The First Nightmare
The satisfaction of Akari's healing was a warm glow that lasted for weeks. I had found my purpose, my method. The Dreaming was not just a refuge for me; it was a hospital for the soul, and I was its chief physician, working miracles in the silent theatre of the night. I approached my duties with a newfound confidence, a gentle pride that even seeped into my waking hours. I was a quieter, more observant three-year-old, often caught with a faint, knowing smile that made my mother laugh and call me her "little old man."
But a garden, no matter how well-tended, is not immune to blight. And a hospital must eventually face a plague.
I felt it first as a change in the weather of the Dreaming. A cold draft through the halls of the library. A faint, acrid smell on the air, like ozone after a lightning strike. The gentle, silver light seemed to dim, as if a filter had been pulled over the sun. The dream-creatures—the moths and light-fish— grew skittish, hiding in the folds of books and the shadows of arches.
Something was wrong.
I sat on my throne, casting my awareness out into the swirling tapestry of the city's dreams. I sought the source of the disturbance. It wasn't hard to find. It was a black hole, a vortex of pure negativity that was pulling at the dreams around it, staining them with its own despair.
This was not like Akari's painful noise. This was… malice. A calculated, feeding despair. This was a nightmare, yes, but not one born of natural fear or anxiety. This was a cultivated thing. A weapon.
I approached with extreme caution. This dream felt different. Sharper. More… aware.
The dream was a memory, playing on a loop. A young man, maybe in his twenties, stood in a laboratory, his face alight with pride. He was demonstrating his Quirk to a panel of men in sharp suits. With a touch, he could make a potted plant wither and die. "Therapeutic applications for invasive species," he was saying, his voice full of hope. "Or targeted agricultural control!"
The men in suits exchanged glances. One smiled, a thin, cold thing. "Not therapeutic," he said. "Terminal. Your Quirk isn't for control. It's for eradication."
The dream shifted. The same man, older, wearier, wearing a uniform he hated. He was in a warehouse, surrounded by crates. He was forced to touch them. The contents—food supplies, medicine—rotted into useless sludge within seconds. He was a tool. A weapon for a villainous organization. His hope had been systematically crushed and replaced with a cold, efficient hopelessness.
The nightmare wasn't just showing me this; it was *savouring* it. It was feeding on his despair, drawing power from his crushed spirit. And it was strong. This wasn't a passive reflection. It felt like an entity, a parasite attached to the dreamer's mind.
I had to help. This was what I did. I reached into the dream, not to change the memory—that was sacred, even the painful ones—but to offer comfort. To remind him that the man in the lab, the hopeful man, still existed somewhere inside him. I sent a wave of warmth, of solidarity. *You are not your Quirk. You are not what they made you.*
The reaction was instantaneous and violent.
The nightmare *turned on me*.
It was like plunging my hand into freezing water and feeling something alive and vicious bite down. A consciousness, cold and alien and utterly hateful, latched onto my presence.
**WHO?** The thought wasn't a word. It was a spike of pure hostility driven directly into my mind.
The dream-memory shattered. The warehouse, the suits, the young man—all vanished. I was in a void of swirling, angry blackness. This was no longer his dream. This was a battleground the nightmare had created.
**INTERLOPER.** The voice was a dry rustle, like insects scuttling over dead leaves. **THIS SUSTENANCE IS MINE.**
I tried to pull back, to retreat to my throne, but it held me fast. Its will was a vise around mine. I could feel it probing, trying to find the source of the intrusion.
**A DREAMER?** it mused, its curiosity as sharp as a knife. **NO… MORE. LESS. A TASTE… STRANGE.**
It was tasting my power. Tasting the essence of the Dreaming. And I felt a horrifying pull. It wasn't just feeding on the man's despair; it was now trying to feed on *me*. I felt a cold siphon trying to draw the very energy from my realm, from my core.
Panic, the old, familiar enemy, surged. I was not a fighter. I was a healer, a gardener. I had no concept of how to combat something like this. My strength was in gentle persuasion, in nurturing growth. This was a brute force attack.
I threw up a defence, not of power, but of concept. I imagined a wall of pure, silent peace, the kind I had built for Akari.
The nightmare recoiled as if scalded. **SILENCE? STAGNATION?** it hissed, disgusted. **NO NOURISHMENT THERE. GIVE ME YOUR FEAR. GIVE ME YOUR PAIN.**
It struck back. It showed me images. My parents, their faces contorted in disappointment. *A Quirkless son. A failure.* My father turning away. My mother crying. It was a childish fear, but it was my deepest one, and it knew it. The emotional blow was crippling.
The Dreaming around me reacted. The throne room, miles away, flickered. A bookshelf toppled, its volumes scattering into mist. The obsidian plain cracked.
I was losing. My realm was tied to my state of mind, and my mind was under assault.
I had to break free. I gathered all my will, not to fight it, but to reject its reality. I focused on the one thing it could not understand, the core of my being. I was not just a consciousness. I was a place. I was the Dreaming.
