So... there I was, staring down a fire-breathing dragon—whoops, my bad, drake! I know how some of you get about technicalities. Fucking nerds—kidding, you know I’d totally peg—uh, I mean, love—your asses! Not that I wouldn’t do the former if you’d let me. Honestly, what I wouldn’t give to make someone my little bitch—oops! Sorry, getting sidetracked. Where was I again?

  The dragon.

  Drake, dipshit!

  Right, right. There I was, facing a drake, green fire with purple tips belching from its maw, barreling at me like a freight train of heat and destruction. My entire gooey form went into full panic mode—all the voices in my head were yelling: duck, run, cover your face, you fucking idiot! My eyes screwed shut, my hands flew up—as if that would do anything against an actual inferno.

  And then... nothing.

  My brain, ever the overachiever, took a second to catch up. There was no pain. No crispy bits. Hell, I should’ve been burnt into a puddle of carbon by now. Maybe my nerves were fried instantly? Was that why I didn’t feel anything?

  Do bck puddings even have nerves?

  We should, right? I mean, we feel things.

  Yeah, like those times you went full solo-session in the dungeon! Seriously, what is up with our libido? It’s like permanently stuck on “fuck me now, daddy.”

  Shhhh! We left that part out of the story for a reason!

  Oops! My bad. Hey reader, just ignore that st bit—it’s not like we’ve been messing around with tentacles and orifices or anything without telling you. Nope, would neeeever do that... and even if I did, it wouldn’t be very memorable. Definitely not worth counting.

  —Seventy eight and three quarters.

  …

  Doing my usual—ignoring the idiotic voices in my head—I was left listening to my heart (not that I had one) thudding away, a phantom rhythm pounding in my ears. My entire body tensed, bracing for agony that just... never came. No blistering heat, no silk combusting in dramatic fashion to reveal the bck sludge beneath. Just... nothing. The roaring fmes swept over me like a gust of warm air, and for a second, my brain just ftlined. Slowly, cautiously, I cracked an eye open.

  The fmes continued to wash over me in an endless wave—harmless. I extended a hand, watching as the green fire flowed around it, like water streaming past a rock. Squinting through the inferno, I finally got a good look at the drake. Decaying, skeletal, unmistakably undead.

  I groaned, straightening up. “Oh, it’s necrotic,” I grumbled. “Well, don’t I just feel like a dumbass.”

  I don’t get it.

  Necrotic Fme, like our skill. It’s not actual fire—it’s death magic.

  Wait, are we immune to death magic?

  ...No?

  Then why isn’t it hurting us?

  Maybe because we have that skill, maybe it’s an eldritch thing, or maybe it’s just the dream realm screwing with us—how the fuck should I know?

  With a sigh and a huff, my arm snapped out, morphing into a long tentacle that shot straight for the drake’s neck, easily coiling around the undead beast. With a heave and a ho, I yanked it back, effortlessly tearing the head clean off like it was nothing. My body twisted as I flung it backward, aiming to smash it against the cave wall... only, there was no shattering sound.

  I turned, finding the group I’d seen earlier in the cave, all watching me with surprisingly little concern. Well, except for Anal-slut—sorry, Anlyth—standing there, hands on her hips, eyes burning with anger. I turned back to the drake, only to find... nothing.

  “Fucking dream realm,” I muttered.

  What could I even say in this moment? Fbbergasted—bewildered—befuddled—my mind swirled through a storm of confusion and disbelief. Was I teetering on the brink of insanity? Well, considering who I was, that was a pretty firm—hell yes!

  I gnced back, eyeing the specter of General Ezad—whom I’d killed, then subsequently shoved Olin’s soul into his corpse—now looming before me.

  Oh, damn, I’d completely forgotten about Olin.

  Eh, we gave Aurelia his phyctery; he’s now her problem.

