If the earlier awakening made me the "Key," what stood before me now made me realize: keys get reclaimed, too.
The Reaper appeared.
Not the fairy-tale hooded scythe-bearer, but a bureaucrat in a crumpled suit, carrying a battered briefcase. He looked like the most impatient window clerk at Social Security, the type who's always ready to tell you, "Your paperwork's incomplete — try again next time."
He sighed, set the briefcase down, popped it open with a neat click — and inside, neatly arranged, were… files of souls.
"It's time to make a choice," he said in a dry voice, sounding like the jittery noise of a copy machine.
"Choice about what? Mortgage, car loan, life insurance?" I couldn't help laughing. Nightmare energy churned around me, but in front of him it felt frozen, like an account that had been seized.
The Reaper pushed up his non-existent glasses. "Don't joke. You understand. You are fully awakened — the Nightmare Key. The question is: will you use that power to save humanity, or to destroy them utterly?"
"Oh, the classic binary. Could you writers ever invent something new? Like Option C: Everyone dies?" I said.
He looked at me, eyebrow twitching. "That's on the list — item 666."
I blinked, then laughed. "You have a sense of humor, for a death clerk."
The sky kept splitting, nightmare tendrils spreading like cheap fireworks. The ground groaned; cities burned; people dissolved into blood and shadow between dream and waking.
The Reaper's voice was calm, like someone taking an order in a café: "Choose. Save them, and they will continue to scrape by in despair. Destroy them, and they end cleanly. Or choose the third option — you go down with them."
"I hate these tropes," I squinted. "Why is the choice mine? I'm not a god."
"Wrong—you are the key." He flipped open a file, the pages full of cryptic scribbles. "The key's job is to open doors. Which door you open — that's your verdict."
The irony hit me: for centuries humans built governments and faiths proclaiming control over fate, and in the end fate is handed to a half-human, half-nightmare tool.
"So you Reapers are just collectors?" I sneered. "Like a debt-collection firm — at the deadline you clear the books."
He nodded. "Something like that. Difference is: we don't call to remind you."
"Look at you — more humane than banks."
Karl stepped forward, expression complicated and steady. "Decide. Whatever you do, at least decide. Don't make me have walked all this way for nothing."
I looked at him. Black energy inside me roared to devour everything. It was ridiculous: I held the power to end or save the world and yet stood at a counter like a broke person forced to sign for the bill.
"If I choose to save?" I asked the Reaper.
"You will carry the nightmares forever, become the anchor for order. You'll no longer be human or free."
"And if I choose to destroy?"
"You become a new Nightmare God. Humanity resets to zero. But gods are lonelier than hell."
"And the third option?"
The Reaper gave a professional smile: "We all leave together. Everything becomes nothing. No responsibility, no future, no punchlines."
A silence heavy as ash. The nightmare god's shadow in the rift unfurled more eyes; it seemed to await an answer.
I laughed, a raw, stuttering sound — like an office worker fired and deciding to burn the boss's office as a parting gift.
"Of course," I shrugged. "Life boils down to making choices on a test. Fine — I'll be the exam writer."
Black energy erupted from my core, tearing earth and sky.
The Reaper raised an eyebrow, snapped his file closed. "Are you going to cheat?"
"Not cheat," I grinned. "Rewrite the question."
I wove nightmare energy and the last scraps of human will together: blood, tears, laughter, nightmare, hope — all contradictions mashed into one roiling mass.
"My choice is—no choice," I shouted.
The Reaper regarded me quietly, as if he'd seen every kind of madness, and found my stubbornness oddly entertaining.
"You understand the consequences are unpredictable."
"Predict? I can't even predict next month's utility bill," I barked, laughing. "Let's give the punchline back to this absurd joke!"
The sky shattered fully. Death and nightmare braided into a carnival.
The Reaper tucked his briefcase away and murmured, "Very well. I'll postpone judgment. You're the first mortal I've made an exception for."
Flames of black energy ignited me; my consciousness ballooned into manic laughter and a torrent of darkness.