'I AM THE STAGE,!!' I thought, pouring every ounce of my identity into the concept. 'NOT THE ACTOR. YOU HAVE NO POWER HERE.!'
For a split second, the nightmare's grip faltered, confused by the paradox. It was a predator that understood prey. It didn't understand a landscape.
It was all the opening I needed.
I tore my consciousness free with a psychic scream that echoed through my realm. I slammed the connection shut, severing the link so violently that the backlash sent a shockwave through the Dreaming.
I collapsed at the foot of my throne, my form flickering. I felt… drained. Violated. The cold, oily feeling of the nightmare's touch lingered on my mind. I had faced my first true enemy, and I had barely escaped.
The young man's dream was gone from the tapestry. The nightmare had either consumed it entirely or withdrawn, sated for now. But the damage was done. The cold draft in my realm remained. A stain had been left behind.
And it knew I was here.
The fear that returned to me then was colder and sharper than any I had felt before. It wasn't the fear of my own weakness. It was the fear of a gardener who has just found a predatory insect in his greenhouse, one that can devour everything he's built and then come for him.
I was not safe in my own home.
The aftermath of the battle was a quiet catastrophe. In the waking world, my body was feverish for two days. I was listless, refusing food, jumping at sudden noises. The old fear returned to my parents' eyes, twice as strong. Doctor's visits followed, yielding nothing. "It's probably just a virus," the doctor said, but his words were empty.
In the Dreaming, the wound remained. The crack in the plain didn't heal. The fallen bookshelf stayed fallen. A permanent, chilling gloom hung over that corner of my realm. I gave it a wide berth.
My confidence was shattered. For nights, I didn't dare venture beyond the safety of my throne room. I tended only to the simplest, calmest dreams, too terrified to approach anything that felt even remotely troubled. The vast, beautiful tapestry of the city's subconscious had become a field of potential landmines. Any one of them could be another nightmare, another predator waiting to sense my touch.
I had become afraid of my own purpose.
The paralysis lasted for a month. A month of fearful sleep and anxious days. The joy I had found in my power was gone, replaced by a constant, low hum of dread.
It was my father who unknowingly broke me out of it. He was watching the news, a report on a string of bizarre incidents across the city. People were waking up comatose, their brains showing unprecedented levels of activity but their bodies utterly unresponsive. Doctors were baffled. The news anchor speculated nervously about a new, mysterious Quirk.
I felt a cold certainty settle in my gut. This was the work of the nightmare. It was growing stronger, feeding on more victims. My inaction was allowing it to spread.
That night, steeling my nerves, I approached the crack in the obsidian plain. The cold emanating from it was bitter. I focused, not on the dreamscape beyond, but on the crack itself. I poured my will into it, not as a builder, but as a healer. I imagined the concept of healing—of skin knitting together, of bones mending.
Slowly, agonizingly slowly, the edges of the crack began to glow with a soft, silver light. They crept toward each other, sealing the rift. It was exhausting work, but when it was done, the chilling draft from that area ceased. The bookshelf righted itself, the books flying back to their places.
I had healed a part of my realm. I could not hide from this. The nightmare was a disease. And I was the only doctor.
I returned to my throne, a new resolve hardening within me. It was a different resolve than before. It wasn't the happy confidence of a healer. It was the grim determination of a soldier forced to defend his home.
I would not be a predator. But I would no longer be prey.
I had to learn to defend myself. To defend the Dreaming. I had to understand what that thing was.
I closed my eyes and cast my awareness back to the young man's dream, not to enter it, but to study the residue it had left behind. The psychic scent of the nightmare. It was a unique signature—a blend of profound despair and a cruel, intelligent hunger.
I imprinted that signature on my mind. I made it a touchstone.
Then, I began the slow, meticulous work of a scout. I gently sifted through the dreams of the city, not to heal, but to search. I was looking for that specific, horrible frequency.
It took three nights. I found it attached to another dream, a woman plagued by guilt over a past mistake. The nightmare was there, feeding, smaller this time. Weaker. It hadn't sensed me yet.
I did not engage. I observed. I learned.
It was drawn to strong, negative emotions. It amplified them. It trapped the dreamer in a cycle of their own pain and fed on the resulting despair. It was a psychic vampire.
And I knew, with a chilling certainty, that this was not a natural phenomenon. This was a Quirk. A sentient, malicious Quirk that could project itself into dreams.
Someone, somewhere, was doing this. Someone was using their power to inflict this suffering.
The game had changed entirely. I was no longer just tending to the natural ecology of dreams. I was at war with an invader.
I withdrew from the woman's dream, my heart pounding, but my mind clear. The fear was still there, but it had been joined by something else: a cold, focused anger.
I had a purpose again. But it was a darker purpose.
I was the King of Dreams. And someone was poaching in my kingdom.
It was time to go hunting.
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