  I shrugged Olin off from my mind. He was a grumpy ass to begin with anyway. Oh well, his soul was tucked away in one of the two phycteries I was loaning him. Yep, a loan! I’d get it back eventually. And yes, you heard that right—I still had another phyctery, one I hadn’t used yet, safely stored away in Stelr... Void.

  —Wait... didn’t we lose everything in our dimensional storage when we exploded? Including that skill?

  Oh, shit.

  “I lost my other phyctery,” I half-whispered, half-cried. As more thoughts about the dream realm crowded in, another question slipped out. “Wait—am I still dead?” The words barely escaped my lips, a whisper so soft it hardly disturbed the air.

  I vaguely remembered seeing some skill notifications when I was slipping in and out of consciousness—something about Stelr Void being altered. But for the life—or death—of me, I couldn’t remember what it had changed into. And, of course, being stuck here meant I couldn’t access the damn system to check. Because, you know, why would anything be easy?

  But back to the whole still-being-dead thing! Sure, my soul had been glued back together, so I wasn’t, you know… dead dead, but I hadn’t exactly respawned either. So, basically, just dead-ish. Worse still, the dungeon that let me respawn had been destroyed, so how the hell was I supposed to come back once I was done with whatever all of this was?

  “Fuck me,” I grumbled, crossing my arms and gring at the figures in front of me.

  Ghosts? Dream tourists? Forgotten memories? Some other bullshit? I couldn’t tell, and honestly, I wasn’t in the mood for more of these guessing games.

  My eyes flickered to the hooded wizard, and recognition smmed into me like a sledgehammer. Craycroft! Which meant that the handsy dwarf, Grimmail, had to be Gimona Grimmail. No wonder I hadn’t recognized her—st time I saw her, she had more of a five o’clock shadow than a full beard. The whole damn gang was here. Apart from the General and the gnome, this was the same party that had killed Wartie, my precious goblin prey I’d been saving for ter.

  A desperate question kept echoing in my gooey skull.

  What the actual fuck is going on?!

  My gaze locked onto the gnome—Niko. Another summoned soul from Earth, just like me. A million questions churned inside me for him, but that interrogation could wait. First, vengeance. Sweet, sweet vengeance. Maybe I’d restrain myself a little—maybe—but then again, I was aching to lean in and fully embrace the Nightmare I was reborn to be.

  “Oi, what’d I miss?”

  Grimmail—or no, Gimona—strolled into the cave, droplets of water cascading from her armor and soaking the wild beard that partly obscured her grin. A wide, unchecked smile beamed across her face, each crease and crinkle slicing into my rising fury like a well-aimed dagger. Her merriment, so starkly out of pce in this twisted reunion of specters and past deeds, acted like acid, slowly eating away at whatever composure I had managed to hold onto.

  “Expin yourself,” Anlyth, the armored woman, demanded, her sword pointed right at me.

  Expin ourselves?

  Oh, right! I said something about killing Ezad, didn’t I?

  After my decration that I’d killed Ezad—despite the man standing right there—and Anlyth’s little outburst, the only sound had been the crackling of the fire. Now, that too was being drowned out by the heavy, oblivious footsteps of the dwarf.

  “Umm, what’s goin’ on, ssie? Also, why’s yer outfit fallin’ apart?” Gimona asked, her wide dwarven smile fading into confusion.

  I gnced down, noticing my dress fraying into a web of tendrils and tentacles. A twinge of embarrassment might have pricked me—what with all my bits peeking in and out between the gaps—but, honestly? Who was I kidding? There it was: darkness bubbling up from somewhere deep inside, oozing out as a manic smile spread across my face.

  Ignoring the sword pointed at me, I looked straight at Gimona. “I may have revealed my little secret,” I said, a coy but cruel smile tugging at my lips, my eyes narrowing with a wild glint, “and even if this is all just a dreamscape, it seems Anlyth isn’t a fan of truth-telling. Her man is dead,” I purred, savoring each word like they were candies ced with poison.

