Loki hadn't slept for two days. His body ached with strange unnatural fatigue, it had started some time ago, a deep dragging weight that had settled underneath his skin.
Loki was curled inside the rattling metal box and listening to the rain drip through the roof. His thoughts came sluggish, he felt constant drowsiness. Loki sighed, he knew what these signs meant. The nightmare spell had come for him.
"Well that was to be expected, I am the protagonist in this story after all hahahaha" Loki amused himself.
On the morning of the third day, Loki stood outside the container where he had been staying since coming to this world and looked at the sky. It was gray, a dull gray that rolled like smoke. The rain fell in thin, steady lines, cold enough to sting but soft enough to feel almost gentle. Fog curled low across the cracked streets, clinging to the ground like an exhausted animal unwilling to rise.
Loki felt melancholic, he thought about Sunny, how he had marked a symbolic grave for himself in the form of a simple line on a tree, a proof that he had existed. Loki felt he should do the same for himself and 'Loki' too.
Loki looked at the container, a rectangular shell made from repurposed shipment metal, dented along the sides, roof bowed slightly from years of weather. Water dripped steadily from a seam above the door, forming a small puddle where Loki's shoes sank into mud.
He stood there for a long time, staring at it.
This had been the boy's home.Not his.But he had used it anyway.
Inside, the space felt smaller than he remembered — a single blanket folded in the corner, a crate used as a table, a cracked bottle, and a rust-stained tin bowl. Nothing else. No letters. No keepsakes. Not even a name carved into the wall.
Loki sat on the cold floor.
The boy had died long before Loki woke up — dying slowly, quietly, to a winter illness no one cared about. A life that had begun without much and ended with even less.
Loki touched the blanket lightly with his fingertips.It was thin. Worn. Damp along the edges.
He stood again.
There wasn't much one could call a grave here, but he felt compelled to make something. Even if it was symbolic.
The ground behind the container was soft from the rain. Loki knelt and dug with his hands scooping mud and wet earth until he had made a shallow hollow no wider than his forearm. It wasn't enough to bury anything meaningful, but it was enough to mark a place.
He placed the boy's blanket inside. Folded gently. Respectfully.
Then he set a piece of scrap metal upright at the head of the hole — bent, rusted, but sturdy enough to remain standing.
A headstone.
Rain gathered at the edges of the small pit, turning the soil dark and heavy. Loki sat back on his heels. His hair clung to his forehead. His clothes were soaked. He didn't care.
He breathed slowly. His fingers curled around a small stone.He placed it on top of the scrap metal.
"I don't know if you would have wanted this," he murmured. "But I didn't want to walk into the city without doing… something."
The fog drifted around him, blurring the edges of the little grave.
A memory rose — faint, secondhand — the boy coughing under this same blanket, waiting for warmth that never came. And then another memory layered over it: Loki's own life, ending under a car, wondering what came after.
Two endings.One body.
He lowered his head. After a moment, he spoke.
"My name is Loki," he said.
He looked at the little grave.A resting place for the boy who had died.And for the version of himself who had died with the car.
It felt appropriate to conclude two lives here.
He placed another stone on the scrap metal.
"Goodbye," he whispered to the grave. A word he hadn't had the chance to say to anyone in a long time.
Loki stood up and walked away without looking back, rain trailing down his face.
"I should give myself a sir name" Loki thought. To a new beginning. Of course it has to be cool and mysterious, he can't ruin his aura now can he.
The fog swallowed him as he returned to the city, one boy laid to rest, another boy walking toward his own fate.
----
There were no goodbyes in the outskirts . It rarely noticed when someone disappeared — whether they had found work elsewhere, been dragged off by gangs, or starved quietly behind a dumpster. The streets were the same rust-colored husks, the same children with blank expressions and too-large clothes.
Loki walked past them with his hands in his pockets, head bowed, body hunched against the rain.
Every few steps, the world shivered. Not physically — Loki's vision simply stuttered, like an image skipping a frame. Sometimes he thought he saw shadows that weren't there. Sometimes the fog looked like it was moving toward him, not away.
He needed to reach the city before he collapsed.
That was also part of the law. If someone showed signs of Nightmare Spell infection, they were required to report to the nearest police station. They would be contained there. So Loki was now walking towards a police station. He didn't want to go through his first nightmare in a slum alley.
