Alex woke with a violent jerk. His body lurched upright in bed, sheets tangling around his legs like ropes. His heart hammered against his ribs so hard he could feel it in his throat. Sweat slicked his bare skin, cooling instantly in the early morning air.
He had a terrible unexplainable nightmare.
In the dream he had stood on cracked black rock under a sky that was bright red. The same void-black butterfly from earlier circled slowly overhead, wings shining with no light at all. Then it descended and landed softly on his forehead.
Then it suddenly grew. Its wings stretched into long wings of pure darkness. A shadow-like figure wrapped around him, cold and endless, pulling him down into darkness that swallowed everything. Even a scream couldn't get out of his suffocating lungs.
Then he woke up. He sat gasping. He took many deep breaths trying to calm down himself and his pounding heart.
