Chapter Text
Nightmare learns two things on the same day: fear can be quiet, and it can wait. It doesn’t scream when it finds you. It doesn’t chase. It settles—patient, observant—like dust in the corners of a room you swear you clean every day.
By the time you notice it, it’s already part of the furniture.
Nightmare does not notice it at first. He is too busy keeping his head down.
The hallway is loud in the way only schools are—lockers slamming shut, laughter snapping like static, the low hum of voices blending into something shapeless and hostile.
Nightmare moves through it with practiced efficiency; shoulders tucked in, steps measured. He knows where not to look, which corners to avoid, and how to disappear without actually leaving.
Being invisible is a skill. He learned it early.
He learned that being invisible ensures his survival.
Being seen causes problems; bullies who seek to torment him, teachers who publicly humiliate him, side-glances that feel like poorly veiled scorn. Judging stares. Nothing but mist in the back of their conscience—if being generous.
So he hides.
Or… as he has taken to doing lately; he avoids.
Avoidance looks exactly like this: taking the long route to change classes. Listening to familiar voices that mean trouble—so he can take detours. Going to ‘haunted’ places to seek refuge; because he knows no one wants to get close to those places.
No one wants to get close to where Parasites live.
No one but him.
Nightmare doesn’t avoid those. The deepest corner of the library. The creepy music room. The east wing stairwell—the most well known ‘haunted’ place of his high school. A forbidden path Nightmare always takes, even though it adds three minutes to his commute between classes.
Why? Because no one goes there.
The walls are old concrete, hairline cracks running through them like veins. The lights flicker—not enough to be broken, just enough to feel indecisive. Sounds behave strangely there—bouncing from walls in funny, invisible shapes. Footsteps dull faster than they should. Voices don’t echo. Everything feels… held.
Students avoid it without ever agreeing to. Rumors circulate in half-jokes and lowered voices.
“It’s cursed!”
“It messes with your head.”
“There is something wrong with that place.”
Once, Nightmare overheard someone say it was ‘Parasite territory’, as if that explained everything.
Sure, he knew about Parasites–everyone did, to some extent.
They live in the walls, amusement parks, museums and shopping malls. They live in people—Hosts—or move between them as if the world were a buffet. They bring magic—an unsettling, unnatural concept—to the world. They’ve contaminated everything they touch, and yet, continue living among people—humans and monsters—as if they belong here.
Parasites are wrong—but common enough that Nightmare don't blink twice when hearing their name. He doesn't care about the creatures that makes it different.
He only knows that when he steps inside the stairway, his shoulders loosen. His breath evens out. The noise of the school—shouting, lockers, laughter sharp as glass—fades into something distant and manageable. It feels like standing in a room where someone else already turned the lights down.
Nightmare pauses on the landing, resting his hand against the cold railing. The air is warmer here, just barely. Not heat—presence. A quiet, ambient awareness that doesn’t look at him so much as exist alongside him.
He closes his eyes for half a second, and a small smile finds his face. When he opens them, someone is staring. A human girl—from his year—hovering near the entrance to the stairwell, backpack clutched tight to her chest. She looks at him like he’s doing something dangerous.
"You shouldn’t be in there," she says. "That place is cursed."
Nightmare blinks. "It’s just a stairwell."
She frowns. "It’s not just anything. My brother says they should seal it. Places like that mess people up. You could catch a Parasite."
Nightmare doesn’t know what to say to that. He shrugs, steps past her, and continues down. Behind him, he hears her mutter, "Freaking parasites," under her breath. The word doesn’t belong here. It feels wrong in the stairwell, like shouting in a library at the library.
Nightmare doesn’t look back.
Nightmare doesn’t notice when it happens.
That, later, bothers him the most.
He leaves the stairwell like he always does—quietly, quickly, head down. The hallway swallows him without comment. No one stops him. No one looks twice. The world resumes its usual indifference. If something changes, it does so without ceremony.
It’s a strange thing to realize, hours later, that the air feels different.
Closer.
Nightmare takes his seat just before the bell rings. It’s the same desk he’s had since the start of the year—third row from the back, near the window that doesn’t open all the way. The kind of seat teachers forget to look at unless they’re taking attendance.
He likes it that way.
He opens his notebook and begins copying the date from the board in careful, even strokes. His handwriting is neat. Also elegant. Almost obsessively so. The letters line up perfectly with curves of embellishment here and there. His handwriting an almost perfect reenactment of victorian letters.
The chalk snaps.
It’s loud enough to make several students flinch. The teacher pauses mid-sentence, staring at the broken stub in her fingers like it personally offended her.
"Tch. Cheap supplies," she mutters.
Nightmare blinks.
The chalk dust hangs in the air longer than it should, drifting instead of falling. It curls strangely, as if following invisible currents. For just a second, Nightmare feels it—an awareness brushing against his, faint and curious. The sensation fades as quickly as it came.
