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The Nightmare had appeared in the city’s bloodstream only a few months ago, but already its name moved like the plague. No one seemed to know who owned it, who built it, or why it was there, but everyone knew what it promised: a night so perfect it blurred at the edges.
People said you didn’t remember much after, only the feeling, that slow unfurling bliss that clung to your skin like perfume. Photos never surfaced, stories fell apart mid-sentence, but everyone knew it was a place where something happened—something wordless and bewildering—and that was enough to get people hungry. The kind of hunger that made people wait hours in shoes that hurt and laugh through the cold just to have a chance to be chosen.
You’ve done everything they say you’re meant to do, the perfect algorithm to get into a place you do not belong. The dress that shows skin like a promise, the voluminous hair and the sharp eyeliner that transforms your eyes into a cat’s. You even try to copy the body language of the people who surround you: shoulders loose, legs slightly scissored from the biting cold and a face that states heedlessness. But it’s not enough. Or at least that’s what the six-foot bouncer deems when it’s your turn.
He uses his gaze as an instrument: it passes over you, along the line of your neck, the slope of your cheek, the minute posture adjustments you didn't know how to stop making when someone important was watching. You hold his gaze because that’s a rule somewhere, some listicle lodged in your subconscious—the same kind that says have your ID ready, but don’t thrust it forward like a small desperate flag.
But he doesn’t ask for your ID, nor does he ask who you know. His face arranges itself into an apologetic expression that holds no sincerity, only condescension. “I’m sorry,” he says, voice velvet wrapped around iron. “You’re not what we’re looking for tonight.” The statement arrived with a clean, anesthetic sting. It doesn’t even sound like a judgment, more like a choice about chocolate or vanilla ice cream—an effortless decision, thoughtless even.
You laugh, a small trapeze act you can’t stop performing for your own dignity. Your mouth makes a foolish shape trying to retrieve itself.
“Oh,” your best friend, Kazuha, says. “Is there, what, a list we can get on? Or—”.
“You’re not what we’re looking for tonight.” It takes the form of an instruction then, beckoning you elsewhere, back to wherever people like you belong. Someone behind you shifts with a breathy pity.
Humiliation is a temperature; it builds under your skin like a fever, like a cry you can’t afford to have in public, so you swallow it so hard your ears pop. You nod as if this doesn’t matter, as if you have somewhere better to be, as if your heels don’t suddenly hurt.
And now you find yourself along the glossy flank of the building, a black glass ribcage that warps your reflection into something you almost don't recognize. The line has thinned to bones; maybe that’s all it was, the club too full. At least that’s what you tell yourself, ignoring the girls who squealed in excitement after being let in.
It looks like alchemy, the way the bouncer’s nod transforms them, the way the rope becomes a benediction instead of a keep-out sign. You watch their spines go liquid, become versions of themselves that bruise easier, versions that yield easier.
“Hey, the uber’s arriving in five minutes”. Kazuha exhales, watching her breath ghost white.
“We should’ve known better,” you murmur, fingers flicking at your phone screen just to keep them moving, afraid that they are going to fall off if you don’t.
“The Nightmare isn’t supposed to be for everyone.”
You roll your eyes. “You sound like an ad.”
“No, seriously—” she tucks her hair behind her ear, voice dipping into something conspiratorial. “People say the ones who get in don’t come back the same. Not bad different, just... quieter. Like they’re still half-dreaming even when they’re awake.”
“Or a hangover.” you mutter.
“Exactly. A good one.” The two of you dissolve into quiet laughter, the kind that sounds like you’re pretending not to be disappointed.
The door keeps breathing. Each time it opens, a sweet floral perfume unfurls and then withdraws, a tide that coats the night and the people. Inside, you glimpse not much: a wash of darkness like velvet, the brief sequin of a sleeve, the pelted green of plants that are too plasticky to be real. The bass slows you down even out here, a giant lying on a drum, beating with a palm.
The uber is arriving in one minute. That’s your cue; bravery can look like walking away. You could be no one again, swallow the whole night like a pill and let it dissolve without touching your insides.
“They just cancelled.” Kazuha crouches, her legs giving up at a second rejection. She looks small suddenly, folded down there on the sidewalk.
“Here, let me try mine.” You stoop down to her level, closing your knees tight against the cold and the possibility of exposure. You tell your face to stay in place, to not dissolve into something pitiful.
The sound arrives before they do, the low and certain purr of an engine that costs more than you’ll make in a year. You don't look up immediately; you're still refreshing the app, watching the little cars populate and vanish like ghosts.
Beside you, your best friend goes still. Her hand finds your wrist, fingers tightening. “Oh god.”
The car is black, so black it seems to drink the streetlights whole and never give them back. It doesn’t arrive so much as appear, settling beside the curb like liquid poured into shape. When it stops, it doesn’t shudder. It simply is.
The doors open without a sound.
Five of them step out, one after another, a sequence so smooth it feels choreographed. Their suits are tailored with such intent that each detail looks like it’s been woven from shadow rather than thread. It’s not just uniformity, it’s precision, the kind that makes you wonder what happens if one of them steps out of line.
The last to emerge has hair the color of tarnished gold; it falls across his forehead in a way that looks accidental but couldn't be. His jaw is sharp, his nose high and profiled. Even from here, you can perceive the easy way he holds himself, like someone who's never been told no in his life. Or if he has, he didn't believe it.