  Gimona’s eyes flicked between Anlyth and me, her brow furrowing as she tried to piece together what was happening. “Yer tellin’ tales, are ye?” she mumbled, scratching at her damp beard before boldly stepping closer to Anlyth. “Now, now, let’s not be hasty with the pointy end, aye?”

  Anlyth’s grip tightened on the sword, her eyes swirling with a chaotic storm of emotions. I could practically feel her shaking rage, barely held in check by a thread of reason. It would take just the right twist—a word, a gesture—to snap that thread. Oh, how delicious that would be. Still, something about Gimona’s words, or maybe her absurd nonchance, seemed to stall Anlyth’s fury, if only for a moment.

  I took a cautious step forward, my smile widening, something gleaming dangerously in my gaze. “I’ll expin. But I suggest you lower your weapon. We wouldn’t want things to get... messy, now would we?” I drawled, practically daring her.

  Yes, we do!

  Yes, we want mess!

  Chaos!

  BLOOD!

  Oh, how I craved it—the mess, the chaos, the sweet, sweet taste of upheaval. It wasn’t just a want; it was a need, an ache that cwed at the edges of my mind, gnawing at my sanity. I could feel it now—a slow, nguorous awakening stretching through my consciousness, our consciousness. I was not alone. I was a Nightmare—all of us were—a fractured soul dripping with malice, hatred, hunger. The naive little voices, all at odds, were fading fast, swallowed by the vast, consuming darkness that was our true self.

  Pfft, it won’t st.

  Shut it—let me have my dramatic moment!

  We’re digging the buildup!

  My grin stretched wider, manic, as the other smaller voices—the scared, pleading ones—faded into the distant background of my mind, reduced to nothing more than faint whispers, drowned beneath the roaring of the louder, hungrier fragments of myself, each one brimming with dark urges.

  Don’t do this.

  Kill them all!

  Broken. Always… Broken.

  Rip out their intestines as they watch!

  We weren’t always like this.

  This will be so much fun!

  I want to go home.

  Embrace the nightmare!

  I don’t want to be a monster.

  Yes ‘we’ do!

  Anlyth’s sword dipped, shifting from my chest to my groin—a marginal improvement at best, but still progress. I could almost taste the hesitation, like sweet nectar on my lips. The change in the air—the uncertainty—made something wicked bubble up within me, a cackle that I fought to keep behind clenched teeth. It was intoxicating, this little crack in her resolve. My words, mixed with Gimona’s foolish insistence, seemed to have pnted seeds of doubt, and I would water them with tears and blood.

  Crity dawned on me, sharp and sudden, like the punchline to a sick joke that left a bitter taste in your mouth. I wasn’t just some lost girl summoned from Earth—never had been. No, I was something far more delicious, something far more terrifying. I was a Nightmare, in every twisted, beautiful sense of the word. The embodiment of fading hope and blooming despair. I was the chill that crawled up your spine when you felt a presence behind you, the dark thing you glimpsed in the corner of your eye when the lights flickered, the whisper that curdled your sweetest dreams into the darkest of screams.

  None of these fools before me seemed to recognize me. Was this a game? A test? No... I remembered a girl’s voice, something about helping me. Maybe this was all just another twisted joke pyed by the Realm of Dreams itself. Who cared? The only thing that mattered was what I’d become—what I’d accepted.

  “We. Are. Bke,” I suddenly decred, catching the fools before me off guard. My voice reverberated like a chorus—hundreds, no, tens of thousands—fractured selves speaking in unison. Each shattered fragment of my soul rose together, forming a chaotic symphony that drowned out the frail, lost whispers of those pieces still too scared to accept what we had become.

  A silence settled over us—a thick, expectant hush from all my souls—as though the entire realm was holding its breath, waiting to see what I would do. Accepting me. Welcoming me home.

  Before the foolish dreamers and wandering souls could even blink, I struck!

