Leonard woke with a start, heart pounding and breath ragged. The trembling that had roused him seemed to echo through every fiber of his being, as if his entire body was trying to reject the reality surrounding him.
"Ahh! What the hell was that? My dreams keep getting worse! How am I supposed to sleep like this?"
He pressed a hand against his chest, trying to steady the wild beating. Then, something felt off. He wasn't in his bedroom. The familiar walls had vanished, replaced by a vast, strange expanse thick with unease. Something deep inside unsettled him — a distant memory of a forgotten nightmare from childhood... but this time, it was real.
Before him stretched a colossal chasm, reaching as far as the eye could see. Rocks stained with shades of red gleamed beneath a dark star that shone like a sun. It was as if the sky itself conspired against his sanity.
"What the hell is this?!"
Leonard squeezed his own arm hard, hoping to wake himself from what he thought was a nightmare. The pain confirmed his worst fear: he was awake.
Raising his gaze, he scanned the ground around him.
"At this hour, I should be asleep, not wide awake... I have work tomorrow, and this isn't helping…"
Strange, withered purple flowers dotted the landscape here and there, vaguely reminiscent of chrysanthemums — a memory of Sophie, who had taught him about flowers. But before he could linger on the thought, his instincts screamed danger. He lunged instinctively to the side, narrowly avoiding something that had sprung from one of the flowers.
"I need to get out of here!"
A bizarre creature, like a whip of flesh with a mouth at the tip, struck him as he fell awkwardly, stinging his shoulder — but he didn't stop. He scrambled up and fled the cursed chasm.
As he pressed on, the terrain slowly shifted. Rocky walls gave way to scarlet mountains, forming a landscape as majestic as it was threatening.
Above, through heavy clouds, a colossal castle hovered over a distant peak. Merely looking at it, Leonard felt the weight of the world crash down on his shoulders. The air felt thin, his chest tight.
"I... I can't breathe..." he gasped, clutching his chest. Every detail of the castle exuded a crushing despair.
Words failed him, as if in the presence of the towering fortress, nothing else mattered but... Despair. Grasping his right hand against his chest, Leonard coughed while staring at the ground, his heart racing and his body screaming for help.
Terrified, Leonard noticed the ground trembling. Immense tentacles emerged, accompanied by a shapeless black mass with a central eye. The creature—an impossible abomination—slithered across the terrain, hunting its next victim. A cold shiver ran down Leonard's spine as he dove into a narrow crevice in the rock wall to hide.
"Fuck, shit, shit... What the hell is this? Is this what the investigators fight against? This has to be a nightmare, right? It's just a nightmare... isn't it?"
The colossal eye swept the chasm, its crimson light slicing through the rocks, exposing everything in its path. Leonard barely breathed, terrified that any movement might give him away. When the creature finally withdrew, the trembling subsided, and Leonard collapsed to the ground, panting, his body shaking.
"It's over now, right? It's passed... Soon I'll wake up, yes, I really will wake up now, won't I?"
But relief didn't come. Next to him, something he had failed to notice before—a decomposing corpse.
Larvae crawled over the rotten flesh, while the chest was grotesquely torn open. Leonard couldn't hold it in.
Overwhelmed, it was too much. He vomited onto the ground with the last of his strength. He fell, hitting his face on the dirt; some of the vomit splattered on his face, but he gathered strength to wipe it away.
He crawled away from the body, leaning on the opposite side of the corpse and his own sickness. His mind was on the verge of collapse, but thoughts of his brothers kept him tethered. They couldn't be here. They couldn't face this hell. For the first time in a long while, Leonard cried. The tears poured like a storm, bringing a bitter relief.
Leonard's body ached, his stomach churned, and the taste of his own vomit lingered in his mouth. He tried to gather saliva to spit and ease the nausea, but his throat was dry and raw.
He felt unbearably alone. He thought of his brothers, of the small happiness they shared despite their struggles. A mix of wanting them close, yet horror at the thought of them enduring the same suffering, filled him with dread...
Exhausted, he fell into a dreamless sleep.
An hour passed. A day. A week. Leonard couldn't tell. But he finally felt better, a remarkable softness beneath his back. He almost believed he had finally awakened from the nightmare, back home. Almost.
When he fully regained consciousness, Leonard became alert. His last memory was the rotting corpse to his left—but unlike before, there was no body there. It was as if it had never existed in this place.
Gathering the little strength he had left, he stood and shuffled forward, leaning against the walls to make his way out of the narrow crevice. Again, the chasm in shades of red unfolded before him.
He walked in the opposite direction from where he had come earlier. Though unsteady, each step filled his heart with a faint hope, however distant. Leonard heard the sound of dripping water, which helped steady his senses as confusion and aimlessness threatened to overwhelm him.
He wandered for ten, twenty minutes—or maybe longer—until the towering walls that once suffocated him with their imposing presence shrank down to mere pebbles. Ahead, a region resembling a plain—or perhaps a plateau—spread out.
"Finally... Water…"
The dripping grew louder, filling his ears, rekindling a spark of hope. Staggering toward the sound, he found only puddles of water mingled with orange grass.
The orange grass gave an unreal feeling, but Leonard recalled the cruel truth: none of this was a dream. This was reality, raw and bare, with its crossroads of the future.
He dropped to his knees, exhausted. The world around him seemed to mock his misery. Everything was surreal—and at the same time, cruelly real. The red surrounding him was more than a color; it was the shade of despair itself.
"No... It's... Not... Possible…"