They move past you, close enough that you catch a scent. It was something that shouldn't work together:earth and funeral flowers, smoke and sugar. It finds its way into you, not just through your nose but through your skin, your pulse. Before you notice, you and Kazuha have drifted closer to the entrance, following it like tidewater pulled toward the moon. The air feels thinner here, charged.
The bouncer feels it too. His spine straightens, his attention snapping toward them as if responding to a silent command. His face performs something like an opening. A recognition.
“Gentlemen.” There’s a change in his voice: the velvet is still there but the iron beneath has softened into something almost warm and malleable. “Welcome back.”
They don't stop. They don't need to. The rope is already lifting, the door slotting open and that hot sweetness pours out to greet them like they've summoned it themselves.
A pause. The one with the sharp jaw sweeps his eyes down the alley with the casual precision of someone cataloging exits and noting details. They pass over the streetlights, his reflection in the black panes and the last cluster of people still waiting with desperate hope.
Then they land on you.
You freeze, phone screen dimming in your hand, casting your face in shadow. You're still bent low like a penitent, like someone praying to a god that won't answer. The position suddenly becomes unbearable; you want to stand, but your legs won't cooperate, locked in place by something you can't name.
His expression doesn't change, but something flickers behind his eyes: the kind of look someone gives a bird with a broken wing: something small and struggling, caught, entirely at their mercy.
You want him to look away, to dismiss you the way the bouncer did, to let his gaze slide past like you're part of the architecture, forgettable as graffiti. But he doesn't. Instead, he lifts one hand. The gesture is minimal, barely a movement at all, just a slight tilt of his fingers, a small rotation of his wrist. But the bouncer sees it. His eyes snap to the man's hand, reading the motion.
“Let them in,” he orders, turning to the bouncer. There's something in his voice that makes you think of honey poured over a blade.
“Let them have their dream.”
The words snag between your shoulder blades like a hook. You hear Kazuha's sharp inhale beside you, feel her fingers tighten on your wrist until it hurts.
The bouncer hesitates, a second so brief you almost miss how his professional disguise shatters. Something that looks almost like fear quivers beneath. He looks at the man, then at you, then back again.
By then, his hand is lowering—he's given his instruction. The man doesn't repeat himself. What happens next isn't his concern.
The man in black turns away, his attention elsewhere, already released. He moves toward the door, following the others—a dark constellation pulling back into formation. You catch one more glimpse of him as the door swallows him whole: the light seems to bend around him rather than touch him.
Then he's gone.
“Were they just talking about us?” Kazuha's voice is barely more than a breath.
“Yeah,” you manage. Your throat is dry. Your legs are shaking. “They were.”
The bouncer is looking at you now. His expression is unreadable, but he lifts the rope like a curtain.
He gives a sharp jerk of his chin toward the entrance. This isn't an invitation he's choosing to extend; it’s an order he's been given.
You hesitate only a moment. Then you step forward, and the door yawns open to meet you.
The air from inside wraps around you, making you go slack at the edges: your eyelashes slow, your eyes film over, a sigh escapes you, the sound being pulled from you rather than given.
You look back once. The bouncer is still there, big as a myth, his hand resting on the rope with careful proprietorship. He has returned to stone, which may be what he really is.
You have a sudden urge to reach back and catch the door, to anchor it with your fingers as if it might close forever and trap you on the wrong side—though you can't say which side that is. You feel the city behind you, the smear of streetlight you are leaving like a peel. You think you’ve laid something down on the curb and will not find it later. Maybe it's your name. Maybe it's the version of yourself that knew how to leave.
The door eases itself back into place.
✦ . ⁺ . ✦ . ⁺ . ✦ . ⁺ . ✦ . ⁺ . ✦ . ⁺ . ✦ . ✦ . ⁺ . ✦ . ⁺ . ✦ . ⁺ .
The Nightmare is not what you expected.
You'd imagined dance floors packed shoulder-to-shoulder, strobe lights carving bodies into geometric fragments, the sticky-sweet reek of spilled cocktails and desperation. But this, this is something else entirely. The space unfolds before you like a fever dream rendered in leather and low light, its proportions slightly wrong, its intimacy impossible.
There are too many couches. That’s the first thing your brain manages to process. Velvet sectionals in jewel tones curve along the walls, pool in corners and create small islands throughout the main floor. They're occupied by people whose heads close together in whispered conversation, faces flickering in and out of the dim light. The dance floor exists, but it's smaller than it should be and less populated than at your usual friday club.
Light spills over everything, from everywhere and nowhere at once. Hidden LEDs wash the room in color, turning skin into waxy art, and yet there’s another kind of glow, a luminescence warm and churning, throwing purple and red in curlicues like the gleam behind your eyelids when you press them shut. It feels alive, as if the room itself were fermenting.
The music answers it, as though the sound were trying to fill every empty space the light leaves behind. The bass notes are so low you feel them in your teeth, your bones, the soft spaces between your ribs. It’s hard to tell whether the room moves with the melody or the melody with the room—it’s a blur of cause and effect.
And then the scent hits you. If the scent outside was strong, inside it’s almost narcotic. The air is saturated with it, so thick you can even taste it on your tongue: vanilla edged by something woodsy, champagne fizzing faintly beneath citrus, the particular musk of too many warm bodies in an enclosed space, and beneath it all, delicate as gossamer, a single floral note. Jasmine maybe. Something white-petaled and night-blooming, the kind of flower that releases its perfume in darkness. You don’t see any flowers around, not a single petal.
