I lay perfectly still, my breath steady as I listneed intently. I knew the drill, but perhaps he had personal experiences to share.
"That place, whatever it is, it's real. The Spell makes it real. And it's gonna try to kill you. Your job is to not let it. You survive. You find a way out. That's all that matters."
He leaned closer, his voice dropping even further. "If you die in there, you die for real. Your heart stops. We'll come in here and find a monster born from your corpse. That's how it goes for most."
The cold finality of his words seeped into my bones.
"But if you do survive… if you make it through…" he continued, a faint, almost mythical note entering his voice. "You come back changed. The Spell rewards survivors. It gives you power. An Aspect. An Ability. Something to help you fight. And it gives you a Flaw. A price. Everyone gets one. Always."
Aspect. Ability. Flaw. The familiar terms echoed around my skull. Yes, I knew these words. They were what had attracted me to this story long ago, the masterful world woven by Guiltythree. Father Malachi had been an Awakened too, and the thought filled me with newfound determination. 'I won't die here-I'm special. The Curator, a God himself, said so. I can adapt. I must.'
"That's the deal," Officer Roberts said, straightening up. "You get one free trip. You survive that, you wake up as a Dormant. After that, the Spell will call you back. Once forcefully against your will, and then again with insidious whispers and inate greed. The Nightmares get harder. The rewards get bigger. The cycle repeats over and over, every building. Until one of them finally kills you."
He looked at me, a boy tied to a bed, and for a moment, I saw a shred of something human in his eyes. "Good luck, kid. You're gonna need it."
He turned and left, the heavy door clicking shut behind him, plunging the room into silence. I was alone, strapped to a bed, waiting for a nightmare to begin.
The Curator's promise echoed in my mind. A Pathway from Lord of the Mysteries. It was here. My power was here. But I couldn't access it. I was entering the First Nightmare not as a Beyonder, not as a Seer, but as a helpless, mundane boy.
The true horror wasn't the monster waiting for me. It was the terrifying realization that I was about to face it with nothing but my own wits, in a game where the penalty for failure was a very real, very final death. Sunny dreamt of a mountain and the slave caravan that crossed it.
He slew an Awakened Hero and a Tyrant there, the former with treachery and the latter through sheer dumb luck. Would I be required to do the same? I wasn't him, I wasn't an actual slum rat. I still had morals, still had actual motives and dreams other than wanting to fuck everyone better than me like some stupid brat. Ah, nearly started hyperventilating there. Gotta keep it under control.
The Spell decided to help me with that, because only minutes later a massive wave of dizziness crashed over me, and I felt like I was falling. An extra extended yawn escaped my mouth as my eyelids irresistibly began to close. I prayed to The Fool, to Amanises, to the True Creator and Adam and even the Mother Goddess of Depravity.
I wouldn't get a response of course, but I felt it was apt considering I might gain one of their Pathways. I gave a passing thought to Weaver and the Shadow God to bless me too, but I expected even less from Them. They were both dead, after all.
...
The sterile white light of the prep room dissolved into nothingness. The cold grip of the leather straps vanished. For a moment, there was only a falling sensation, a dizzying plunge through layers of reality.
Then, I stood.
I was on a windswept mountaintop, the air crisp and thin, tasting of ozone and something purer. Before me stood a temple of breathtaking beauty. It was built from radiant white marble, its columns reaching for the heavens, its pediments adorned with sculptures of gods and heroes frozen in perfect, divine action. A sense of profound peace, of absolute order, emanated from it. This was a place of sanctuary, of light untouched by the world's corruption.
Time began to warp.
It accelerated, a blur of days and nights flashing by. I watched, a ghost outside of time, as a trickle of people became a river of desperation. They flooded up the mountain path—families with hollow eyes, soldiers with broken armor, priests clutching shattered relics. They sought refuge within the temple's radiant walls. The skies, once a perfect azure, began to bruise. Gloomy, sickly clouds gathered, and the sun's light grew wan and feeble, as if fighting a losing battle against a rising tide.
Beyond the horizon, titanic forces clashed. I couldn't see them, but I could feel them—world-shattering blows that vibrated through the very stone of the mountain, and deafening silences that were more terrifying than any sound. The temple, once a bastion of order, began to fray at the edges. The peace shattered into chaos. The cries of the refugees were no longer prayers of thanks, but screams of terror.
Then, time slowed, crystallizing into a moment of perfect dread.