The smile lingered in the dark like an after-image burned into Seong-jun's retinas—
even though nothing here produced light.
SFX: thum-thum-thum — his pulse hammered in his ears.
He took one step backward.
The stone beneath his bare feet was perfectly smooth, almost oily, as if centuries of something crawling had polished it down to skin.
Another step.
Another.
His shoulders brushed the wall he'd leaned against earlier.
Only now it felt warm.
Too warm.
Like skin.
Seong-jun jerked away.
SFX: skrrr-krrr-krrr
The whisper laughed—dry leaves skittering across a grave.
"Running already? You only just arrived."
This time the voice came from everywhere and nowhere, layered and overlapping, a chorus of one.
Male. Female. Child. Ancient.
All speaking the same words, a heartbeat out of sync.
It was the sound a mirror would make if it ever learned to talk back.
Seong-jun forced his breath slow.
Panic was a luxury he couldn't afford.
Not here.
Not in a Nightmare.
Second one this week.
The Spell never repeated.
It escalated.
He'd heard the veterans whisper: the deeper layers didn't follow rules. The Nightmare became sentient, playful, patient—
a cat batting a half-dead mouse.
Most Awakened never returned.
Those who did came back speaking in questions and forgetting their own names.
Seong-jun pressed his back to the warm wall. Closed his eyes even though darkness here didn't care.
"Fine," he murmured. "You want to talk? Talk."
Darkness purred, pleased.
"Polite. I like that. Most scream first. Then bargain. Then scream again."
A pause—
as though tasting the air.
"You're different. You're… hollow. Deliciously hollow."
Something cold and wet brushed his neck.
SFX: slrp
He flinched hard enough to crack his spine against the wall.
He spun—nothing.
Only the lingering sensation of a tongue that should never have existed.
He swallowed bile.
"Get to the point."
"Very well."
The temperature plummeted.
Frost bloomed across his skin; crystals formed on his eyelashes, inside his nostrils.
His breath plumed white—
—and the dark ate it whole.
"Your soul is cracked, little dreamer," the chorus crooned. "A hairline fracture straight through the middle. Do you feel it? That empty place where something used to be?"
His hand drifted to his chest.
Something did ache there—
a hollow throb he'd been ignoring since the First Nightmare.
Since he lost—
"Don't," he warned.
The darkness ignored him.
"We can fill it. We are very good at filling things. Holes. Silences. Graves."
A crushing weight slammed his shoulders.
He dropped to one knee.
SFX: BOOM—
The stone was freezing now; the earlier heat nothing but a lie.
"Picture it," the voices whispered, breath against his ear.
"All that pain—gone. Give it to us. We'll swallow it whole. In exchange…"
Fingers that weren't fingers traced his jaw.
Nails too long. Too sharp.
"You give us a taste. One memory. One name. The one you keep trying to bury."
His mother's face flashed—
smiling, screaming, burning.
Seong-jun snarled and punched the dark.
His fist struck nothing, yet pain shot up his arm as if he'd hit iron.
The chorus cackled, delighted.
"Still fighting. How tedious. How delicious."
The pressure vanished.
Seong-jun staggered.
Then a new voice—small, broken, familiar.
"Oppa… why didn't you save me?"
His blood froze.
His sister's voice.
Exactly.
Down to the tiny hiccup she made when she was scared.
"Stop it," he whispered, spinning wildly.
Another voice, soft and loving—
his mother's.
"You were always such a disappointment, Seong-jun-ah."
"Shut up!"
And then—
the worst of all—
his own voice, older, hollow:
"I should have died with them."
The words struck like a punch to the gut.
He doubled over, retching.
Tears he didn't remember letting fall froze on his cheeks.
The darkness pressed closer, folding around him like a shroud.
"Shhh," it soothed, voices merging into one velvet whisper.
"Let go. It's easier. Just say the name. Say it, and we'll make the hurting stop. Forever."
His knees hit the ground.
The stone was warm again—
pulsing faintly.
Like a heartbeat.
His lips parted.
For one terrible second, he almost obeyed.
Then something inside him—small, vicious, stubborn—
snapped its teeth.
"No," he breathed.
The word cracked, but it was his.
The darkness recoiled, hissing as though scalded.
"No?" it echoed, incredulous.
Heat swung into cold, then into heat again.
The wall behind him rippled like disturbed water.
Seong-jun forced himself upright.
"I've carried them this far," he said, voice raw but steady. "I'm not giving them to you."
Silence.
Then the chorus returned—
no longer amused.
It sounded hungry.
"Very well," it rasped, each syllable scraping like rusted metal.
"Then we will take them ourselves."
The floor lurched.
The stone softened beneath him—
turning viscous, gripping his ankles like tar.
Invisible hands clamped around his wrists, throat, hair—
pulling him in a hundred directions.
Seong-jun screamed once before something cold and wet sealed over his mouth.
SFX: GLUURP—HSSSSS—CRACK
And then—
the darkness began to pour inside.