You breathe it in, coating the inside of your throat like honey.
But it doesn't go down like honey. It tickles your sinuses and has you folding over in a loud sneeze.
“You okay?” Your best friend glances back at you.
“Yeah, I just—” Another sneeze interrupts you. A couple on a nearby couch glance over, faces twisting in brief disgust before they turn away. Your eyes water slightly. You sniff, embarrassed.
“Seriously?” Kazuha laughs, bright against the music's dark undertow. “Are you allergic to something?”
“There's just—there's some kind of perfume in here,” you say, pressing your knuckle under your nose. “It's really strong.”
“I can barely smell anything over the alcohol and expensive cologne.” She grins, bumping your shoulder. “Guess you're allergic to rich-people perfume.”
You throw your head back with a small laugh. That’s when you notice it: the second floor curves along the back wall like a gallery in an opera house, wrought iron and shadow. Figures drift there, indistinct in the low light, moving with underwater grace. Something glints momentarily—gold jewelry, maybe.
The stairway leading up is flanked by a pair of bouncers whose stillness feels like a statement. Their eyes sweep the crowd below with the disinterest of gods watching ants. You don’t need a rope to know what it means. The stairs aren’t for you. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
“VIP section,” Kazuha says, following your gaze.
“Of course there is.” She puffs beside you. Her palm, already damp with heat, finds yours, squeezing. The calefaction isn’t unpleasant, but it’s consuming: a sweltering warmth that makes your skin aware of itself.
Kazuha tugs you toward the bar that glows like an altar along the far wall. You move, carefully navigating between clusters of people who seem to exist in their own private worlds. Everyone here is alluring, not in the airbrushed, impossible way of advertisements, but in the specific, devastating way of real human faces caught in perfect light.
“Hey, you should get some water. Maybe that’ll calm you down.” Kazuha says, peeking over the counter to look at the diversity of alcohol. The woman behind the bar doesn’t ask what you want; she just hands you a glass with clear liquid that doesn’t ripple. You drink quickly, as if finishing it fast will settle your nose. When you lower the glass, Kazuha presses another into your hand: a cherry-smoke drink, faintly foaming. “They just handed it to me,” she says, smirking. “Guess we look like the kind of girls who need one.”
You blink, and she’s already slipping toward the dance floor.
On the floor, her body finds yours in the dark, and you move together the way you always do. The music swells around you, turning motion into instinct. Thought dissolves into rhythm, and rhythm into heat, until you can’t tell where the song ends and your body begins. When you spin, the room spins with you, and when you stop, you're facing that balcony again as if it were the sun and you, some planet caught in its pull.
“This place,” Kazuha says into your ear, her breath hot against your neck, "is perfect. Everything's perfect."
And she's right, isn't she? The heat, the rhythm, the way the crowd moves as one pulse: it’s all perfect. Even your sneezing feels like it belonged here, just another beat in the night’s rhythm, part of some pattern you don’t yet understand.
The floral scent coils around you again, softer this time. You breathe it in, let it settle low in your lungs, heavy as smoke from an expensive cigarette. The room tilts, then rights itself. Your drink is empty—when did that happen? You’re already forgetting the cold outside, the waiting, the wanting in. All you can do now is follow the night wherever it leads.
✦ . ⁺ . ✦ . ⁺ . ✦ . ⁺ . ✦ . ⁺ . ✦ . ⁺ . ✦ . ✦ . ⁺ . ✦ . ⁺ . ✦ . ⁺ .
The bass slows first. You don’t notice at once, it just feels heavier, like someone poured syrup through the speakers. The melody melts apart, notes collapsing into a single tone that fills the hollows of your skull.
You blink, expecting the blur of color to sharpen, but the light has turned viscous: gold leaks into red, red bleeds into violet, everything dripping together. The air doesn't help either; it's thick, smooth, touched by static and you think you can see it stir, ribbons of light winding between the dancers like mist in a fever dream.
Kazuha is saying something, mouth moving, but her words drown in music that no longer is a song. The crowd moves slowly, airily, as if gravity’s been rewritten. No one bumps into anyone. No one laughs. Everyone seems to be drifting somewhere.
A sound starts to form on your tongue.
Something sharp prickles the back of your throat.
Then someone screams: a whimper strangled in the throat, a sound too raw to be human.
A girl in silver staggers backward, hands clawing at her chest. Her mouth stretches too wide, a scream bending her face out of shape. She hits the floor hard, limbs jerking and head thrashing side to side. Her eyes are sealed tight, but they roll violently beneath the thin skin, as if she's recoiling from a sight only she can see.
Near the bar, a man doubles over, retching, hands clamped to his temples as if trying to hold his skull together. He begins to mutter a stuttered prayer before locking rigid, his body twisting once before it drops. A sound tears from him—a guttural, choked cry of utter helplessness—before stillness overtakes him.
You freeze.
Another drops. Then three. Five. A dozen.
The wave spreads from the dance floor’s center, like a rupture in the middle of a city. People stumble, clutch at furniture, tear at the air, hyperventilate, choke on a fear that has no shape. Glass breaks somewhere, a high sharp sound swallowed by the bass.
“Kazuha—” You reach for her, but she's already swaying, eyes glazed and unfocused. Her face slackens into disbelief, a silent vowel of denial escaping her lips. Then a shock, cold and total, wipes her features clean.