The teacher replaces the chalk and continues.
Nightmare lowers his gaze, pulse ticking up a notch. He tries to focus on his classes, but he spends the rest of the school day drifting through it. He answers questions when called on. He writes notes he’ll never reread with a perfect calligraphy no teacher will ever bother to praise—or read. He avoids familiar voices, takes familiar detours, does everything exactly the way he’s practiced doing it for years.
And yet—
The spaces between things feel smaller.
He becomes aware of places the way someone might notice background music suddenly turned up a notch. The hallway corners hum faintly. The old lockers radiate a dull warmth that has nothing to do with heat. Even the classroom—sterile, aggressively normal—has a texture to it he’s never picked up on before.
He doesn’t have a word for it, though. Just a sense that the world is… layered.
Nightmare rubs at his arms, unsettled, and tells himself he’s imagining it.
Everyone imagines things sometimes—he thinks to himself.
Between third and fourth period, Nightmare hears his name. It’s not said loudly.
It’s not meant for anyone–but him–to hear.
The teacher calls on him by accident. Nightmare knows this because she flinches when she realizes what she’s done.
"Yes—uh—Nightmare?" she says, glancing down at her attendance sheet like it betrayed her. "Could you… answer the next one?"
The room turns. Not fully. Not dramatically.
But enough to be uncomfortable.
Nightmare feels the attention like a sudden change in air pressure. His back straightens automatically, every muscle pulling inward as if trying to fold him smaller.
The presence shifts. It doesn’t surge. It doesn’t react the way panic does.
It settles.
Nightmare swallows and looks at the board. The answer comes easily. Too easily. The problem is layered—numbers on top of symbols, symbols on top of assumptions—but the solution slides into place in his mind like it’s always been there, waiting.
He explains it quietly. Clearly.
The teacher blinks. "Oh," she says. "Yes. That’s—correct."
A few students glance at him with mild surprise. One of them snorts softly, disbelieving.
The presence hums, pleased in a way Nightmare can’t quite identify.
"Good," the teacher adds, then hesitates. "You should… participate more."
Nightmare simply nods.
He doesn’t tell her that he tried. That he always has. That getting answers right had never been the problem. The problem is that she—or anyone else—just never noticed. Always ignoring him. Or when they notice, it’s always bad attention.
Nightmare sits down. It’s as if he’d never stood in the first place.
When the attention fades, it leaves something behind: Expectation.
Nightmare ignores it. He keeps repeating the mantra "Hide. Do not be seen. Don't attract attention." His hands tremble once he’s out of sight, and for the first time, it's not relief curling in his chest.
By the time the final bell rings, he’s exhausted. Not physically. Not mentally, exactly. It feels more like having held something carefully all day without realizing it—only noticing the strain once he’s allowed to let go.
The walk home is uneventful. The street looks the same. The houses stand where they always have. Nothing follows him. Nothing watches. If anything, the quiet feels too quiet.
But he feels that something is wrong. There is change in the air. He is being watched, somehow. Nothing is quiet enough.
Nightmare tells himself it’s dissociation—That’s the word the counselor used once, during a meeting Nightmare didn’t ask for. He remembers nodding along, pretending to understand while wishing the floor would swallow him whole.
Dissociation explains a lot.
The floaty feeling. The sense of distance. The way the world sometimes feels like it’s happening a step to the left of where he’s standing.
So that’s what this is. Just his brain doing what it does best: protecting him badly.
By the time he reaches home, he’s almost convinced himself.
Almost.
When he steps inside, the feeling dulls slightly, like whatever has been pressing against his awareness settles down. That’s comforting enough that he doesn’t question it.
He should have.
Nightmare drops his bag by the door and kicks off his shoes. Home smells like detergent and something warm—soup, maybe, or bread, or apple pie. The kind of smell that seeps into fabric and makes everything feel slower.
Dream’s voice drifts in from the living room. "—I’m just saying, if they’re going to make us run laps, they could at least explain why—"
"You’d complain less if you ran more," Nim replies mildly.
Nightmare hovers in the doorway, listening. The presence quiets further, like it’s learning the rules of the space.
Dream notices him first. "Hey. You’re home early."
He is absolutly not ‘early’.
"Normal time," Nightmare says.
Dream squints. "You okay?"
Nightmare shrugs. That’s enough. Dream accepts it immediately, attention already drifting back to whatever injustice he was mid-rant about. Nightmare moves to the sink and washes his hands.
The water feels… wrong.
He turns the tap off too fast, heart skipping.
“Sorry,” the presence says, almost embarrassed. “I’m still figuring this out.”
Nightmare freezes.
“What? Who’s–” he says aloud.
