The world around me went dark.
At first, there was nothing—just the hollow emptiness, like the quiet before a storm. Then, the air pressed down on me, heavy and suffocating, like I was being pulled under. My chest tightened, and I gasped for breath, but the air felt thick, cold, and unwelcoming.
Pain shot through my body, sudden and sharp. I stumbled, disoriented, and fell. I hit the ground hard, my vision spinning, my heart pounding in my ears. I couldn't tell if I was still breathing, if I was alive or not. But there was something inside me, something pulling me forward, refusing to let me give up.
I didn't want to die like this.
When my vision cleared, I found myself somewhere… wrong.
The sky above me was a swirling mess of black and purple, clouds that moved like they had a mind of their own. The ground beneath me was cracked and uneven, stretching out in every direction. Nothing made sense. It was like I had fallen into a nightmare, a place that shouldn't exist.
Whispers surrounded me. Not whispers of people, but something darker, something more ancient. They whispered words I couldn't understand, echoing in my mind like they were speaking to my soul.
I looked around, searching for something, anything that could help me understand where I was. But then I heard it.
Slithering. Crawling. The sound of something moving in the shadows, moving toward me.
My heart skipped a beat.
From the corner of my eye, I saw it. A creature—no, a nightmare—emerged from the dark, its shape constantly shifting. It wasn't solid, not really. It moved like smoke, like it was torn between worlds, a horrible, twisted thing that shouldn't exist.
And it had eyes. Hundreds of them, all staring at me, dark and hollow, like pits. They glowed with hunger, with madness.
It lunged.
I barely had time to react. The nightmare's tentacles—limbs, I don't even know what to call them—whipped through the air with a sickening speed. One of them slammed into the ground right where I had been standing, sending cracks shooting through the stone.
I couldn't breathe, couldn't think, couldn't move fast enough.
But I had to.
I couldn't die here. Not like this.
I shoved myself to the side, barely dodging another strike, my heart racing. I scrambled to my feet, every instinct screaming at me to run, to escape, but there was nowhere to go. This was its world. I was trapped.
I searched around desperately, my mind spinning. There had to be something I could use. Anything.
Then my eyes landed on a jagged piece of stone. It was big, sharp. I grabbed it without thinking.
The nightmare screeched, its twisted form twisting toward me. I couldn't wait any longer. I ran straight at it, swinging the stone shard at its closest limb.
I didn't know if it would work.
The stone hit the creature's eye. One of its many eyes. There was a sickening crack as the shard sank into its dark mass, and the nightmare let out a shrill scream, its body jerking back, its eyes flashing with pain.
I barely had time to celebrate. Another tentacle shot toward me, faster than I could see, slamming into the ground right next to me. The shockwave sent me sprawling. My head hit the stone with a jarring thud, and for a second, the world spun again.
But I couldn't let it win.
I forced myself to my feet, teeth gritted. I had to keep going. I had to survive.
I swung the shard again. Again. Again. The nightmare howled in rage as the stone cut into its body, breaking its form into pieces, bits of darkness splintering off. But every time I hit it, it only got angrier. Stronger. The air was thick with its rage.
I needed something more.
That's when I felt it.
A strange heat, like a fire building in my chest. It burned, but not in a way that hurt. It was power—raw, untamed. It surged through my arms, my hands, my body, spreading until I could barely hold it back.
My fingers curled around the stone shard, and the heat inside me exploded outward. A wave of dark energy surged from my hands, a black flame that scorched the air and everything in its path.
I didn't know how it happened. I didn't know how I was controlling it. But in that moment, I didn't care.
The nightmare was hit head-on, the energy blasting through its form like a wave crashing into the shore. The creature screamed, twisting, writhing as the black flames burned through it, tearing its body apart.
I didn't stop.
I kept pouring more into it, feeding the flames, watching as the nightmare's body burned and unraveled. The air smelled like burnt flesh and ash, and the ground cracked beneath my feet.
Finally, the nightmare let out one last deafening screech before its form collapsed into nothing—just a mass of shadow and smoke that faded into the air.
I stood there, breathing hard, my hands trembling.
The flames still clung to my skin, like they were a part of me now, swirling around my fingers in dark, curling wisps.
I wasn't sure what just happened. I didn't know how I had done it, how I had defeated something like that. But I felt… different.
Not the same.
I wasn't the weak, powerless man I had been when I first entered this place. But I wasn't sure if this power was something I could control, something I wanted.
I had killed the nightmare. But what had I become in the process?
I fell to my knees, my chest tight with exhaustion. The air around me still felt heavy, suffocating. The whispers hadn't stopped—they were still there, lingering at the edges of my mind. But now, they were clearer, sharper. They weren't just whispers anymore. They were voices, calling to me, pulling me toward something.
I didn't know what.
But I knew one thing.
This wasn't the end.
It was only the beginning.