  My arm—now a relic of a past self—ripped free from its silk covering, snapping toward Craycroft with a violent, otherworldly aggression. It disintegrated, silk threads unraveling in the chilled, death-stained air, as a grotesque jet of bck sludge spewed from the void left behind, smothering the wizard’s face. His muffled screams were sweet, discordant notes in our shared consciousness.

  At the same moment, Necrotic Fme billowed from my free hand, a vicious green inferno edged with hungry purple fmes seeking Anlyth’s flesh. But she was quick, her shield jerking up just in time to intercept my malice. A cng, ethereal and ringing, filled the cavern. It didn’t matter; my intentions were broader, more insidious.

  A high, brittle scream shattered the cacophony of combat. The gnome colpsed, scrabbling back, his wide eyes reflecting all the horrors before him. A smile tugged at my lips. My questions could wait. His terror? Now that was music.

  The dwarf, though, was less fortunate. She was a pawn—just another victim ensnared in the insidious tendrils of my form. She writhed on the ground, her screams a poignant duet with Craycroft’s muffled gurgles.

  I basked in my own madness, marveling at how effortlessly my spells flowed—Necrotic Fme, Corrosive, Polymorph, Venomous, even Blight—all cascading out without the locked system’s aid, as though they were an extension of myself, woven into my very being.

  Ezad charged—his muscur silhouette a rampaging shadow against the flickering firelight, bellowing as he lunged. My hair—once a delicate cascade of darkness—exploded into a writhing mass of bck tendrils. They snaked forward, coiling around Ezad in a lover’s cruel embrace. The Corrosive touch ate away at his flesh, each Venomous tendril squeezing tighter, drawing out screams that reverberated, twisted, and joined the macabre symphony of pain. A bck miasma enveloped his form, Blight spreading across his skin, pustulent lesions bubbling up and oozing down his body like grotesque rivers of decay.

  Craycroft’s silence was almost more satisfying. He couldn’t scream, not submerged in the abyss of my vengeance. But I could feel it—each silent plea, every unspoken curse—rippling through the nightmare we’d unleashed.

  Then light. Subtle at first—a soft, unwelcome golden glow emanating from behind Anlyth’s shield. It spread, blooming into a blinding luminescence, seeping into every dark crevice of the cavern, a crescendo of brightness culminating in her sword’s zealous eruption into divine fme. The glow framed her form, casting her as something awe-inspiring yet ominously dangerous.

  Pain was like an unexpected dance partner, dragging me into an agonizing waltz. Imagine diving into boiling oil while nursing the worst sunburn imaginable. That was the sensation. The sword hadn’t even touched me yet, but its sanctimonious glow was smearing my essence with agony, barbecuing me slowly over an eternal fme.

  It was more than just a weapon. It was a divine beacon, each flicker a knife cutting into the very fabric of my being. The light didn’t just sting—it dissected, tormented, condemned.

  My gooey, shadowy form crumpled, screaming wordlessly as every flicker of holy light screamed back—filling me with stories of creatures like me torn apart, their fragments scattered, their essence annihited.

  Cocooned in this celestial doom, a dark, insidious resolve bubbled up: I was spectacurly screwed.

  Frantically, I groped for the ambient mana—trying to double, no, quintuple—the wrath of my Necrotic Fme, a torrent spewing from my fingers, as vomit from a demon with too much in its belly. But the mana felt tainted—soaked with that damned holy energy, slipping through my tendrils, rejecting me as though I was something abhorrent.

  What the fucking hell is this?!

  It’s like sticking my hand into va for a high-five.

  Before I could piece together any sembnce of a solution, Anlyth, shield bzing like the sun itself, barreled through the dying embers of my fire. A metallic crash and my arm was shoved aside, the searing glow leaving me vulnerable.

  Then, that light—that horrible, horrible light—came arcing down towards my face.

  “Two?”

  “Aye, found meself a magus-tier caster who’s offered t’join us,” Gimona boasted, her swagger practically dripping from every word. “An’ I’ve already called dibs, so hands off—she be mine.”

