In a dark and quiet room, a person lays in his bed staring at a tiny screen in his hand. The tiny screen flashes with a red notification, it was dying.
"Damn already?" He looks at his computer on the desk nearby, seeing the time. 3 am. He takes a drink from his water by his bedside, he had meant to get to a good stopping point in the book he was reading but he couldn't stop himself but continued reading well past the time he told himself he should stop. "Shit, work is gonna be a pain in the ass. I'm gonna be so tired tomorrow" He tries to rub the sleepiness from his eyes as he reaches between the wall and the bed looking for his charger. His face pressed against the wall looking up, unable to find the damn thing. When he finally finds it he has only gotten over the first hurtle, he had accidentally unplugged it waving his hands around so now he has to begin the dreaded "no look plug" as the socket seemingly disappears every time he looks away to try.
As he's trying, he can't tell but the shadows in the room grow darker starting at his door before silently and terrifyingly moving across the room. Flowing over the computer as the screen flickers and a new image is plastered on it. One of a dark figure wearing a horrifying oni mask, the mouth open with two large teeth upturned, 3 horns elegantly twisting back over the figures white mane. The two lightless pits of darkness looking at the man trying to press his face into the wall. The shadow moves away from the computer before looming over the oblivious man floating above him on the wall none the wiser of the eldritch being in the room with him.
The shadow sits above him for a few moments seemingly stunned by his inability to do something so basic, before maybe shaking it's head if it has one. It silently glides down guiding the man's shadow towards the plug before tilting the water it had grabbed without his notice spilling it into the socket as the man's hand connects with it.
He groans and yelps in pain, he's been shocked by a taser before and this was 1000 times worse. His body was convulsing and no matter what he told his body it grabbed the charger harder, pressing his body into the wall making it impossible for him to let go or free himself from the pain. Very quickly the pain was blinding. He couldn't figure out if he had been shocked for minutes or hours. It seared through him, white-hot, unending. His hand wouldn't let go. Muscles locked. Heart racing. The charger burned in his grip, and the world blurred into agony. Then—a voice, slow and cold as a winter grave.
He felt chillingly cold.
Colder than he had ever felt before, down to his core. His very soul seemed to freeze. In this moment he felt a voice reach into the fiber of his being.
"You are good enough, just barely.I don't have enough essence to be picky and I don't like being sent to do things anyway, especially by that bastard. Since I finished up so quickly I should be able to squeeze in a nap before returning." The creature speaks in a slow almost lazy cadence. As if it had all the time in the world and wasn't concerned with his predicament.
"Ah, don't tell him I didn't look long though. He'll make me train for weeks." The shadow creature shivers. Whatever that thing was scared of would probably give him an instant heart attack if he saw it…. If his heart was still beating and not well done. By this time, he did not feel any pain in his body long since shutting down. It's a miracle he could even still hallucinate something this intricate before he died.
The creature lazily gazes back to him before perking up. "I almost forgot to do what I came for. I almost helped you kill yourself for nothing. That would've been unfortunate and annoying for me"
'Annoying for you'?!?!? What the hell about ME the guy 'committing suicide'?!?!?!?!
"Well, time to send you back, and do me a huge favor. Tell the younger me to for the love of all the horrors in the Nightmare spell DO NOT touch honey, it's the source of all evil, oh and birds too" It chuckles as a shadowy tendril produces a clear orb, inside was as black as night. Until one looked closer an infinitely intricate tapestry of black strings filled every crevice inside the basketball sized orb. It seemed to have millions of individual strings, most of the ends never visible but the tapestry did end. At the very center was a black string that was even darker than the rest. It was actually a bonafide string of fate made by a treacherous creature.
The orb touched the dying man, finally free from the grasp of the deadly charger. As it does the shadow of the man is sucked inside and the body goes limp, eyes hollow the orb now illuminated by the tiniest fleck of light. The room is quiet as the shadow moves away from the bed. Silently leaving the room until something makes it turn around.
The dead body was moving.
Inside it what should have been empty soul cores didn't exist in this world. Maybe not yet. But where his core should have been there was a piece of darkness and it was expanding.
The shadow froze, its form rippling like ink in water. "Corruption? But how?" It stared at the man's body, where a speck of darkness pulsed, unnatural and hungry, spreading through veins that no longer carried blood. I came here specifically because of that. Maybe it's because of my essence? Or the string not being made correctly? Either way, I cannot allow it to spread here. What kind of guest would I be to track in mud like that?
Just as the shadows surge about to snuff out the tiny seed of corruption it jumps. Not away from the danger but towards the shadow. Maybe it was the surprise or maybe the shadow was too lazy to react but the seed touched the orb entering it along with the man's shadow and the fleck of light. The shadow stares down at the orb for a few moments.