She falls, and you lunge beneath her weight. It nearly takes you down, but you manage to lower her to the floor. She lies there with her hands raised as if warding off an unseen attack, her gaze fixed on some distant, internal point.
“Kazuha!” You shake her shoulders. Nothing. You shake harder. “What’s wrong?!”
But she doesn't answer.
Silence.
Not true silence. The music still plays, an endless hypnotic pounding, but the human noise is gone. The room is now a graveyard of bodies and abandoned screams.
And you're standing in the center of it all, the only one awake.
Your heart hammers against your ribs. Your hands have gone numb. The room tilts—harder this time. You drop onto a couch, head heavy, invaded by unease and that floral sweetness that drives the urge to sneeze, the pressure building behind your eyes until it hurts.
You look down at your best friend: she looks like she’s crying in her sleep. You whisper her name again, softer this time, like saying it quieter will make this whole thing untrue.
Movement catches your eye. The VIP balcony.
Five figures emerge from the shadows beyond. They descend the stairs unhurried, each footstep measured and precise. Their black suits blend into the darkness, but their eyes catch the light: bright, reflective, wrong. They look—no, feel synchronized, like a single thought split into five bodies.
They reach the floor and spread out among the writhing crowd.
The tallest one kneels beside a girl curled on a couch, face buried in her hands. He brushes a strand of hair behind her ear, and presses his palm to her temple.
For a heartbeat, nothing happens.
Then the girl's face... changes. The fear simply vanishes. Her eyebrows relax, breath evens, hands fall away from her face and the faintest smile grazes her lips. He moves on. Others follow in a similar rhythm, gliding from person to person, each touch undoing the terror in an instant. Whimpering, clawing, convulsing bodies—all transformed to calm, serene forms.
You watch, frozen. Every face tells the same immediate story: dismay replaced by serenity, nightmares turned to dreams.
Their touch is magic, or something wearing its skin, and it terrifies you more than the chaos ever could. The calm feels wrong, too sudden, too absolute. You saw what came before. This isn’t healing; it’s the quiet of a wound sealed with something toxic.
The golden-haired straightens from the body he was examining and turns. His gaze drifts slowly across the room, towards you.
Your stomach lurches. Move. Hide. Get out. But your legs, locked by terror and the weight of the air, refuse to obey. All you can do is press yourself flat against the floor, willing yourself invisible. Did he see you? Did he—
Footsteps—easy, measured—draw closer, each one landing like a countdown. Pure, animal instinct takes over: you get on your hands and knees and crawl, dragging yourself through the maze of toppled furniture and motionless bodies.
A hand seizes your hair, jerking your head back.
You almost scream—until you see it’s a girl. She clings to you, sobbing soundlessly, her fingers knotted in your hair as if you’re her last anchor. You want to help. You really do. But fear wins: you pry yourself free. Your palms slap against the sticky floor, skimming past shards of glass and spilled liquor.
There, a velvet curtain at the far wall. You lunge toward it, every sound impossibly loud: your raspy breathing, the rustle of your clothing, the thud of your knees on tile and the thunder of your pulse in your ears.
You slip behind the curtain and fold into the corner where the walls meet, drawing the fabric around you like armor. The fabric smells of smoke and that same sweet floral perfume. It makes you gag.
Through a narrow gap, you peek a sliver of the room beyond. The five have regrouped near the center, speaking in tones too low to make out. One gestures toward the balcony; another nods. They look… satisfied. Like doctors who finished their rounds.
But the golden-haired one isn’t done. His eyes roam the room again, sharp and searching. Something in his expression makes your stomach twist: he looks unsettled, eyes searching for something you don’t know.
Your hand flies to your face, covering your nose and mouth. The pressure builds again, the sneeze, that cursed allergy stalking you all night.
Not now. Please, not now.
He starts walking. One step. Then another.
The floral scent blazes through your nose. The sneeze coils tighter, a desperate, physical knot ready to tear free. Your eyes water.
Ten feet away. Eight. Six.
You pinch your nose until your vision blurs. You can't—
You can't hold it.
The sneeze rips out of you, muffled by your hand but a gunshot in the sudden quiet.
He stops. Turns. Looks directly at the curtain.
Silence drops like a blade. The music. The lights. Even your heartbeat seems to wait.
You see his shoes first: black and so polished that they catch and reflect the neon lights into tiny captive galaxies.
Then the curtain shifts. Not all at once, just a hand, veined and long-fingered, sauntering with impossible calm.
And then he's looking down at you.
He's even more striking up close, and all the more terrifying for it. His midnight black suit fits like a second skin. His face is perfect in a way that human faces shouldn't be: symmetry too uncanny, skin so smooth it looks painted, a jaw carved from lightless stone. His eyes catch what little light remains and throw it back wrong—dark, bright, alive in a way that feels predatory.
“Awake?”
You crush yourself against the wall, desperately seeking to increase the few inches of air that separate you from him.
“You're awake,” he says, studying you like a puzzle piece that doesn’t fit but should. “Why are you awake?”
Behind him, the curtain sways shut, your only exit: gone.
You clench a handful of your dress to keep your hands from shaking. “What’s going on?”
“That,” he leans closer, the club's scent—vanilla, smoke and crushed flowers—intensifies around him, “is what I'd like to know.”