The road into the city was long and poorly lit. Fog thickened as Loki approached the city districts, swallowing the silhouettes of broken buildings and half-functioning lamps. Cars passed occasionally armored carriers with tinted glass and heavy wheels designed to roll over corpses if needed.
As he left the outskirts behind, the buildings grew taller — still bleak , but structured in a way that showed they were maintained. The roads grew wider with proper lamp posts.
Loki's heart thudded as he crossed the invisible border into the city.
He felt… safer.
And simultaneously, more terrified.
Safer because he had left behind the chaos of the outskirts.
Terrified because he was about to enter his first nightmare if he survived he'd become a mighty Awakened and if he didn't....well it wouldn't matter if he didn't either way.
By the time he reached the city's lower district, Loki felt as though his legs were made of glass.
Rainwater clung to his hair, dripping into his eyes. He wiped it away absently. He kept walking. He was afraid.
It didn't help that he knew what came next in the original story. Sunny had gone through his first nightmare alone, nearly naked and had nearly dead. Loki knew what a first nightmare could do, crushed bodies, broken minds and that wasn't the worst of it. And Loki knew he wasn't strong, brave, or talented. He was a frightened boy inhabiting another frightened boy's body.
He would probably die.
Unless he didn't.
That was the only thought that kept him moving.
Finally he reached the police station a concrete block with reinforced walls, metal doors. A few people lingered outside: two men smoking quietly, a woman crying into her hands, a child sitting on the ground with a blank stare.
Loki stepped inside.
The air was warmer. Cleaner. It smelled faintly of disinfectant and old paper.
A officer behind a desk glanced up. He was older, maybe in his forties, with tired eyes and shoulders that slouched as though carrying the weight of hundreds of cases.
"You here to report?" the man asked, voice neutral.
Loki nodded slowly.
"As demanded by the Third Special Directive, I an here to surrender myself as a carrier of the Nightmare Spell." Loki said. His voice cracked on the last word.
The officer's expression changed instantly from tired to wary.
"When did you start showing symptoms he asked" he asked.
"Three days."
He paled instantly.
"Shit"
The officer with surprising agility pressed a button on the terminal.
"CODE BLACK in the lobby!!! I repeat CODE BLACK." he shouted.
----
A few minutes later, Loki was yawning while several policemen were busy putting him in restraints. Soon he was tied into a metal chair that looked like a torture device. The containment room was located in the basement of the police station, with thick concrete walls and a heavy metal door. Other officers were standing near the walls, with guns in hand, expressions grim
Awhile later, the metal door opened, and the same person he had seen outside walked in.
"What's your name, kid?" he said
Loki blinked a few times, trying hard not to fall asleep.
"Loki."
The policeman grunted.
"Do you want me to contact your family?"
Loki simply shook his head.
"There's no one. Don't bother."
The policeman's face turned serious.
"Alright, Loki. How long can you stay awake?"
"Uh… not long."
The policeman sighed.
"Then we don't have time for the full procedure. Try to resist for as long as you can and listen to me very carefully. Okay?"
Not waiting for a response, he added:
"How much do you know about the Nightmare Spell?"
Loki couldn't say the truth.
"As much as anyone, I guess? Who doesn't know about the Spell?" he said.
"Don't I just go into the Dream Realm, kill a few monsters to complete the First Nightmare, receive powers and become an Awakened?"
The policeman shook his head.
"Listen carefully. Once you fall asleep, you will be transported inside your First Nightmare. Nightmares are trials created by the Spell. Once inside, you will meet monsters, sure, but you will also meet people. Remember: they are not real. They're just illusions conjured up to test you."
Loki nodded
The old policeman waited for a second and continued.
"The First Nightmare mostly depends on luck. Generally, it shouldn't be overwhelmingly hard. The situation you're in, the tools you have at your disposal and the creatures you have to defeat should be within the range of your abilities, at least. After all, the Spell is fair."
Loki nodded again. He was getting more and more sleepy. It was becoming hard to follow the conversation.
The voice of the policeman sounded more and more distant. Loki's was slowly drifting off to sleep, the fatigue of the last few days catching up to him.
"Remember: the first thing you must do once inside the Nightmare is to check your Attributes and your Aspect."
The room was slowly growing dimmer.
Loki couldn't hear the policeman's words anymore. Slowly he slipped into a deep slumber.
And then, in the darkness, a faint voice rang:
[Aspirant! Welcome to the Nightmare Spell. Prepare for your First Trial…]