The night smelled of pine smoke and wet iron.
[SFX: Hhhhhh—whoosh... The wind sighs through the pines.]
Shade sat on the low stone wall that circled the training yard, knees drawn up, eyes tracing the last lanterns as they flickered out one by one.
Seventeen years old—and the only thing he could swing without dropping was a broom.
Across the yard, his cousins drilled in perfect unison—steel flashing, [SFX: CLANG! CLANG!] boots striking packed earth like thunderous drums. Their laughter rang sharp and clean under the pale moon.
Shade's father, Captain Torren, stood at the edge of the circle, arms folded. Pride glowed in his eyes... until that gaze shifted.
When Torren's eyes found the boy on the wall, the pride cooled—into something colder. Harder.
Shade looked away first.
He had tried.
Gods, he had tried.
Every dawn for ten years, he rose before the roosters, wrapped too-small hands around wooden blades, and let the older boys bruise him purple.
His wrists buckled. His lungs burned.
The sword always felt... borrowed.
The clan whispered that the bloodline had skipped him—
—that the warrior spark had guttered out before he even breathed his first cry.
His mother still kissed his forehead each night, but her lips trembled now when they did.
That evening, the yard emptied early. A storm prowled the ridge, [SFX: Rmmmmm… crack! distant thunder], wind hissing through the pines like a warning.
Shade lingered, fingertips tracing the gouges carved into the wall by generations of blades. One mark ran especially deep—his grandfather's, made the day he slew the frost wyrm.
Shade pressed his palm to it.
Nothing answered.
Then—
—the air changed.
[SFX: Fwooosh—thummmm. The air thickens. Silence swells.]
At first it was subtle: the lanterns dimmed without flickering, the crickets went silent, and the pine-scented smoke thinned into something metallic and cold.
Shade's heartbeat slowed, as though the world itself had drawn in a breath... and forgotten to let it go.
A pressure bloomed behind his eyes.
He rose.
The yard was the same—dummies, weapon racks, the clan banner snapping in the wind—
but the edges of everything had sharpened.
Every shadow deepened.
Above, the moon loomed too large... too blue, its light pooling across the ground like spilled ink.
And then—
—a voice pressed into his skull.
[SFX: Vmmm—]
"Come."
Shade stumbled back—
—but the wall behind him was gone.
In its place stretched a plain of cracked obsidian, reflecting the swollen moon in a thousand fractured shards. The pines had become twisted spires of blue glass, chiming softly though no wind touched them.
Far away, a tower rose—impossibly tall, built of starlight and bone, its peak lost inside a slow-swirling storm of galaxies.
The Nightmare Realm.
The elders had spoken of it in hushed tones, around winter fires.
A mirror world that bled into dreams—where the dead guarded secrets and the living paid in years.
Children were warned:
Never answer if it calls.
Shade had always thought it a story for cowards.
The ground rippled.
From the obsidian plain rose a map, luminous and translucent, hovering at chest height. It unfolded like living parchment, borders shifting as he watched.
The Nightmare Realm:
The Shattered Expanse — the plain beneath his feet, endless, littered with the husks of fallen dreams.
The Glasswood — those chiming spires of memory, sharp enough to bleed.
The Drowning Choir — a sea of black water whose waves sang in the voices of the lost.
The Astral Tower — the bone-and-starlight spire, crowned with a door said to open only for the worthy... or the damned.
And pulsing brightest, over the tower's heart:
Lady Maria – Warden of the Gate.
Shade's throat tightened.
That name was legend—the hunter who vanished a century ago chasing a nightmare beast.
Her corpse was said to rest upon a throne of bone, blade across her knees, waiting for any soul foolish enough to climb.
The map folded in on itself—
[SFX: Shhhhhh—snap!]
—and slipped beneath his skin.
[SFX: Ghhh—burn!]
"Ghh—ah!"
He clutched his chest as light seared across his ribs. When he looked down, the plain was empty... except for a single set of footprints leading toward the tower.
His own.
Though he hadn't moved.
Then—movement.
At the corner of his vision.
A figure stepped from the glasswood: armor rusted, helm shaped like a screaming crow. Its eyes were only void.
It raised a broken sword—
pointed at him—
and shattered into crows made of shadow.
[SFX: KRAA—KRAA—shhhh!]
They wheeled skyward and vanished.
Pain spiked through his skull. The yard, the clan, the scent of pine—all of it tore like wet paper around him.
He reached for the wall—
and found only air.
The last thing he felt was the burning sigil against his chest, flaring white-hot—
marking him with coordinates he could not yet read.
Then—
[SFX: FWOOOOM!]
—the Nightmare Realm swallowed him whole.