The world ended in the middle of a sentence.
One moment, I was sprawled on my couch, phone screen glowing in the dark, scrolling through the latest Shadow Slave chapter—teeth clenched, whispering curses at yet another perfectly timed cliffhanger.
The next—
[STATIC—]
The room tilted.
Colors bled into gray noise. The air thickened, heavy and wrong. Something vast and ancient brushed against my mind—not curious, not cruel.
Just indifferent.
[WHISPER — not heard, but felt]
[The Nightmare Spell welcomes you, Levi.]
[You have been chosen.]
No fanfare.
No swelling music.
No heroic bullshit.
Just certainty—cold and final—like a guillotine blade already halfway down.
I opened my eyes.
[DRIP… DRIP…]
Cracked concrete pressed against my palms. The sour stench of rot and old piss burned my nose. Rain hammered through broken windows, rattling loose metal and shattered glass.
A derelict apartment block.
A future city I recognized instantly.
Sirens wailed somewhere far away—long, distant cries of panic. The kind that meant a Gate had opened. Or that a Sleeper had Awakened… badly.
My hands shook as I pushed myself up.
They were thinner than I remembered. Knuckles scabbed and raw, skin stretched tight over bone—hands that had lived a harder life than mine ever had.
I staggered into what used to be a bathroom.
The mirror was cracked, spiderwebbed, but the reflection staring back was unmistakably me.
Younger.
Hungrier.
Dark, messy hair plastered to my forehead with sweat. Eyes too wide. Too sharp. Too knowing.
Seventeen? Eighteen?
Didn't matter.
The Spell didn't care about calendars.
A familiar pressure bloomed behind my eyes, like a migraine made of destiny.
[Aspect Awakening imminent.]
[Prepare for the First Nightmare.]
My stomach dropped.
The tutorial.
The meat grinder.
The place where most people died screaming before they even learned what an Aspect was.
I knew the statistics.
I knew the odds.
And worst of all—
I knew I wasn't Sunny.
I didn't have his luck.
Didn't have his madness.
Didn't have [Shadow Slave] waiting neatly in the wings.
What did I have?
Nothing.
Just knowledge—already curdling into a curse.
[REALITY FRACTURES]
The world dissolved.
When it reassembled—
It was worse.
Ash stretched in every direction, soft and choking underfoot. Each step kicked up gray clouds that clung to my skin and lungs.
The sky was the color of old blood—low, heavy, pressing down like the lid of a coffin.
Skeletal trees clawed at the horizon, black and leafless, twisted into shapes that looked almost… pleading.
Far away, a ruined temple of cracked obsidian pulsed with faint, sickly light.
[THUMP… THUMP…]
The air tasted of iron and burned bone.
I looked down.
Rags.
Bare feet.
No weapon.
Just cold skin and the unmistakable sensation of being watched.
[Welcome to your First Nightmare, Awakened Levi.]
[Survive.]
That was it.
No instructions.
No mercy.
I started walking—because standing still felt like surrender.
Time slipped. Ten minutes? An hour?
Then—
[GROWL — wet, low, hungry]
I froze.
The sound came from behind a cluster of bone-white trees.
Then I ran.
The thing burst from the ash like a living nightmare—too fast, too wrong. Six limbs. Maybe eight. Jointed backward, covered in cracked gray carapace like living stone.
Its head was mostly mouth.
Needle teeth.
Coal-bright eyes.
[Nightmare Creature – Ash Stalker]
The runes appeared calmly in my vision.
Clinical.
Uncaring.
My lungs burned. Ash sprayed behind me like filthy snow.
I tripped.
[IMPACT—]
Pain exploded up my arm as I hit the ground.
The Ash Stalker lunged.
Instinct—raw and animal—made me roll.
[SCRAAAAAPE]
Claws tore through the ash where my skull had been a heartbeat earlier.
Something snapped inside my chest.
Not pain.
A click.
Like a lock turning.
The shadows around me—mine, the trees', the creature's—shifted.
Alive.
A thin black thread, darker than ink, finer than spider silk, erupted from the center of my chest and stabbed into the shadow of a nearby boulder.
It went taut.
[Ability Unlocked: Shadow Bind]
[Link your fate to a shadow.]
[Share strength. Share pain.]
I didn't think.
I pulled.
The boulder's shadow stretched like molten tar, snapping across the ground and wrapping around the Ash Stalker's leg.
[SCREEEEEECH—]
The creature stumbled.
Balance broken.
I scrambled up, seized the sharpest shard of stone I could find, and charged.
First strike—glanced off carapace.
Second—found flesh behind the eye cluster.
Black ichor sprayed.
The Stalker thrashed, dragging me with it.
Pain flared as a claw raked my shoulder—
But the thread pulsed.
Something flowed back into me.
Its strength.
Just enough.
I stabbed again.
And again.
And again.
Until it stopped moving.
The corpse dissolved into black mist, washing over my skin like cold smoke.
[You have slain: Nightmare Creature – Ash Stalker (Dormant).]
[Shadow Essence absorbed.]
[+1 Shadow Core Fragment.]
I collapsed to my knees.
Gasping.
Laughing.
That broken, hysterical sound people make when they realize they're still alive.
The laugh died quickly.
Because the thread in my chest hadn't vanished.
It stretched outward now—far beyond sight—through ash, through blood-red sky.
Toward someone.
Another Awakened.
I couldn't see them.
But I felt the pull.
Unavoidable.
Binding.
[Flaw partially revealed: Chains of Destiny]
[Bonds forged in shadow cannot be easily broken.]
[To save one is to bind yourself.]
I exhaled slowly.
"Great," I muttered.
"Just fucking great."
The distant temple pulsed brighter, almost beckoning.
A way out.
Or the next trap.
Either way, standing still wasn't an option.
Fate had already begun weaving its web.
And somewhere out there—
A silver-haired girl with an unbreakable will.
A boy with too many secrets and shadows that listened.
A blind seer who saw far too much.
I knew their names.
Now—
They were going to learn mine.
Whether any of us liked it or not.
The ash kept falling.
[SOFT TENSION—]
And somewhere in the darkness—
Another thread tightened.