"Theres no way that is going to affect the plan right?" It shrugs its shoulders "The Shadow needs as many tools as it can get. Apparently you're enough" pressing a button on the perfect orb that no one would've spotted and the orb pulses once, shrinking into itself before disappearing like it never existed. Vanishing, taking the man's shadow— his soul— and the corrupt seed with it.
The shadow then makes the man's body vanish before the figure of a chillingly beautiful young man with pale flawless skin, silky black hair and two eyes darker than any night lying in the bed as if nothing had occurred.
"Ahh is this what they call memory foam? I feel like I'm sleeping on a cloud, definitely better than a falling mimic." The terrifying and beautiful man sighs in pure bliss. "Good Luck Kid, even with everything you have it won't be easy to…"
….He was already asleep before he could finish his last thought….
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Traveling through what seemed like infinite unending darkness, a lonely shadow clung onto a tiny speck of light unaware of a tiny purple seed landing on it, the roots slowly emerging from it searching for fresh soil.
After the shadow travels for a long time, or maybe not much time at all there was no way to judge how far or how long he had come. Slowly the consciousness buds, only to bear witness to the horrifying majesty of the tapestry he was traveling through.
The infinite darkness pressed in, not cold or warm, but a suffocating absence that tugged at his edges. 'What the hell is going on? Where am I?' The words echoed in his mind, unanswered, as the speck of light flickered weakly against the darkness. He was actually traveling somewhere. He was trying to understand what just happened to him. He was reading a webnovel, and he was getting ready for bed. Then he felt this chill run down his spine like he had nearly avoided death. Trying to plug in his phone he somehow shocked himself, it felt so painful he could smell his body smoking. He had to be dead. But, there was a voice in his room with him. He lived alone.
'You're good enough' it said. For what? Then he remembered! It chose him out of convenience for itself! It just wanted to be done and take a nap! He had died for some eldritch being's beauty sleep of all things!
In the distance there seemed to be a piece of the Neverending darkness that was darker than the rest. He was approaching it quickly. Or slowly? He couldn't tell but at least he knew he was definitely moving now. The thing mentioned essence… Shadow… and the Nightmare spell….
The Nightmare spell from the world of Shadow Slave? That insidious force that dragged souls into the Dream Realm, twisting them with Aspects and Flaws. Would his be a curse or a gift? He thought of Sunless, that unbreakable shadow slave, surviving horrors that would crush lesser men. Could he match that?
Was that where he was going now? He was both excited to see something different from his mundane life, but he sobered up quickly. Where he was just reading the creatures and events happening in that universe were terrifying, catastrophic, and nearly inescapable. Would someone like him be able to survive in a world like that? Sure, he knew a lot about the events and how they played out. But, would he be able to make a meaningful impact to the story or would he just be another mundane or awakened in the background drowned out by figures like Sunless, Changing Star, Nightingale and many more influential and powerful figures in the story.
He was just some normal human fan of the story, the amount of strength, determination and cockroach traits these characters all shared (Sunless most of all) and needed to survive even the first nightmare. Did he have that? He wasn't sure his life never forced those traits out of him.
The purple seed on his shoulder finally finding a purchase. (Maybe it was his shoulder?). Embedding itself in it and rapidly growing once it got a taste of the dark soil. He felt a faint itch where it dug in--a phantom sensation in his formless state from being shocked to death? The darker spot he was heading towards now towering over him, it was like an unfathomably huge door. He had seen mountains and sky scrapers but this door dwarfed anything he had seen before. It was wider than he could see in the distance to his left and right. When he looked up he couldn't see the end of it no matter how much he painfully craned his neck (do shadows have necks to hurt?).
Finally just as the seed was slowly spreading its roots down his arm he could feel a chill spread, like ink bleeding through paper, staining his essence with something foreign. Something hungry.
Up ahead he could see the rapidly approaching wall of pitch black darkness.
In the moments as he rocketed towards the rippling mass of darkness, he steeled himself. All his life he was bored. He read, watched, and played through many stories and games. Always imagining how amazing it would be to have those powers. To be able to fly through the skies or shoot fire from a weapon or slay a powerful monster. Or be one of the select few to have the power to change anything.
At this moment he prepared himself. If he wanted to do all that and survive in this world, he was going to have to truly embrace the mindset of a cockroach. To find a way to live no matter the cost.
Just as he was about to touch the door. He felt a prick in his hand, looking down he realized in horror that something had grown on his right arm up to his shoulder. It was a plant with vines trailing down the length of his arm, stopping at what he thinks was the center of his open palm where the roots swirled into a dizzying and mesmerizing pattern. Forming a bead in the center of his hand.
His mind was frozen in shock and fear. His mind was not capable of understanding what he was looking at.
Then the shadow of the man met the great shadow door, entering it barely making a ripple on its great surface.
The Nightmare had already begun.