  A blink, a breath, and suddenly I found myself at the cavern entrance, Gimona to my side, gabbing away with Craycroft, who lurked just out of view within the cavern’s maw.

  “Now, ssie, off ye go,” she nudged me with a sly, conspiratorial grin pying across her features. “I’ll be tailin’ behind soon enough. Just need a quick spsh in the river—can hardly abide me own stench with these sodden trousers,” she procimed, letting out a roaring ugh from her broad chest.

  Confusion gnawed at the edges of my thoughts, fragments of coherence slipping through my mind like sand through a sieve. But the nightmare within didn’t care for reason—it thrived on impulse, on chaos. There was no pause for rationale, no conversation. Just instinct.

  Without thought, I shed out.

  My arm burst into a grotesque torrent of bck goop, snapping toward Gimona’s head with a wet, resounding sp. Tendrils twisted down, crawling over her face, igniting with Necrotic Fme—green and violet fire engulfing her head, her body instantly transforming into a thrashing, screaming pyre.

  “Die, monster!” Craycroft’s voice reverberated through the cavern, dripping with loathing, soaked in terror.

  I turned, a wicked grin twisting my lips as I caught sight of the brilliant blue glow rushing toward me—a spell cast in desperation.

  Always strike the mage first.

  That one thought fshed through my mind, the split-second instinct drilled into me. No time for consideration, no chance to evade. The spell connected.

  Agony ripped through me, slicing like a knife of pure frost. My body, my very essence, seemed to shudder beneath its force. Cold pain, followed by a blinding burst of white in my vision—and then…

  “Two?” I heard Craycroft’s voice echo, like a warped repy.

  “Aye, found meself a magus-tier caster who’s offered t’join us,” Gimona’s voice responded, a sickeningly familiar refrain. “An’ I’ve already called dibs, so hands off—she be mine.”

  “Wha… What’s happening?” The words tumbled out of my mouth, bouncing off the darkened cliff walls, sounding more like a lost child’s cry than I’d care to admit.

  Gimona turned, her brow furrowing as she cast a gnce at me, worry simmering in her eyes—just beneath the surface, like something ready to boil over. “Eh, Lassie? We’re meetin’ the rest of me merry crew, and there’s a wee drake that needs a good syin’. D’ye not remember agreein’ to this?”

  “Ah, just lost in thought for a moment, Gim—Grimmail.” I aimed for an air of innocent ignorance, pretending I didn’t know her full name.

  That pretending innocence was about as natural to me as pying by the rules—I hate rules! A smile slinked across my face, the kind I meant to be innocent but ended up anything but—predatory, curling at the edges like it had a mind of its own.

  Gimona’s eyes narrowed, her suspicion flickering to life like a shadow stretching in the firelight. “Aye, if ye say so, ss.”

  A depth of chuckles rolled through my mind, dark and heavy.

  She doesn’t buy it, not one bit.

  “Will you please be quiet?” I hissed under my breath, earning an odd gnce from both of them.

  Gimona turned her head, calling toward the cave’s opening, her voice bouncing off the cavern walls, “Ye pnnin’ to invite us in, mage?”

  From the dimness inside, Craycroft’s gruff voice filtered outward, “Yes. Yes. Do come in. I’m keen to meet this magus-tier caster you’ve brought us.”

  “Magus-tier?” I whispered, intrigue slithering through my tone like a serpent.

  “Yeah,” I replied to myself, the voice light, almost airy, like I was tiptoeing through a puzzle. “Seems they’ve got a ranking system for magic users. Oh, and keep an eye out for a little girl in a pink dress. I’ve got a hunch some goddess is having herself a good ugh at our expense.”

  My tone sharpened, biting. “A goddess, huh? Wonder if she’ll bleed like the rest?”

  I sighed inwardly, trying to steer through the tangled mess that was my own mind. “Maybe let’s not poke the celestial bear just yet. Let’s see how far down this insane rabbit hole goes before we start making enemies with the divine, alright?”

