It's over for me. I can't even spell echo right...' (He could spell it in his thoughts apparently.)
Nayomi pressed on, voice sharp as a scalpel.
"You won't just be graded on academics. Your reputation matters. Fearcraft isn't only skill, it's presence. Poise. Prestige. You are future trauma influencers, architects of emotional meltdowns, engineers of existential dread!"
Zev's stomach churned. He'd signed up for a simple, trauma-free life—not this.
From the corner of his eye, he noticed the other student to his left.
Pale as snowfall. Crimson eyes faintly glowing like they hadn't gotten the memo about subtlety.
He wasn't writing notes. He was doodling, lines spilling into grotesque shapes that looked a little too alive.
The boy's lips curved in a semi-smile, as if he were in on a joke only he understood. He whispered things to the drawings, his lips moving so faintly Zev almost missed it.
The other boy blinked hard, tearing his gaze away from the unnerving sight.
'What a weirdo. And here I was thinking I was beyond saving.'
"—You'll also be assessed at the end of every semester. Nine in total, spread across your three-year program. These exams will determine your next class tier."
A few students visibly panicked. The classes hadn't even started, and there was already talk of exams?? One was casually crashing out at the back of the classroom.
Nayomi's smile widened at their discomfort.
"The metrics for the rankings are as follows: academic score, practical aptitude, behavioral record, and individual potential. Ignore any one of these, and you'll find yourself demoted... or worse, blacklisted."
Zev's throat tightened.
'That absolutely can't happen. Ever. Mum would be devastated. Then again, it's not like I wished for any of this. Everything's complicated. I don't want to be here, but I don't want to let her down either…'
His teeth found the ragged edge of his left thumb before his brain caught up. A tiny bite, then another, until that salt-metal taste slid in and the panic loosened by a millimeter.
He tucked his hand under the desk, pretending to straighten his notes, heat crawling up his ears. He pressed the thumb hard into his palm, ignoring the pain.
When Nayomi spoke again, he was barely listening.
"And finally, your internship semester. You'll be assigned human targets. Your projects will be streamed live to the appropriate portals. The Council will watch. The Otherkin will comment. Your Fright Potential will be rated."
The marker dropped. The sound echoed throughout the room.
Nayomi's smile didn't falter.
"Any questions?"