The tickle returns to your nose. You fight it, but a small, graceless sneeze escapes, cracking the terrible intimacy of the moment.
His mouth twitches.
“Ah,” he mutters, crouching to your level with ease too smooth to be human. “The scent doesn’t like you, does it? That’s rare.” He rests his forearms on his knees, hands hanging loosely.
He watches you for a long moment. The silence stretches until it hurts. You’re afraid it’ll consume you whole.
“What—” Your voice cracks. You swallow. “What did you do to them? To my friend?”
“Do?” He sounds perplexed, as if the question itself doesn't make sense.
You think of Kazuha: eyes rolled back, small whimpers caught in her throat. The club seems to shrink around you, walls pressing in, air compressing your lungs.
“They were screaming! I saw them—” Your voice gains strength, adrenaline slicing through the fog.
He glances back toward the room. Understanding dawns his face.
“They were,” he agrees softly. “But they aren’t anymore, are they?” He gestures toward the curtain, toward whatever waits beyond.
“I don't believe you.” You stare at him, horror crawling up your throat.
His mouth twitches, something almost sad. “I know. That's why I'll show you.”
“No—I'm not going anywhere with you.” The wall at your back feels cold, solid—your only anchor.
“Then stay.” He stands up, taking a step back. “Hide behind your curtain. Let the air finish what it started. Your little resistance won't last. The body adapts, even to what it should reject.” His patient gaze pins you where you are. “Or come. See the truth. Feed that relentless curiosity of yours.”
The burning in your nose has faded; the air doesn’t sting anymore. Your body’s giving in.
“Come,” he says again, voice softer now. “See your friend. See for yourself whether she’s still suffering.”
The mention of Kazuha cleaves through you. You left her. You ran.
“She's fine,” he adds, reading you. “Better than fine. She's dreaming of something beautiful, something she's always wanted but never let herself have.”
“I don't understand.” you whisper.
“I know. That's why I'm offering to show you.”
Everything in you screams no. Stay hidden. Stay small. But you have to see her, you have to know.
“If you're lying—” you start.
“Then you'll know,” he finishes. “And you can run. Scream. Whatever you need.” His tone doesn't change. “But you won't. Because I'm not lying.”
Your heart hammers. You push yourself off the wall, legs trembling. The air feels thick, heavy with sweetness. It tugs at your eyelids, makes your bones ache with exhaustion. You want to sleep. The wanting is physical now, a hunger you can taste.
He doesn't touch you, but he's there, close enough his presence steadies you. “Careful,” he murmurs, “the air’s been working on you longer than you think.”
He parts the curtain with one hand, and the club opens before you.
Something’s changed.
Everything that screamed a moment ago sits like a painting. People are draped across couches in impossible repose, mouths parting in small, practiced smiles. The panic is gone, erased with an efficiency that makes your skin ache.
But your body hasn’t caught up. You’re still running, heart hammering against ribs that refuse to believe in peace.
“You see?” His breath brushes the bare skin of your shoulder—bitingly cool, not warm like it should be. “No more nightmares. Just dreams.” He watches you as if your reaction matters.
You take a step forward, then another. He follows, silent as a shadow, giving you space to process.
Everywhere you look: serenity. The girl in silver lies folded into herself, her lashes wet yet her face tranquil, as if she’s drifted somewhere kinder. The praying man snores gently; a sound of deep, untroubled contentment.
It hits you then with nauseating clarity: this calm isn’t mercy—it’s aftermath. They didn’t stop the chaos; they completed it. Panic was the ignition. This, this peace, is the harvest. This isn't an accident. This is the process.
“What did you do to them?”
“They came here,” he says, voice gentle but threaded with steel, “for escape, something different, something they can’t find anywhere else.” He steps closer, soft enough that his presence feels like temperature more than sound.
“You knocked them unconscious.” Your voice shakes; you don’t know if it’s fury or disbelief.
He’s in front of you now, eyes locked on yours—and you can't look away. “You think consciousness is the prize?” He pauses, letting the words settle. “Most people spend their lives begging for the quiet we give.”
He moves past you, weaving between the sleepers with practiced ease. “Do you know how rare true peace is? No anxiety, no fear, no thoughts of tomorrow's responsibilities or yesterday's regrets.” He gestures around.
You follow him, slow and dazed, trying to reconcile what you saw before with what you see now. Until you see her: Kazuha.
She’s sprawled across a velvet couch, head resting on a cushion. Her face is softer than you’ve ever seen it: unguarded, peaceful, radiant. No trace of horror.
“Kazuha?” You drop to your knees and grip her shoulder. Nothing. Just the rhythmic rise and fall of her chest.
“She can't hear you,” he says behind you. “She's too deep in the dream.”
“What is she dreaming about?”
“I don't know.” He crouches beside you, voice quiet. “Dreams are private. We don't observe them, never in detail. We only take what we need.”
Take. The word take makes your skin crawl. “You're feeding of them.”
“You make it sound sinister,” he laughs, a genuine sound that somehow makes everything worse. “Names change the shape of things. You could call it feeding, or balance, or service. We take fear; we leave peace. An exchange, nothing more.” He pauses. “Is that so terrible?”
You look down at Kazuha again. She looks… lighter. Whole. As if she’s been polished clean of all the cracks that made her human.
“She won't remember any of it,” he sighs. “Tomorrow she’ll wake up feeling free. That’s what they all want. The nightmare part—” He makes a dismissive gesture. “Gone. Like it never happened.”