  Craycroft leaned in toward the dwarf, barely whispering, “Is she alright in the head?”

  “Shush,” the dwarf snapped back.

  I followed Craycroft into the cavern, giving a nod that was more of a vague tilt—barely greeting anyone—while Gimona trotted off to the river for her so-called wash-up. Honestly, neither part of me thought she smelled all that bad—in fact, this was almost an upgrade from the typical dwarven musk. Maybe she’d come back with a hint of wet-dog stench, but I hadn’t given much thought to that during previous iterations of this twisted, repetitive nightmare.

  Navigating the bends of the dim cavern, we stumbled upon the rest—Anlyth, sharpening her bde with a face that practically screamed, I’m ready to eviscerate something.

  Ezad, confined to the shadows, exerting himself with a series of push-ups that reeked of self-punishment; and Niko, poking at some weird contraption by the fire—a flintlock pistol, except for the odd, glowing crystal where the flint would usually sit.

  “Alright,” Craycroft announced as we stepped in, “seems the dwarf’s brought in another caster to help us.” He turned to me with a hollow chivalry, his decay showing through his teeth. “I’m afraid I didn’t catch your name, dear.”

  “Bke,” I offered, the sweetness in my smile masking the chaos beneath—symphonies of shrill voices screaming in unison, each calling for blood. “Pleasure to see you again, Niko,” I added, feigning indifference.

  Niko blinked, his sleepy eyes widening, brows doing a bewildered little dance as he stared at me. “Uh, do we... know each other?”

  He really didn’t remember? I scanned the area, looking for that fsh of pink. Nothing.

  Ezad, done with his theatrics, slinked over, a grin smeared across his face. “Oh! What do we have here, a woman—and a fine-looking one at that.”

  The struggle within me raged—cruelty howling to be unleashed, my resistance barely a whisper. It was all about impulse control—something I wasn’t exactly famous for. But right now? I was getting tired, so damn tired, of this never-ending Groundhog Day dream sequence.

  I tossed a coy grin his way, “Flirting, are we? What’s your wife over there gonna say?”

  “Wife?!” The word echoed from both Anlyth and Ezad, an unintentional harmony of outrage.

  Anlyth cut in first, snapping, “We’re just dating. Like I’d legally bind myself to him,” the disdain palpable.

  Ezad clutched his chest, mock wounded, “Oh, darling, you slice me deep.”

  I furrowed my brow, genuinely confused. “Hold up, you two aren’t hitched?”

  Gimona chimed in, miraculously reappearing to grab a handful of my ass. “Nope, tragically unwed. Though why would immortals even bother with such nonsense these days, eh?” Her dripping clothes were surprisingly absent of the wet-dog aroma I expected—perhaps why I missed it before. “Right then, let’s get t’it, shall we? Give that drake a good ol’ kick in its scaly arse?”

  Um… we already killed the drake, didn’t we?

  Sheer bloodlust imploded as Gimona’s touch sent ripples of revulsion down our spine. Ezad, Craycroft, Gimona—all within arm’s reach. The allure of chaos won out, drowning any rational argument.

  I struck—once again!

  My form contorted, the disguise of silky tendrils shredding apart as my arm twisted, releasing a torrent of thick, bck tentacles that burst forth. In a grotesque rush, they shed onto the dwarf, enveloping her head with a suffocating embrace. An eerie hiss echoed as the tendrils ignited with Necrotic Fme, searing through her flesh. Her form twisted, becoming a thrashing, screaming pyre, her movements frantic and desperate as the fmes consumed her. The air filled with the stench of charred flesh and burning hair, her screams a discordant symphony that resonated in the cavern.

  Craycroft’s eyes widened—I barely caught his incantation, the air vibrating with a surge of mana. The fsh of blue light was blinding. Pain nced through every inch of my being, searing—and then… nothing.

