The red-horned streetlights cast an eerie glow across their faces as they walked. Asher's fingers remained wrapped around his dagger, though his posture appeared casual. Every so often, a paper streamer would flutter down from nowhere, disappearing before it hit the ground – a detail that didn't escape his notice.
"The bikes," Kira finally said, breaking their silence. "They're all the same model. And they're all..." she paused at one, studying it, "they're all facing the same direction."
Asher had noticed this thirty minutes ago but held his tongue. Instead, he watched Kira's reaction as she pieced it together. Her dreamwalker abilities might be impressive, but her real strength lay in pattern recognition. The way her eyes darted from bike to bike, making connections – it reminded him of himself, though he kept that observation private.
A child's laugh echoed through the streets, bouncing off the decorated houses in a way that sound shouldn't. The confetti suddenly stopped falling, frozen in mid-air.
"Wait," Kira held up her hand, her energy signatures beginning to pulse faintly. "The bakeries. Look at their names."
Each shop they passed had variations of the same name: "Sally's Sweet Shop," "Sally's Bakery," "Sweet Sally's," "Sally's Treats." The signs flickered between neon brightness and complete darkness, but the name remained constant.
"Sally," Asher mused aloud, finally sharing one of his observations. "Notice how every bike has a basket, and in every basket..."
"A wrapped present," Kira finished, her eyes widening. "With the same pink bow. And they're all labeled..."
"To Sally," they said in unison.
The child's laugh came again, closer this time, and the frozen confetti began to spin slowly in place. The streetlights' red horns suddenly looked less like decorations and more like warning signals.
"The amusement park," Asher said quietly, his hand tightening on his dagger. "It wasn't random. Every ride we saw..."
"Was a carousel," Kira breathed. "Different sizes, different styles, but all carousels. How did I miss that?"
Asher had seen it immediately, but he'd waited for her to make the connection herself. What interested him more was the way the dream space was responding to their realization. The houses' Christmas decorations were slowly transforming, the cheerful lights becoming harsh and angular, the wreaths twisting into thorny circles.
"Sally's birthday," Kira said, her voice dropping to a whisper. "This isn't Christmas decoration. It's birthday decoration gone wrong. The bikes, the presents, the carousels... this is a birthday party that never happened."
The child's laugh came one more time, but now it had an edge to it – something sharp and dangerous. The bakery signs all flickered in unison, and for a split second, their names changed to "SORRY SALLY."
"Oh no !. This does not look good" snapped kira.
Asher however stayed calmly and viewed his surroundings. Finally he said " So what do we know from this?. We know Sally is at the name of the owner of this nightmare. This must have happened around the years 13 to 16."
Kira looked suprised at how he just states things by looking at the scene "and how do you know all that just by looking at this street? ". She asks.
Asher smirksand continues " Not to be rude kira but Sally being her name is pretty obvious and I don't think this looks anything below 13. Also we know her birthday got ruined by some factor. Because this is the smaller picture and I think worse is to come. All I can say is Sally envisioned her birthday to be all about her you know the gifts posters amusement park and all but some thing happened that made it all come crashing down. But what?".
He holds his chin up as if a way to commiserate with the streets and starts walking down. For once Kira did not say a word and justs follows suit. The air grew thick with tension as all the bakery signs suddenly shattered, raining glass onto the empty streets. The child's laugh transformed into something between a sob and a scream, and the frozen confetti burst into flames mid-air, casting dancing shadows across the warping landscape.
"Sally never made it to her birthday party," Asher said softly, his eyes fixed on something in the distance. A lone carousel had appeared at the end of the street, its lights pulsing with a sickly yellow glow. Unlike the cheerful ones in the amusement park, this one was twisted, its horses bearing grotesque expressions and sharp metal teeth.
Kira's energy signatures flared instinctively as the ground beneath them began to crack, revealing not earth but birthday wrapping paper that bled when torn. "The bikes," she gasped. "They're all turning."
Indeed, every bicycle on the street was slowly rotating to face them, their baskets opening to reveal the presents inside. But now the pink bows were unraveling like living things, stretching toward the sky like grasping fingers.
"Get ready," Asher warned, noting how the streetlights' red horns had begun to grow, curling into actual demonic horns that dripped a black substance onto the paper-streets below. He maintained his position of appearing cautious but not too powerful, even as he felt the pendant's energy urging him to prepare for what was coming.
A small figure appeared atop the twisted carousel, sitting sidesaddle on one of the snarling horses. It looked like a young girl in a party dress, but her form flickered between that of a child and something else – something ancient and full of grief.
"Sally?" Kira called out, taking a step forward. The symbols in her energy began to react to the nightmare's growing power, creating protective patterns in the air around them.
The figure's head snapped toward them at an impossible angle. When it spoke, its voice was a chorus of children's voices, all speaking slightly out of sync: "You weren't there. None of you were there. They said they'd come but they LIED!"
The presents in the bike baskets exploded, releasing not confetti but thousands of party invitations that swirled around them like razor-edged birds. Each one bore the same message: "Come to Sally's 16th Birthday! We Promise It'll Be Fun!"
"The core of the nightmare," Asher muttered, dodging a particularly aggressive invitation that tried to slice at his dream form. "It's not just about a ruined birthday party. It's about broken promises."
Kira nodded, her silver energy threads weaving a shield against the paper onslaught. "The dreamer... she must have experienced something similar. This nightmare is feeding off her own broken promises, her abandonments."
The Sally-thing stood up on its horse, its form growing larger, more distorted. The carousel began to spin, faster and faster, its warped music box melody becoming a screech of metal on metal. The horses broke free from their poles, galloping into the air with their metal teeth gleaming.
"They promised!" the figure shrieked, and suddenly all the bikes lifted off the ground, their wheels spinning violently, chains rattling like angry snakes. "They promised they'd be different! They promised they'd stay! THEY PROMISED THEY'D LOVE ME!"
The entire dreamscape shuddered with the force of Sally's pain, and Asher could feel the nightmare's power building toward something catastrophic. He glanced at Kira, saw her struggling to maintain her defensive barriers against the increasing chaos, and made a quick calculation about how much of his own power he could reveal without raising suspicions.
The streets began to fold in on themselves like origami made of broken promises and birthday wishes, and in the center of it all, Sally's form continued to grow, her party dress becoming a writhing mass of forgotten celebrations and discarded hope.