The coral maze stretched around us in all directions. It wasn't the vibrant coral you'd see in the shallow waters of Earth — no, this was something else entirely. Each massive stalk of crimson coral pulsed faintly, veins glowing with a sick red light. It made the air feel warmer, thicker, like we were walking through the circulatory system of some enormous beast. The coral groaned and creaked faintly as if it were alive, shifting ever so slightly when you weren't looking.
The ground was a rough carpet of jagged coral shards. Every step crunched under our boots. Effie, poor girl, looked like a toddler who had just discovered the joy of standing upright.
She stumbled forward with wide eyes, arms swinging loosely at her sides, like her body belonged to someone else. And maybe it did. The Dream Realm was cruel that way.
I slowed my pace to let her catch up, watching her test her legs like they were new.
"Look," she said suddenly, beaming, "I can jump!"
I raised an eyebrow beneath the helm. "Is that something new?"
"Yeah," she said proudly, doing a hop that looked more like a misfired squat. "For me it is."
Her hair, tangled and wild, bounced with the motion. For just a moment, the Forgotten Shore's oppressive red light made her look almost normal. Almost alive.
I said nothing, just watching her grin like she'd conquered the world by leaping half a foot into the air. A part of me envied her. She could celebrate something so small while I fought against the hunger chewing through my insides.
We kept walking. The coral labyrinth twisted endlessly, sharp walls rising higher than houses, blotting out much of the bloody sky. I didn't bother leading — I was just as lost as her. The only real plan was simple: find high ground, get a look around, then figure out where the hell to go from there.
That was easier said than done.
My thoughts drifted to the coming night. Soon the cursed sun would sink below the blood-red horizon, and with it, my restraints. Night gave me more freedom. I wouldn't need to hide beneath shadows and armor, wincing as the dream sun threatened to peel my skin.
For now, though, it was all heat and hunger.
Eventually, after what felt like hours of wandering through living walls of coral, we stumbled into a clearing.
And that's when I saw it.
A statue.
No — not a statue. A monument.
It loomed impossibly tall, a silhouette against the bleeding sky. Carved from the same pale stone that made up the seabed, it depicted a figure standing upright, hands raised high toward the heavens as if offering a desperate prayer. Its head, however, was gone — shattered clean off, leaving only a jagged stump of stone where the face should have been.
The sheer size of it dwarfed everything I had seen in the Dream Realm so far. The coral maze looked like weeds compared to it.
"From up there," I said slowly, my voice echoing inside the helm, "we'll definitely be able to see something."
Effie tilted her head back, eyes wide, and whistled. "Just who the hell could build something this damn big?"
I sighed, shadows whispering around me as I adjusted the armor. "Effie, how the hell am I supposed to know? This is my first time here too."
She smirked, brushing sweat from her brow. "It was a rhetorical question, creepy."
I groaned under my breath and stepped forward. "My name isn't creepy."
Effie jogged after me, her armor shimmering faintly in the red light. "Yeah, but with that shadow armor of yours, you do look creepy. Honestly, if I saw you from a distance, I'd throw a spear first and ask questions later."
I muttered something under my breath and grabbed onto the base of the statue. The stone was rough beneath my gauntlets, handholds plentiful. With a grunt, I began climbing.
Effie followed, surprisingly quick despite her earlier toddler-like wobble. She wasn't graceful — more like a cat still figuring out its claws — but she kept up.
We were only halfway when she decided to start talking again.
"Hey, so… the armor."
"What about it?" I asked, focusing on the next handhold.
"Where'd you get it?"
A beat of silence stretched between us. The shadows around my gauntlets twitched.
"From my first nightmare," I answered finally.
There was a pause. Then she made a noise halfway between a groan and a laugh. "Damn it. I wish I got something cool like that. All I got was this boring armor and a spear."
I smirked, though she couldn't see it. "You're jealous."
"Hell yeah, I'm jealous. You've got spooky shadow powers and I've got… sharp stick."
"Sharp sticks save lives," I offered dryly.
She snorted. "Not when I'm holding them."