  It was all silent. Dark.

  The screaming—both from within me and from them—gone. Fleeting moments of terror swallowed by a familiar abyss. I was back to the beginning again, aching for that chaos I’d create, knowing full well we’d end up here once more, in this endless loop of my making.

  Yet, as always, the madness was beautiful. The way their screams intertwined, the look of horror in their eyes—a symphony I relished, over and over. How long, I wondered, until the girl in pink decided to put an end to my fun?

  ~

  The steady drip of water echoed through the dimly lit cell, harmonizing with the distant rattle of chains and faint, despairing screams. Occasionally, muffled roars and cheers from the world beyond the stone walls seeped in, reminders of a life they could no longer touch. Visitors were rare here—only the occasional guard, delivering a day’s worth of slop onto the frigid floor. It barely qualified as food; even the armored boars of the highnd goblins feasted better.

  In that dark, damp cell, a dwarf woman shuddered awake, her body trembling from the cold.

  “It happened again?” A raspy voice slipped through the shadows from the adjacent cell, soft yet somehow knowing.

  “’Tis always the same,” she replied, her voice brittle as cracked gss. “I-I find this enchantin’ human woman,” she stammered, struggling to stifle a sniffle. “I ask her to join our party, and then she murders us. Brutally, mercilessly—again and again. Always the day before that terrible night.”

  “Ah, the night Sethia fell?” The old man’s voice came with a weary timbre, as though he had carried this burden for far too long.

  “Aye.” The word came out as a whisper, fragile and tired. “She’s hauntin’ me dreams, she is.”

  The darkness swallowed her words, leaving only the echo of her despair. Night after night, sleep had become an ordeal—an unending nightmare that held her hostage for nearly two years.

  “It’s strange, isn’t it?” The old man’s voice held a hint of something unspoken. “I find her in my dreams at night too, always doing the same thing.” He let out a hollow sigh. “Been so long since I’ve had a proper sleep.”

  Another subdued sniffle slipped past the dwarf’s defenses, her tears a quiet rebellion against the cold, indifferent stone. For a dwarf, no shame cut deeper than showing vulnerability. Yet, everything had been stripped from her—her freedom, her honor. Falsely accused of treason, thrown into this pit without trial—all because the nobles needed a scapegoat. Undeserved cruelty. She’d admit to having done some unsavory things in her time, but nothing like this—nothing deserving of this endless punishment.

  “Gimona,” Craycroft’s voice whispered from the shadows, a soft but determined promise woven into the darkness. “We’ll get out of this. Just... have faith in Anlyth.”

  “Aye, but don’t ye be makin’ promises we both know ye cannae keep, Craycroft.” Her voice cracked, tears threatening to return. “For now, I’d settle for a bit of shut-eye without losin’ me intestines.”

  “Yes, that’d be a blessing,” he responded, a hint of something solemn underlying his words. “Last night, I dreamt she fashioned a neckce from my entrails. Yet... she’s never id a hand on Nelzar in any of my nightmares.”

  “Nelzar—the High Priest?” Gimona’s voice sharpened, surprise flickering in her weary tone. “He ain’t in any o’ mine either. It’s some other gnome I don’t recognize.”

  “He wasn’t always a priest,” Craycroft expined, his words soft, distant. “Back before Sethia fell, he was just our healer.”

  “Aye, ye’re right.” A shiver ran through Gimona, and she shook her head. “But I swear, it ain’t him. It’s a different gnome altogether. What d’ye make of that? Reckon Anlyth’s havin’ these same nightmares?”

  A heavy sigh filled the darkness, Craycroft’s voice barely more than a whisper. “I don’t know, Gimona. I just don’t know.”

  The silence returned, heavier than before. The shadows of the dungeon seemed to press closer, suffocating, and the steady drip of water was the only reminder that time, however cruel, still moved forward.

  1

  Like what you read? Wait—you actually did? Well, hot damn! I thought I was the only one with mental issues!

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