He dreamed of drowning in blood.
It wasn't metaphorical. He felt it—the nauseating warmth of it clinging to his skin like a fever, the crushing weight pressing down on his chest until his ribs threatened to crack. His lungs filled with the viscous fluid, every desperate breath a betrayal that sent copper-tinged liquid cascading down his throat. The metallic taste coated his tongue, bitter and overwhelming, while thick clots slithered between his teeth like living things. His body regenerated faster than it could die, but in the dream, it didn't matter—there was no ground beneath his feet, no ceiling above his head, no direction to orient himself. Just the suffocating red ocean, and the unbearable weight of every version of himself that had ever died dragging him deeper into the abyss.
Despite somehow being aware he was drowning, the terrifying thought came to his mind unbidden, crystallizing through the haze of panic.
He could endure dying, if he could see a path forward, but if he caught himself drowning with no way of escaping, would he die—
Forever?
He heard shouting through ears submerged in the thick fluid—distant voices that sounded like faint whispers echoing through miles of liquid. The blood muffled everything, creating a hollow, underwater silence that pressed against his eardrums. Then he felt something grip his arm through the viscous red—fingers that felt too familiar, too real—and suddenly he was being pulled upward, carried out of the endless sea of blood back toward what felt like solid ground.
For a terrifying moment, his body refused to take in air. His chest seized, muscles locked in panic, and then he erupted into violent coughing fits, retching and heaving as he expelled the coagulating blood from his system. The fluid burned his throat raw as it came up, leaving streaks of crimson down his chin. He had expected blood to feel just like water, but this blood was thicker, more alive somehow. He could feel the warm clots sliding against his teeth, taste the overwhelming iron that made his stomach lurch. The smell filled his nostrils—sweet, metallic, and wrong. But at least he was free from the suffocating depths.
Where was he? Who had saved him? He raised his head, blinking away the red film that clouded his vision, and looked up to see his savior. His brain turned to sludge in absolute horror.
It was him. A perfect mirror version. The same black, crow-like hair matted with blood. The same sunken eyes that seemed to hold too much knowledge. The same thin frame draped in an oversized brown shirt and black shorts that clung to his damp skin.
"No, no, no!" He screeched, voice cracking with terror as he shook the remaining droplets of blood from his trembling hands and scrambled away from his doppelganger. His bare feet slipped on the wet ground, leaving smears of red in his wake. He wasn't exactly sure why he was afraid of his reflection—the other version didn't look particularly menacing, though he wasn't exactly beautiful either. The features were his own, after all.
No. He wasn't scared because his clone looked frightening. He was scared because the clone felt like something his eyes were never supposed to witness—a violation of reality itself, a glimpse behind a curtain that should have remained closed forever.
He didn't know how to explain the wrongness that radiated from his double. He just knew he had to get as far away from that thing that wore his face as possible.
He took off running, not knowing where he was going, not caring about direction. He wiped the sticky red from his eyes with the back of his hand, leaving streaks across his cheeks, and gaped as the dreamscape settled around him like a suffocating blanket.
If he had to name it, he'd call it the land of death.
Not that the place was filled with corpses or scattered bones or rotting flesh. The land just emanated the very essence of death itself—a cold, creeping sensation that seeped through his pores and settled in his bones like ice.
His bare feet crunched against the dull desert sand, each grain sharp and gritty against his skin. The texture was wrong somehow, too coarse, too cold. He became acutely aware that he was still naked, even in the dream, goosebumps rising across his exposed flesh. The beach extended endlessly in both directions until it met the blood-red ocean that stretched to the horizon. The sky above was the color of dark wine, oppressive and heavy, while the entire hellscape was bathed in the eerie light of a perpetual lunar eclipse that somehow generated its own illumination.
The moon hung like a malevolent eye, its upside-down crescent seeming to grin down at him with cruel amusement when he let his vision unfocus. There were no stars in the vast emptiness above—almost as if the rest of the universe had been erased, leaving only this desolate realm of endless blood-sea and barren desert.
A chill crawled up his spine despite the stagnant air that barely stirred around him. The silence was absolute except for the distant, rhythmic lapping of waves against the shore—waves that sounded too thick.
His reflection remained standing at the water's edge, motionless, not giving chase. The figure's stillness was somehow more terrifying than pursuit would have been.
"Good," he thought, though his heart still hammered against his ribs. "How do I get out of here? This is a dream, right? How do I wake up from this nightmare?"
He stumbled forward, legs unsteady on the shifting sand, then slowed as something materialized ahead of him. When he looked up, there was a structure that definitely hadn't been there moments before—a section of library that appeared to have been surgically removed from some larger building and deposited randomly in his path. The wooden shelves rose impossibly high, their edges sharp and defined against the wine-dark sky. He could smell the familiar scent of old paper and aged wood drifting toward him on the still air, a comforting smell that felt completely out of place in this realm of death.
It made sense in the way dream logic made sense—one second he was fleeing across barren desert, the next he was walking between towering bookshelves, the sand beneath his feet transforming into worn wooden floorboards.
The library section somehow felt larger inside than it had appeared from the outside, the shelves stretching upward into shadows that seemed to swallow light. His footsteps echoed hollowly as he explored the space, hoping to find some clue about how to escape this vivid nightmare. The air inside was cooler, carrying the musty scent of centuries-old knowledge. Besides, he would wake up eventually, right? Dreams always ended.
He approached a shelf lined with leather-bound volumes and pulled out a bright-red tome that felt unexpectedly heavy in his hands. The binding was warm to the touch, almost feverish. When he flipped it open, the pages revealed...
Gibberish.