“But it did happen,” you whisper.
He cocks his head in a birdlike way, considering. “If she doesn't remember the pain, if all that remains from tonight is joy, does it matter that there were a few minutes of fear in between?”
You open your mouth, but nothing comes. The logic is wrong, you know it’s wrong, but it feels slippery, almost convincing.
“Go with me upstairs,” he stands, extending a hand. “To the balcony. There’s still more to see. More to understand.”
He withdraws his hand, stepping back. “You can say no. I'll let you wake your friend, unlock the doors, send you both home. You'll forget most of this by morning—the drug sees to that.”
“But I'll know,” you utter. “Somewhere, I'll know something was wrong.”
“Yes.” His grin widens. “And that will haunt you more than anything you’ve seen tonight.”
The music shifts again, the hypnotic drumming deepening. The sleepers exhale in unison, and the rhythm of it pulls at you, syncing your heartbeat to theirs.
Your legs shake. The drug hums through your veins; your limbs feel distant. He extends his hand again. You know you don't have much time before it wins.
“You promise?”
Something flashes across his face, something like pity. “I don't make promises, but I’ll tell you this: peace always asks for something back.” he says. “The question is whether you're willing to pay the price of knowing.”
You look at Kazuha, smiling in her sleep, lost in whatever dream he gave her. You look at his outstretched hand. You find, to your own surprise, that your fingers hover toward his.
His strange smirk returns, pleased. He extends his hand again—pale, unblemished, perfectly still—and this time you take it. His skin is contrastingly cool to his steady and warm grip as he pulls you to your feet.
He doesn't let go immediately, and you don't pull away.
“Come,” he lets go, but the word itself compels your feet forward, more spell than command. “Before the dream forgets you.”
And despite everything, despite the warning, the dread, the voice screaming inside your skull—
You follow.
✦ . ⁺ . ✦ . ⁺ . ✦ . ⁺ . ✦ . ⁺ . ✦ . ⁺ . ✦ . ✦ . ⁺ . ✦ . ⁺ . ✦ . ⁺ .
The staircase winds upward like a spine.
At the base of the stairs stands one of them, silver-haired, with a face like a porcelain saint. He doesn’t move as you pass, doesn’t even blink, but his gaze is a heavy, cold weight following you up into the darker heart of The Nightmare.
The stairs are carpeted in something that drinks sound, swallowing your footsteps. Only his breathing remains, steady as a metronome, and beneath it—far below now—the collective exhale of several dozen sleeping bodies.
The balcony opens like a secret. It stretches across the upper tier of the club: a crescent overlooking everything. The railing is ornate, twisted into shapes that could be vines—or perhaps reaching hands—you can't quite tell in the low light. Candles flicker in glasses along the edge, their flames barely moving, as if even the air up here holds its breath.
You step forward, and you can see everything.
Below, the dance floor has become a field of dreams. The strobing lights have softened to gentle cascades of deep red and midnight purple, washing over the bodies sprawled in impossible intimacy. It seems as if the world itself has paused to let everyone inhale at once.
You can see your best friend, her arm draped over her stomach, sleeping the sleep of the unburdened. The sleep of the innocent.
“Beautiful,” he says softly, and the word hangs between you like a verdict. There’s no fondness in it, just attention, acute and almost clinical.
“They look dead.”
“Do they?” His voice comes from beside you, low and close. He isn’t looking at you; his gaze drifts over the sleepers as if studying results. “I think they look free.”
You grip the railing. The iron bites into your palms, a rude comfort.
“Tell me,” he says, leaning against the rail, the motion graceful and almost careless, “how often have you felt peace? Truly. No noise in your head, no anticipation, no shame.”
You can’t answer. He doesn’t expect you to.
“People spend their whole lives drowning in fear,” he continues. “Fear of failure. Fear of being alone. Fear of being seen. Fear of being forgotten.” His fingers trace the iron railing absently. “They live in a constant state of terror so normalized they no longer recognize it.”
“That's just life.”
“Is it?” He looks at you, and there's something ancient in his eyes, something that's seen too much and remembers it all. “Or is that just what you've been told to accept?”
You want to argue, but your voice catches.
“But you force nightmares on them”
“The nightmares were always there.” His voice drops lower. “We just bring them to the surface. Let them play out. Let them end.” He pauses, watching a sleeping couple below, tangled together like they've known each other for years instead of hours. “And when they wake, the nightmares stay gone—for a while, at least.”
“For a while,” you repeat. “Until they come back.” The words land soft but heavy.
“Of course they come back.” He doesn't deny it. “Peace isn't permanent. Nothing is. But for a few days, a few weeks—” He gestures below, and your eyes follow. “They feel lighter. They sleep through the night. They remember what it's like to breathe without drowning.”
You want to argue, but looking down at those peaceful faces, you can't quite find the words.
“But there's a danger,” he says, almost to himself now.
“Danger?” Your head snaps to look at him.
He's quiet for a moment, regarding the way his glass holds the candlelight—there's a drink in his hand now. You didn't see him pick it up. Red wine. Dark as blood. “What happens when someone gets exactly what they've been craving?" His mouth quirks, an expression that doesn’t reach his eyes. “They want more. Again and again. The fear dulls, then the hunger, then everything else.” He takes a sip. “Soon there’s nothing left to strip away.”
“They lose themselves.” You sigh.
