When Anakin woke up, he was surrounded by weighted darkness
It was quite different from the comfortable embrace of sleep, but something older—patient, pressing down on him from nowhere and everywhere. His lungs pulled air that tasted wrong, cold threaded with the copper tang of something he couldn't name but recognized anyway.
Death, probably. Or close enough.
He tried to move, and predictably his body protested with a symphony of pain that started at his temples and cascaded down through every nerve ending. His muscles screamed, his bones ached, and his mouth tasted like rust.
For a long moment, he just lay there, assembling the pieces.
The memory of his death was hazy, extremely hazy, his entire life or what he remembered of it atleast, was like a dark void he could not gaze into. He did know a few things though, he was dead, that was for sure. He had heard distant sounds of screams too, or at least they seemed distant. He also remembered a rather odd chain of thoughts and also a single bitter thought: Didn't even finish reading Shadow Slave.
But apparently, death had other plans.
Or rather—the Nightmare Spell had other plans.
"No," he said aloud, and his voice came out rough and unfamiliar. "No fucking way."
The words echoed off stone walls he couldn't see but felt pressing close, too close. Somewhere in the distance, water dripped with a rhythmic beat, counting down to something. The darkness didn't retreat, but his eyes adjusted anyway, and he could make out rough stone beneath his hands and the suggestion of a passage leading away into deeper black.
He pushed himself upright, ignoring the way his vision swam and his head pounded. Focus. He needed to focus.
"Status," he said, then felt immediately stupid. "Information? Runes?"
Nothing.
Then—reluctantly, like the universe was doing him a favor it resented—a shimmering script materialized in the air before him. Ancient alphabet that his brain translated without permission, the meaning sliding into place like it had always been there.
Name: Anakin.
The irony would've made him laugh if his ribs didn't hurt so much.
True Name: —
Rank: Aspirant.
Soul Core: Dormant.
Standard enough. Exactly what he'd expected from reading the novel, he atleast knew how the Spell worked—
His eyes hit the next line, and he stopped.
Aspect: ???
Aspect Description: [Your Fate is Shattered]
'Huh?' what was that? Some kind or broken aspect?
But that wasn't how this worked. Aspects had names—[Shadow Slave], [Battle Master], [Light Bringer]. They didn't just not exist. The Spell gave you powers, that was the entire point of it. You survived your nightmare, you got an aspect, and you became Awakened.
Unless someone did not truly complete their first nightmare, was he in his first nightmare? He shook his head, even then he would get something
He scrolled down, forcing himself to focus.
Attributes: [Fated], [???], [???]
Fate Fragments: 0/700
"What the actual fuck."
The curse echoed back at him from the dark, and something in the distance shifted in response.
Anakin dismissed the runes with a thought and stood up, his legs were steadier than they had any right to be, given his current circumstances. His mind was already working through the implications, assembling the pieces into something that made horrible sense.
No aspect. Shattered fate. Some weird counter that definitely wasn't part of the standard nightmare package. This was beyond bad luck—this was the universe looking at the Nightmare Spell's already brutal survival rates and deciding to add a hard mode that nobody had asked for.
He should be panicking. Screaming or breaking down, doing literally anything except what he was actually doing.
Which was laughing.
It started quiet—just a chuckle that escaped from his chest—but then it built into genuine, slightly unhinged laughter that bounced off the stone walls and came back to him in broken echoes. Because of course. Of course this was happening. He'd transmigrated into his favorite novel, the thing people dreamed about, the ultimate second chance at life, and he'd immediately rolled the worst possible start.
No aspect. No powers. A death sentence.
The absurdity of it was almost beautiful.
"Alright," he said, wiping his eyes, and the laughter faded but left something behind—not quite hope, not quite desperation. Something sharper. "Alright. So I'm fucked. What else is new?"
He took stock of his situation with a cold efficiency he knew he could depend upon, though the reasons were scattered. Stone walls, check. Unknown location, check. Distant sounds that probably meant nightmare creatures, check. zero weapons, and zero supernatural powers to compensate, check, check, and check.
But he had something the Spell couldn't take away.
He knew this world. Had read Shadow Slave up through the Third Nightmare, absorbed every detail like his life depended on it—which, apparently, it now did. He knew about Sunny, Nephis, about the Forgotten Shore and the horrors waiting there. He knew the rules the Spell operated under and the way it structured its trials. He even knew many things that would not be revealed until much later.
The Spell created challenges, not executions. If his fate was shattered, there had to be a reason. If he had this weird fate fragment counter, there had to be a purpose. But what did it mean for his fate to have shattered? Was he fateless like sunny? No he had the nightmare spell, he also had an attribute he quite dreaded, but he would ponder on that later.
He just had to survive long enough to figure out what that purpose was.
Anakin moved toward the passage, his steps were more confident than they should be. The darkness ahead suggested all kinds of unpleasant possibilities, but standing still meant dying slow, and moving forward meant dying with purpose.
He'd take the second option.
His hand trailed along the stone wall as he walked, feeling the texture shift under his fingers—smooth in some places, rough in others, with the occasional gap that suggested either architectural damage or something with claws. The air grew colder as he descended, and with it came the smell of blood.
The passage opened into a larger chamber, and that's when he heard it.
A howl.
Not close—not yet—but close enough to matter. The sound rolled through the darkness like something with mass, and Anakin felt every hair on his body stand up in response. His hand closed around a loose stone without conscious thought, the weight felt familiar.
Huh.
The howl came again, closer this time, and Anakin smiled.
It wasn't a nice smile. It was a crooked one.
"Alright," he said to the darkness, to the approaching threat, and to whatever cosmic force had dropped him here without giving a damn. "Let's see what you've got."
The darkness answered with teeth and the sound of something moving fast.
Anakin moved to meet it.