Complete, utter nonsense. It looked like a child had taken a pencil and scribbled frantically across every line, the marks seeming to writhe and shift when he tried to focus on them. Each page was filled with unintelligible symbols that hurt his eyes to look at directly.
"I think I've heard that you can't read in dreams," he mused aloud, his voice echoing strangely in the enclosed space. "But seeing it so vividly for the first time—it's still incredibly disturbing."
This was indeed the first time he'd experienced a dream so vivid, so real that he could feel the texture of the paper beneath his fingertips, smell the leather binding, taste the metallic residue still coating his tongue. What did they call it? Lucid dreaming?
"I've always wanted to have lucid dreams," he thought, and stretched out his hand toward one of the candles flickering between the shelves, willing fire to spring from his palm or something equally impressive. But nothing happened. He knew this was a dream, but it seemed it could only be experienced like the waking world—no magical powers, no impossible feats.
"Ugh, this is useless," he groaned, setting the red book aside and reaching for another volume. He should be waking up any moment now, shouldn't he?
He selected another book and tried to open it, but this one seemed fused shut. The covers wouldn't budge no matter how hard he pulled, as if the pages had been sealed together with some invisible force. His fingers began to ache from the effort.
"Dreams have meanings, right?" he wondered aloud, his voice barely above a whisper. So what did this nightmare represent? What was his subconscious trying to tell him?
He moved deeper into the library, weaving between the towering shelves in search of answers, but something disturbing began to happen around him.
The library was dissolving.
The air itself seemed to ripple like water, distorting his vision. The tall wooden shelves began blurring at their edges, their solid forms becoming translucent. Books flickered in and out of existence like dying flames, their pages scattering into nothingness before reforming only to vanish again.
"What the hell?" he voiced, panic rising in his throat as more of the library began to dissolve around him. The entire dreamscape was collapsing, reality itself seeming to unravel as everything was replaced by an encroaching wall of pure white nothingness.
He took a step backward, muscles tensing to run, ready to flee even back to the blood-red ocean if necessary, when a voice spoke directly behind him—a voice that was unmistakably his own but somehow wrong, carrying undertones he'd never heard before.
"You're not supposed to see this. You're not supposed to be here, Rhett."
It was him. Another version of himself, speaking with quiet authority.
The library vanished completely, taking with it the land of death, the blood-red sky, everything. His field of vision filled with darkness that slowly gave way to the faint pre-dawn light filtering through clouds.
Well, almost darkness. He could make out the silhouettes of buildings in his peripheral vision, though he was seeing their rooftops, indicating he was positioned high above street level. The air carried the familiar stale scent of dust and ash—the distinctive smell of Brookside, the city where he'd grown up. The war encroaching on their borders had forced a mass evacuation, leaving behind only the lingering odor of abandonment and decay.
"What happened?" he groaned, instinctively moving to rub the back of his head with his right hand, only to stare in shock at the empty space where his arm should have been.
The pain returned with vengeance, as if his brain had forgotten to register the injury until reminded of the missing limb. Phantom sensations crawled along nerves that no longer existed, sending electric jolts of agony through his shoulder. His left arm remained intact but had been secured to his torso with thick nylon rope that cut into his skin with every movement. His kneecaps were still caved in from the earlier damage, though someone had cleaned and bandaged the wounds. The white gauze was already stained with seepage, and the injuries remained unhealed, leaving him completely immobilized.
His captor was determined to keep him alive.
As his vision adjusted to the growing light, he spotted a figure perched on the building's parapet, silhouetted against the lightening sky. The person sat with their back to him, gazing out over the mostly evacuated city. They wore a long black coat that obscured their entire body, making it impossible to determine their build or gender.
The figure's head turned as he made involuntary sounds of pain, movement fluid and predatory. "You're finally awake."
Now that he could see clearly, he took in his captor's features—pale, copper-tinted skin that seemed to glow in the dim light, gaunt cheekbones that cast sharp shadows, and flesh that appeared to cling too tightly to the underlying skull. But it was the eyes that truly disturbed him—piercing brown orbs that seemed to hold depths of knowledge no one should possess.
"Fuck yeah I'm awake! Let me go!" he grunted, attempting to struggle against his bonds. The rope bit deeper into his skin, and he lost his balance, falling pathetically to the dusty rooftop. His cheek scraped against the rough concrete, leaving a burning sensation along his jaw.
"Shut up," his captor whisper-yelled, voice carrying a dangerous edge. "Don't go drawing attention to yourself."
The thought crossed his mind that maybe he should do exactly that. If he attracted the notice of some more powerful villain, they might kill both his captor and himself in the process, and then he'd be free from this nightmare. But what if they decided to take him prisoner instead? His captor had mentioned people with "sinister" uses for his regenerative abilities, and while he could endure pain, he had no desire to suffer unnecessarily.
Besides, he had his own goals to pursue, his own mission to complete.
"What is your plan? What do you want from me?" he demanded, and immediately a shrieking sound pierced the atmosphere, cutting through the morning air like a blade.
It sounded like a wolf's howl, but wrong—wetter, more desperate, as if the creature was drowning in its own blood while it cried out. The sound grated against his eardrums like nails on metal, making him grit his teeth so hard his jaw ached. Whatever had made that sound was clearly in unspeakable agony, and the raw anguish in the cry sent ice through his veins.
"What do I want from you?" His captor repeated the question thoughtfully, seemingly unaffected by the horrible screech. His voice had become softer, more contemplative than it had been when he'd methodically cut and cauterized the arm. "Just stay put until the sun comes out."
He turned back toward the cityscape, addressing the howl that still echoed in the distance. "I have a plan of my own. And you, my unkillable comrade, are going to be my bait."