“They lose everything that made them human.” He throws his head back. “That’s the natural conclusion of what they wanted all along: peace. Perfect, unchanging peace.”
A shiver works its way down your spine. “You sound like you hate them for it.”
“No,” he says. “I understand them.”
The quiet stretches thin.
“You think we're cruel,” his voice slides through the air like a note from the song that never ended.
"Aren't you? They can't consent—”
“They consented the moment they walked through those doors.” He interrupts softly. “The Nightmare isn't subtle—everyone knows this place is different, even when something feels wrong. They drink, they breathe deep, they submit. They always stay.”
The candles flutter between you, casting shifting shadows across your faces. The music below is barely audible now, just a low vibration that matches the uneven thrum of your pulse.
“It's manipulation.”
“Everything is.” His reply is soft but sharp. “Every gesture, every word, every touch—we're all just trying to get what we need from each other.” His eyes shine golden like his hair.
You should argue, but there’s a coherence to his cynicism that makes your stomach twist. Something in you knows he’s right, even if every nerve insists he shouldn’t be.
“Why am I here?” The question comes out quieter than you intend. “Why bring me up instead of letting me sleep too?”
He sets his glass down on the railing, pushing himself off it. “Because you’re awake.”
He takes a slow step closer, words unraveling with the patience of someone who hasn’t needed to rush for centuries. “Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve spoken to anyone who wasn’t dreaming? Someone who could respond with intention instead of dream-logic?”
You turn to face him, leaning slightly on the railing. “How long?”
“Long enough that time stopped meaning anything. The nights repeat until they blur.” Another step. “But you, you're different. You ask questions. You challenge.” A faint smile ghosts across his face. “You judge.”
“I'm not—”
“You are,” he says, almost fondly. “And I don't mind. It's… refreshing.” He pauses. “To be seen at all.”
Something in his tone that makes you hesitate. Weariness, weariness comes from playing the same role for so long you forget there was ever another.
“What are you?”
He laughs under his breath, the sound like silk catching on something rough. “What do you think I am?”
“I don’t know.” You glance at the floor. “Something that shouldn't exist. Something that feeds on pain and calls it mercy.”
“Shouldn't?” He moves closer still, and you don't back away—can't. “That's a matter of perspective. We've existed far longer than your 'should' and 'shouldn't' categories.”
Your heart is palpitating so hard you can hear it. “How long have you been doing this?”
“Longer than you can imagine.” He says without pride or shame. “Longer than cities have had names. Longer than humans have had words for what we are.”
“What are you?” you ask again, desperate now for a real answer.
“Does it matter? By tomorrow, you won't remember anyway.”
The casual way he says it makes something twist in your chest. As if this moment means nothing. As if you mean nothing.
You want to hate him for it, but the candlelight makes him look almost human, exhaustion etched beneath perfection. He looks like something ancient playing at being young. A creature that’s forgotten how to rest.
“You look tired.” you say before you can stop yourself.
His eyes flash—startled, almost defensive.
“You're tired,” you press, voice steadying. “Of this—of the same night, over and over. Of feeding on relief but never feeling it yourself.” You take a breath. “Of being alone.”
“Don't,” he says, quieter than before. “Don't do that.”
“Do what?”
His voice scrapes, suddenly rough. “Don’t make me something I’m not. Don’t make me human.”
He says it like a warning, but the space between you hums with the opposite. You can feel it: the pull, the gravity of recognition neither of you asked for.
He doesn't answer, just stares at you with those too-bright eyes. And you realize: he doesn't know. He brought you up here thinking he had a reason, a purpose, a script to follow. But somewhere between words, it slipped. Became something real.
And now he's as trapped in this moment as you are.
“You want to feel real,” you say softly. “Even if it's just for tonight. Even if I forget. You want someone to see you—really see you—and not see a myth.”
Your hand moves before you decide to move it, pressing lightly against his chest. The fabric is smooth, precise, expensive. Beneath it, a heartbeat.
Slow. Steady. Real.
He looks down at your hand, then back up. The control he wears like armor falters.
“Don’t make me want this,” he says, but his hand rises anyway, covering yours. The contact seals something neither of you meant to start. His skin is cool through the fabric, but the pulse beneath it feels almost fevered.
“Want what?”
“This.” He gestures between you, the space suddenly intimate, charged. To stop being seen as a function.” His eyes find yours again, startlingly bright. “To stop being what I was made to be. To just—be.”
The words fall between you like static. You should pull away. Should remember what he is, what he does, what he's capable of. Should remember Kazuha sleeping below, all those bodies unconscious because of him and his kind.
But his heartbeat doesn’t lie, and the loneliness in his face isn’t something you can ignore.
“You are real,” you say, a statement.
His free hand rises to cup your face, cautious, thumb brushing your cheek as if confirming you exist too. The gesture is so careful it feels almost reverent.
“You won't remember,” he murmurs, “you'll wake up confused, unsure if any of this happened. It'll feel like a dream.”
“Maybe.” You tilt into his palm. “But right now, it is happening.”
He studies you for a long moment. When he speaks again, his voice has lost its edge. “Right now,” he echoes, quieter, “you’re the only real thing in my world.”
Somewhere in the space between his heartbeat and yours, something shifts. The air changes temperature. His pulse rises beneath your hand.
“You're not afraid anymore,” he says, thumb tracing the edge of your jaw.
He's right. The fear has transformed into something else, a feeling warm and dangerous and hopelessly reckless. “Should I be?”
