"Mom…"

  A child’s voice.

  Young. Trembling.

  Thomas sat upright in a warm bed, his hands clutching the sheets. His cheeks were wet with tears, pupils wide with the echo of something he couldn’t explain.

  From the doorway, a woman entered, bathed in honeyed light. Her silhouette was calm. Kind. Wrong.

  "What is it, honey?" she asked, voice velveted with tenderness. She knelt, brushing the hair. "Bad dreams again?"

  “I was trapped,” young Thomas whimpered. “With others. A place not real. Full of monsters. We had to survive these… horrible trials.”

  She smiled with motherly patience. “It was just a dream, darling. Look, you’re already awake.” She kissed his forehead. “Come have breakfast before school.”

  Thomas blinked. Something behind his eyes shifted.

  “You can stop now,” he said, voice cold and flat.

  Her hand froze mid-stroke.

  “What…?” she asked, faltering.

  “I’m an orphan,” he said plainly. “I’ve had no parents since I was six.”

  The room’s warmth vanished like steam. Her face twitched. The softness of her features peeled back—slowly, then violently—flesh slithering like shed skin. Eyes cracked sideways. Lips split open horizontally. Her neck stretched long and forked.

  Something hissing now wore her skin.

  “You’re cleverer than the rest,” it rasped, smile widening beyond its face. “Most scream until their minds melt... but not you. No, not you.”

  “You’re not my mother,” Thomas said. “You’re a parasite pretending to be something important to me. That was your first mistake.”

  The creature cackled. “You’re not fun at all.”

  It lunged.

  Thomas twisted, small legs bolting through the door. Behind him, the laughter turned jagged, crawling down like ants beneath the skin.

  The hallway outside had changed. No longer the familiar corridor of dreams—it was now alive. Grotesque, warped. The floor throbbed beneath his feet, slick with something black and warm. Body parts littered the corners: eyes nailed into walls, tongues strung like garlands, limbs twisted into impossible knots.

  A rib-bone, jagged at one end, jutted from the dirt. Thomas snatched it.

  He turned just as the Dream Demon screeched toward him—its body slipping between humanoid and serpent, talons clicking like insect limbs.

  A claw caught his cheek. Blood sprayed.

  "You can’t escape me, Thomas," it sang, voice overlapping with dozens of others—male, female, child, all wrong.

  Thomas swung. Missed. The rib-bone glanced off the creature’s hide.

  “This body is too small. I can’t land a fatal strike,” he growled, darting behind a decayed pillar.

  “Thoooomaaas~” it sang, footsteps clicking. “Don’t hide from Mommy. Come out, let’s talk…”

  Then it snapped.

  “COME OUT, OR MOMMY GETS ANGRY!”

  No sound just silence.

  “You think you’re special? You think you’ll pass? You’re meat. That’s all. Your little friend—what’s her name? Sara?—already tied up. Already sobbing. I’ll feast on her soul first. Sweet girls always taste like honey.”

  Thomas’ eyes narrowed.

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  The moment it turned, he pounced from above, landing on its back like a shadow.

  One stab.

  Straight into the top of its skull.

  The creature shrieked. Its voice fractured into a hundred.

  It bucked, slamming Thomas to the ground—but the rib was still buried deep in its head.

  “H-HOW DARE YOU—” it howled, blood gushing from its malformed eyes.

  “You talk too much,” Thomas said, picking up a shattered femur. He bashed the creature’s head.

  Once.

  Twice.

  Again.

  Until its skull collapsed into sludge.

  The creature twitched, mouth bubbling blood.

  “Th-this is… just the beginn-nning… You will die… in this TRIAL…”

  Its body collapsed into smoke.

  Silence.

  The only sound left was Thomas’ breath.

  Then came the whisper.

  “KILLED A DREAM-DEMON.

  SOUL POWER +5.”

  Thomas stood. Wiped the blood from his mouth.

  “I killed it. My soul power increased.”

  He blinked.

  “Seven now… I had two before. From killing that boy.”

  His eyes narrowed, no remorse—just cold calculation.

  Soul Power—a law of Chronicle Torment. Kill to grow stronger. No rules. No morals. Only will.

  “This will break them,” he said to himself. “The others… once they realize they can kill each other for power…”

  He turned, pacing back through the dream-hall as it crumbled behind him.

  “If anyone stands in my way... I’ll kill them.”

  A pause.

  “What kind of twisted place makes a dream-beast the first test?”

  He touched his cheek where the claw had struck. Blood dried on his fingers.

  “Sara,” he muttered.

  He closed his eyes.

  And woke.

  The world was stone and rot.

  Thomas lay on cold granite, soaked in something viscous. His eyes flickered open—blurry, red light dancing above him like candlelight through skin.

  Beside him, Sara gasped and bolted upright.

  “FUCK—Get away from me!” she shouted, backpedaling.

  Thomas stood calmly. Blood still on him.

  “Oh, you’re awake,” he said.

  She breathed hard, eyes wild. “What the hell happened…?”

  “A Dream Demon,” he said. “They pull you into a false dream. Feed by making you emotionally vulnerable… then eat your soul.”

  “Shit,” Sara muttered. “I… I almost didn’t make it.”

  Thomas didn’t respond.

  The chamber around them was massive—fleshy stone, walls pulsing with red veins, as if they stood inside the ribcage of a living thing. The air reeked of rot, metallic and thick. Piles of bones were scattered, arranged like offerings to something ancient.

  Then came the voice.

  A high-pitched metallic chime, then words carved into the air.

  NUMBER OF PARTICIPANTS: TWO.

  SURVIVORS OF THE DREAM-DEMON: TWO.

  “INITIATING TRIAL: ART OF THE NIGHTMARE.”

  Thomas’ eyes narrowed as he gripped the rib-bone tighter.

  “Now the real trial begins.”