Someone once said that "total mastery of power" is like suddenly getting an infinite-limit credit card—sounds great until you realize the only thing you can buy with it is your own downfall.
Right now I am the cardholder.
Nightmare energy crawls up from the marrow like black mercury, tugging at my nerves. Every heartbeat feels like an explosion. The city shudders under my feet; the air compresses until it moans.
"You finally… became the real key," a nameless whisper says—like a debt collector and an undertaker pal in one, with dark humor baked into the timbre.
I look down. Under my skin the color isn't pallor; it has the sheen of an abyss. The reflection in my eyes is no longer a person but the world trembling inside a crack.
Good news: I can now make enemies have nightmares at will. Bad news: they might die in those nightmares—and I have to account for it.
The last of the rebel ragtag are huddled in the ruins. Their looks aren't trust anymore; they are the wary respect of people who stand beside a live grenade.
"Is he… still one of us?" someone whispers.
"He's the nightmare itself now," someone else snarks. "Either he leads, or he eats us."
I find myself laughing—an ugly, mechanical laugh that echoes with someone else's reverb.
"Don't worry. I'm not planning to eat people—yet," I say. My voice carries a resonance that isn't mine. "But if someone wants to betray me, don't complain about being appetizing."
They fall silent like catechumens hearing a blasphemy.
Across the city the Bureau's tower collapses. Concrete turns to ink-fog. The agents who once held "protect humanity" up like a banner now crack like porcelain; what leaks out isn't blood but dream fragments.
I can feel them being puppeteered by a larger will. My awakening is the step the leviathan has been waiting for.
—the Nightmare Key must be fully activated to open that door.
Ah, what elegant plotting: I am both savior and detonation.
Karl—the only one still standing nearby—walks over, his face an anthology of emotions: hurt, relief, and a wry "told you so."
"Look," he says, "you always feared losing control. Now you finally get your wish. You get power, you get fate—cost? Your soul."
"Sounds like a steal," I raise a brow. My smile is a mask.
"You'll lose yourself," he says quietly. "When the nightmare eats you, the 'you' is gone."
I shrug. Black energy curls from my fingertips as dozens of glaring, nasty eyes form in the air, turning and inspecting the scene like critics at a farce.
"Honestly," I tell him, "I'm not even sure which 'me' is mine anymore. Maybe I was always the key, borrowing a mortal body to pass the time."
"That's not funny," he says.
"Black humor is never funny," I reply.
A sound like the planet being split opens in the sky: a deep crack from horizon to horizon. Nightmare energy pours like a flood. Human screams, godly murmurs, dream fragments—an absurd symphony.
I raise my hand. The flood answers me.
"Key," another whisper says, "open. The door is coming."
The burn in my chest intensifies; my heart feels like a lit star. Every beat tears the fabric of reality.
Around me people fall, convulsing. Their dreams leak into the open air—someone's exam panic, someone's first love rejection, someone's unpaid mortgage—ridiculous, mundane terrors become lethal when magnified by nightmare energy.
"You've turned into the ultimate monster," Karl says, voice flat.
I laugh harder. "No. I just have a full-access pass. Before, I could be a monster in dreams. Now I can punch the clock."
In the distance a titanic silhouette wakes: the projection of the Nightmare God—so vast the world is its stage dressing. It fixes an eye on me.
Suddenly everything is clear: the key's awakening was not to annihilate but to switch on that thing.
I am the switch.
And switches cannot decide to un-switch themselves.
I laugh, the sound swallowing the thunder.
"Okay then," I say. "If I'm the key, I'll decide which door to open. You want an apocalypse? Too bad—lines, please."
Nightmare energy detonates inside me like a black sun.
At that moment I accept it: I am no longer human. I am the Nightmare Key.
—Isan and Karl stand at the edge of a world that's just begun to laugh.