The world around him had gone quiet.
Ash floated through the air like snow. The battlefield was a ruin—collapsed stone, scorched earth, burned-out husks of what once lived. Twisted bodies littered the ground, some still smoldering, others contorted into unnatural shapes as if their last moments were agony itself.
But Rei stood still—paralyzed.
His breathing was shallow. His eyes wide. Because something stood in front of him.
It was shaped like him. Moved like him. Shadowed like him.
But its face—he couldn't see it.
The more he tried, the more it blurred, as if existence itself refused to let him understand what he was looking at. The skin around its head shimmered like heat rising off asphalt. And where a face should have been… only a sick, formless distortion. But the eyes—
Oh gods, the eyes.
They gleamed like old blood under a dying sun—watching him, through him, past him.
And still, it smiled. Even with no mouth to see, Rei could feel the grin. Stretched wide. Too wide. Something no human should be able to wear.
The ground beneath his feet melted, turning pitch black—slick, rippling like oil under firelight. Crimson cracks veined the surface, pulsing like a heartbeat. The sky had become a red, swirling void, its endless canvas scattered with distant, blinking eyes. Not stars. Eyes. Watching. Always watching.
Time distorted. Space twisted.
This place wasn't real.
It shouldn't exist.
"You shouldn't be awake yet," Rei whispered, his voice trembling. He didn't even know who he was speaking to—maybe the thing in front of him. Maybe himself.
The figure didn't answer. It didn't need to. It just stared.
And then—
A voice.
Whispering. Distant. Echoing inside his skull.
"You have to hurry… they're coming… if you don't act now—"
He clutched his head. That voice—it was female. Gentle. Urgent. But not his own.
"Who… who are you?" he gasped, falling to one knee.
The floor cracked beneath him like glass under pressure. The air grew heavier. And the figure took a single step forward.
The nightmare realm breathed.
His heart pounded harder, the sound deafening in his ears.
Then it all snapped——the battlefield—the figure—the red sky—the demon inside him.
The ground beneath him split open with a sickening crack. The blackness widened like the gaping maw of something ancient and monstrous. His body trembled. The pressure was unbearable. He couldn't move. Couldn't think. Couldn't escape.
"Wake up!" he shouted, the words ripped from his throat, desperate and raw. "I don't understand! Who are you? What is this?!"
The faceless figure tilted its head, slowly. Its blurred visage warped unnaturally, as if smiling.
"You already know the answer," it said, voice slithering through the thick air, distorted like a voice underwater. "But your fear is keeping you from seeing it. You've been here before."
A memory flickered—barely a moment.A flash of black eyes. Blood. Screaming.Something terrible, alive… inside him.
No. No, not again.
Shhhk—stop hiding.
The female voice returned—this time sharper, more urgent. It wasn't his thought. It never had been. It was her—the one bound to him since that cursed night.
The demon.
You know what it is, Rei. You know what's inside you.
The air thickened. The creature's blurred face twisted further, its eyes glowing with that sickly, ancient light.
Rei could feel it.The demon.Stirring beneath his skin.
It was waking up.
"No… shut up!" he cried out, shaking his head violently. "I won't—not again!"
The figure stepped forward.
"You can't escape it, Rei," it said, voice now shifting into a low, cracked version of his own. "It's inside you. Always has been. Always will be."
His knees buckled. His hands clutched his head as the cracks in the world widened——and so did the ones in his mind.
He couldn't stop it.
The demon's will surged through him, raw and primal.
His vision blurred, the figure's body melting into something else—an amalgamation of him and it. A shifting, pulsating, faceless horror.
I am you, and you are me.
The voice surged through his head, cold and suffocating.
Rei collapsed to his knees, gasping for breath.
"Stop it! I won't let you out!"
But the demon only laughed—a deep, cruel sound echoing across the void.
Thud!
"Oof—!?"
Rei hit the floor hard, jolted awake as he rolled straight off his bed.
His breath came in ragged gasps, heart hammering in his chest. Sweat soaked his shirt, and his dark hair clung to his forehead. He blinked at the ceiling, the chill of the wooden floor pressing into his spine.
"What the hell was that dream…?"
He sat up slowly, every movement aching.The images were still there—The red sky.The creature with no face.The black, oily floor.
Too real.
Too vivid.
Too familiar.
"Tch… it's getting worse," he muttered, looking down at his trembling hands.
This wasn't just a dream.
Not for him.
It never was.
And somewhere, deep inside, something stirred.
Waiting.
Watching.
Smiling.
It was no dream.
It was a warning.
And the next time it came…
He might not wake up at all.