“Probably.” He grins. “But you're not. Your curiosity’s won the battle, hasn’t it?”
“That's more dangerous than fear.” He tightens his hold on your hand and lets it go. Leaving a cold patch of skin.
“Because curiosity is how humans fall.” His voice drops to almost nothing as his hand finds the other side of your jaw. “How they surrender without even realizing they've made a choice.”
“And if I want to?”
For a moment, he looks like he doesn’t understand the question. Then his expression darkens, wild and bright at once. “Then I won’t stop you”
His hand slides from your cheek to the back of your neck, fingers tangling in your hair; an anchor or a warning, you can’t tell. The space between you narrows until it feels electric.
“Last chance,” he murmurs, his lips so close to yours you can feel the cool air of his breath. “You can still walk away. Go back. Forget.”
But his hand is in your hair, his other hand ghosting your jaw, his heartbeat steady under your palm. And you're so tired, tired of resisting, tired of pretending you don’t want to know what happens next.
“I don't want to walk away.”
The words are barely out before his mouth finds yours.
The kiss is gentle at first, testing, tasting, unhurried. He kisses like someone who hasn’t done it in centuries, like he’s relearning what it means to touch another being and be touched in return. There’s no hunger at first, only precision—memorization.
He tastes like honey from flowers and something older beneath it, metallic and unplaceable. The strangeness only makes you lean in more, let him in, surrender to the slow drag of his tongue against yours.
And you correspond: your tongue delves into his mouth, feeling every detail, trying to etch this moment into your bones deep enough to survive the forgetting.
The hand on your jaw slides to your waist, drawing you closer until the distance disappears. He’s solid, too solid for what he is, and that impossibility makes your pulse race harder.
When you finally break apart, your breath catches against his. His forehead rests against yours, and for a moment he looks almost human.
His hand slithers from your waist to your spine, leaving heat in its wake despite the coolness of his touch. You arch into it without meaning to, letting something between a gasp and a sigh out. His grip tightens in your hair.
“You should stop me,” his voice comes low.
You manage a breath. “Why?”
“Because I'm taking from you.” His thumb traces the hollow of your throat. “Your clarity. Your fear. Your hope. It’s how we exist. How I exist.” His eyes flick down to your mouth. “And when morning comes, you’ll forget what you’ve lost.”
“Then take it.” You swallow, your voice trembling but steady. “If I won't remember anyway, if this moment only exists for you—” You meet his eyes. “Then make it worth remembering.”
In a second, gratitude and hunger cross his face in one impossible expression.
The next kiss breaks through restraint, through whatever fragile control he had left. His mouth moves against yours with something between need and apology, consuming every sound you make.
He presses you back until the railing catches your spine, the cold iron digging into your back, but you don't care. Can't care. Because his mouth is on your neck, your collarbone, that sensitive spot behind your ear. Every kiss feels like he's pulling something from you, unease or hope or the memory of both, and replacing it with heat.
His hands leave you only long enough to shrug his jacket from his shoulders. He takes the chance to find you again, gripping your body like he’s mapping it—learning every curve, every soft place, every spot that makes you tremble.
Your fingers find the buttons of his shirt, fumbling with them. The first one slips free, then the second, but your hands are shaking now. Weakening. The strength drains from your limbs like water through a sieve.
He notices. His hands come up to cover yours, stilling their useless movement.
“I'm not—” you start, but the words slur. Your vision blurs at the edges, the candlelight smearing into gold streaks.
“You are.” He pulls back enough to look at you, but that makes you lose your balance and your falling.
He catches you before you hit the ground, arms wrapping around you as you both sink down to the floor with a muted thud. He cradles you against his chest, your body nestling into his.
“I've got you,” he mutters, one hand cupping the back of your head, the other wrapped tight around your waist. “I've got you.”
You try to hold onto him, but your fingers won't cooperate. They slide uselessly down his chest, catching on the open buttons of his shirt before falling limp again.
“I don't want to forget this.” You whisper, barely audible.
“Shh.” He shifts, pulling you closer until you're practically in his lap, until there's no space between you at all. His hand strokes your hair in docile, rhythmic motions. “Let go. It's alright.”
Something in his tone sounds like farewell.
“Sleep,” he whispers in your ear. “Dream. Let it all fade.”
You feel the words settle into you like a command. The weight in your limbs deepens, the world softens at the edges.
“You were perfect,” his voice is barely audible now. “Brave and curious and so beautifully awake. I'll remember every word. Every breath. The exact way you looked at me before you surrendered.”
You try to answer, but your tongue won't work. Won't form the words you need.
“When you wake,” his hand continues its gentle path through your hair, “you'll remember dancing. Laughing. Feeling free. The fear will be gone. The nightmares you carried—they’re gone now. I took them with me.”
No. That's not—you want to remember. Want to hold onto this impossible moment.
But the darkness is rising, warm and gentle, pulling you under.
“Thank you,” he whispers, voice breaking on the edge of something like sorrow. “For seeing me. Even if you’ll never know you did.”
His lips brush your forehead: cool, tender, final.
“Dream well.”
The world tilts. The candles blur. And the last thing you see before the darkness takes you completely is his face hovering above yours, unbearably lonely.
Then nothing.
Only warmth.
Only dark.
And somewhere in it, a dream begins.
You forget the taste of fear before you forget your name.
What was his name?