The conversation stops. His mother looks at him like he’s gone crazy. His brother has an interrogation mark on his expression. Nightmare instantly shuts up. Brushes it off as accidentally thinking loudly. His mother comments on ‘stress’. Dream laughs it off. Nightmare doesn’t make any more questions–no one does.
The voice disappears.
Nightmare wishes he could do that too.
Lunch is late, as usual.
His mother—Nim—insists on eating together when she can, and today she can. The three of them sit around the small kitchen table—Dream talking too fast about something that happened at school, their mother half-listening while she flips through messages on her phone, and adding shallow questions here and there to keep the conversation going.
His twin brother talks with his hands. He always has. Fork abandoned, gestures wide and careless as he recounts his day like it’s a performance. Nim nods along.
"No, that wasn’t Tuesday," she says. "That was last week."
Dream grins. "Same thing."
Nightmare watches them from behind his glass of juice. He’s aware, suddenly, of how much space Dream takes up. How easily. How no one minds.
Nightmare shifts in his chair, pulling his elbows in. The room presses close. Not threatening. Just… attentive. Waiting to see what his next action will be.
He does nothing. He just pokes at his food.
The presence he’s being constantly aware of since school ended deflates–disappointed.
Nightmare swallows, suddenly uneasy.
Then—
“Oh.”
The thought lands in his mind with the gentleness of someone stepping into a room and realizing they’re not alone.
Nightmare freezes. Fork halfway to his mouth. Shoulders locked. Breath caught somewhere shallow and useless.
But the world does not stop. Dream keeps talking. Nim is still humming softly under her breath as she reads her e-mails and messages.
No one reacts.
“There you are.” The thought continues, tentative but unmistakably present. “I was worried you’ve been ignoring me.”
Nightmare’s heart slams against his ribs. He doesn’t move. Doesn’t blink.
Doesn’t breathe.
This isn’t like his thoughts. It doesn’t feel intrusive, sharp, or spiraling. It's oriented. Directed at him, not through him. But it doesn’t feel his.
"I—" Nightmare croaks.
Dream stops mid-sentence. "Huh?"
Nightmare’s mouth snaps shut.
The presence withdraws just enough to give him space—not gone, just quieter, like someone leaning back to avoid being overheard.
“Sorry,” it says once again. “Bad timing?”
Nightmare stares at his plate, vision blurring. His hands shake.
Nim looks up. Her gaze sharpens instantly—not alarmed, not angry, just focused in the way only parents get when something goes wrong in a way that doesn’t announce itself.
“Nightmare?” she asks carefully. "What’s wrong?"
He swallows. "I think," he says, voice thin, "I think someone’s talking to me."
Silence.
Not the awkward kind. Not the confused kind. The loaded kind. Everyone at that dining table knows what that means.
His mother is on her feet before Nightmare finishes the sentence. She doesn’t shout. She doesn’t panic. She crosses the room in two strides and crouches in front of him, hands hovering, respectful of his space.
"Since when?" she asks quietly.
Nightmare squeezes his eyes shut. "Just now."
Dream frowns. "Talking how?"
Nightmare doesn’t answer him. He can feel the presence listening—not intruding, not pushing. Waiting.
Nim’s jaw tightens almost imperceptibly.
She doesn’t ask who.
She doesn’t ask why.
She asked when—which meant she already knew what it was.
She reaches for Nightmare’s wrist, checking his pulse with practiced familiarity. She is a nurse, afterall. And yet, she wasn't prepared to deal with this.
No one ever is.
"Okay," she says, voice steady. "Okay. We’re going to the clinic."
Nightmare opens his eyes. "What? No—I’m not—maybe I’m just tired, or—"
"Night," Nim says gently, firmly. "Sweetheart. Listen to me."
She meets his gaze, and for the first time since the thought appeared in his head, fear blooms in a way he recognizes. Not his own. Hers.
Nightmare can feel it.
He shouldn’t be able to. But he can. And he doesn’t know why.
"Does it feel like it’s inside your head," she asks, "or like it’s next to you?"
Nightmare hesitates.
The presence shifts, uncertain. “I don’t want to cause trouble.” It mumbles, almost like a reassurance to itself.
"Inside," Nightmare whispers.
Nim closes her eyes.
That’s it. That’s the moment where Nightmare’s life changed forever. A moment he won’t ever be able to forget.
Dream looks between them, confusion giving way to something sharper. "Mom?"
Nim exhales slowly, then straightens. "We’re leaving," she says. "Now."
The waiting room is terrible.
The chairs are bolted to the floor, spaced just far enough apart to discourage conversation. A muted television plays some uninteresting news with the sound turned off and visually dizzying subtitles. Dream fidgets beside him, tugging at his sleeves. Their mother sits rigid, hands folded too neatly in her lap.
Nightmare can’t stop looking around.
Hosts are easy to spot once you know what to look for.