For a while, it almost felt normal. Two people climbing a forgotten monument, trading banter to distract themselves from the danger clawing at their heels.
But the Dream Realm never allowed normal for long.
We had just reached the statue's midsection when the world changed.
It started as a low rumble beneath my boots. The coral maze groaned. A sound like cracking glass echoed in the distance.
And then — black water.
From the cracks in the ground, from the spaces between coral stalks, from the very air itself, a torrent of inky liquid surged upward. It wasn't normal water. It moved too fast, too hungrily, boiling up from below as though the land itself was vomiting.
Within seconds, the clearing below us was swallowed whole. The coral walls disappeared beneath churning black waves.
Effie screamed, scrambling to climb faster. "What the hell is that?!"
I didn't answer. Because I didn't know.
The flood was rising fast, slamming against the statue's knees, its waist, its chest. I climbed like my life depended on it — because it did.
By the time we reached the statue's outstretched hands, the black tide had already swallowed everything below. The only things above the surface were us… and the stone fingers we clung to.
Effie gasped, coughing. Her armor clung to her frame, dripping. "You—you think it'll stop?!"
I didn't answer right away. My eyes scanned the horizon, but all I saw was an endless, boiling sea of black.
"…I hope so," I said finally, tightening my grip.
The night pressed in heavy, swallowing the world in black. The endless sea of shadowy water below still lapped hungrily against the broken coral, an ocean with no wind and no waves, just that eerie stillness.
Me and Effie lay sprawled across the stone palm of the statue — its raised hand was wide enough to fit both of us, though just barely. Our makeshift perch was slick with dampness, every shift of weight threatening to tip one of us into the black water below.
Effie shivered. "Well, this sucks."
I gave her a sideways glance through the visor of the Shadow Knight's helm. "Better than drowning."
She sighed, hugging her knees. "You know, creepy, I'm starting to think you like stating the obvious."
"My name isn't—" I stopped halfway through, too tired to argue, and leaned back against the rough stone instead.
For a long time, silence settled over us. The sky was endless and red, a bruised wound stretching across the horizon, but as night deepened, the stars came. Strange constellations I didn't recognize flickered faintly above, like a mockery of the real world.
Finally, the heat inside the armor grew too much. The shadows were suffocating. With a slow hiss of breath, I raised my hands to the helmet and pulled it free.
Effie stiffened immediately, the sound of shifting metal snapping her out of her daze. Her head whipped toward me, her eyes narrowing suspiciously.
The shadows that had hidden me peeled away, and my face was bared to the Dream Realm's broken night.
Black hair fell in uneven strands across my forehead, catching the faint starlight. My skin — pale, unnaturally so — almost glowed in the darkness, a sharp contrast against the blood-red sky. And my eyes… red, deep as molten rubies, catching every flicker of light like polished glass.
Effie blinked once. Then again.
Her first thought hit like a slap. Wait a damn minute… are you that pasty bastard who kept getting my name wrong back at the academy?
Her lips almost moved, almost shaped the words — but she caught herself just in time. She remembered how he'd bungled her name three separate times, looking like he barely even cared. She wanted to sneer. She wanted to laugh.
And then her second thought landed, far more dangerous.
Wait… why does he kinda look hot now?
Her gaze lingered longer than she wanted it to. The sharp lines of his jaw, the way his black hair framed that pale face, the intensity of those red eyes that should have been terrifying but instead pulled her in like gravity. He looked like something sculpted out of moonlight and shadow, untouchable, otherworldly… and infuriatingly attractive.
She tore her eyes away, cheeks heating.
He didn't notice. Oblivious as ever, Alucard leaned back, eyes half-lidded, staring at the ruined constellations above as if they held all the answers.
Effie hugged her knees tighter, refusing to look at him again.
Great. Just great. I'm stuck in a coral-blood nightmare with a creepy pasty bastard who apparently decided to grow into a tragic vampire pretty boy. Figures.
The statue's hand groaned faintly under the weight of two exhausted bodies. The black water below shimmered with reflections of alien stars. And on that high perch, in the silence of the Dream Realm, two survivors rested side by side — one oblivious, one conflicted — as the night deepened.