A woman across the room stares at nothing, fingers twitching rhythmically against her thigh. A teenager younger than Nightmare rocks gently, murmuring under his breath while his parent pretends not to hear. Near the door, a child clutches something small and metallic—an external Parasite, cold and inert-looking, latched around their wrist like a bracelet.
A staff member watches them too closely.
Nightmare’s stomach twists. He can almost smell the fear radiating from her. Can read the emotions of everyone in the waiting room. Nightmare feels the 'something' recoil in his mind, curling in on itself.
“They don’t like us here,” it whispers.
Nightmare swallows. Neither do I–He almost answers.
A man across the room catches Nightmare looking. He doesn’t smile. He doesn’t frown. He just tilts his head slightly, eyes flicking—briefly, subtly—to Nightmare’s temple. Understanding passes between them like a current.
The man looks away first.
Nightmare’s throat tightens.
I didn’t say anything. I didn’t do anything. And yet—
The presence curls closer, uneasy. “I think they know,” it whispers.
Nightmare presses his heel into the floor, grounding himself.
Dream notices the shift. "You okay?" he mutters.
Nightmare nods automatically. The lie tastes wrong–but it’s infinitly sweeter than the truth. The truth is bitter.
A nurse steps out and calls a name. The woman with twitching fingers rises immediately, already resigned. Her partner touches her elbow, guiding her gently, like this is routine. Nightmare watches them go and feels something crack.
Not fear.
Recognition.
Which is much, much worse.
The clinic smells like disinfectant and old magic—faint enough that Nightmare might not have noticed it on the waiting room.
Inside, it’s unmistakable.
The lights buzz. The walls hum. The air presses close again, reacting to him in a way that makes his skin prickle. The 'something' stirs, uneasy.
“This place hurts,” it murmurs.
Nightmare flinches, but he does nothing about it–even if he feels like he should.
The doctor doesn’t take long.
They ask Nightmare to sit still. A device hums softly as it’s positioned near his skull—close enough that he can feel the vibration through his teeth.
The presence stiffens. “Please don’t,” it says, not much louder than a whisper.
Nightmare clenches his fists. The hum spikes. It hurts his hearing, the hum an uncomfortable ache like electricity dialed up a notch. It rattles his skull in a way that makes him involuntarily close an eye in pain.
A nurse frowns. "Try to relax."
He laughs weakly. "I am."
The hum does not lower.
It doesn't take long to learn the answer. A few tests. A few questions Nightmare can barely focus on answering. They make no sense whatsoever, and can be easily misinterpreted. Nightmare doesn’t know his symptoms enough to answer the questionnaire in a satisfying–or efficient–way.
The answers still come, whether he likes it or not.
One quiet exchange between adults filled with words Nightmare pretends not to hear.
Internal.
Infected.
Host.
The diagnostic comes; sharp, cold and merciless.
Nim signs the paperwork with shaking hands–not after shedding a few tears while the doctor tried to bring her some semblance of solace. This happened while pretending that Nightmare wasn’t also in the room. Like he also didn’t need comfort. Like he wasn’t also just as devastated.
Like his life hadn’t just changed irreparably overnight.
When they finally let Nightmare go, Nim wraps her son in a hug that’s too tight, too careful, like she’s afraid he’ll break.
"It’s going to be okay," she says, over and over. "We’ll manage this. We’ll get you help."
Nightmare stares over her shoulder at the blank wall. The word Host echoes in his head, heavy and wrong.
The presence–Parasite–curls in on itself, small and apologetic. “I didn’t mean to stay,” it says softly. “But you felt… safe.”
Nightmare doesn’t answer. He doesn’t know how. And somewhere deep in his chest, something he’s spent years trying not to have is suddenly, catastrophically impossible to hide.
The car ride home is quiet. Not peaceful. Quiet like everyone is afraid to disturb something fragile. Quiet like grief. Streetlights pass in steady intervals. Nightmare watches them blur across the windshield, each one briefly illuminating the reflection of his own face.
He looks the same.
That’s the problem. No one looks like a Host, even if many claim otherwise. He was ‘normal’ just this morning, and now, he isn’t. It’s simple as that.
But what even is normal?–Nightmare thinks, and he hates not having an answer to that.
Dream breaks the silence first. "So," he says, too casual. "Does this mean you get to be magical now?"
Nim inhales sharply. "Dream."
The reprimand is so sharp that Dream curls into himself. Nightmare looks at his twin–sitting just by his side on the backseat–with a blank expression.
"What? I’m just asking…"
Nim doesn’t answer.
The presence stirs.
“I can do that. I can help,” it offers softly. “If you let me.”
Nightmare closes his eyes. Then he answers: "Yes, Dream."
His brother beams, going on an excited rant about magical uses and the many cool things he can do now. But it's all silenced by Nim, who looks horrified.
Just like that, Nightmare realizes: after becoming a Host, he is nothing more than the residue of the person he once was.