Dreams are hidden gateways—secret realms conjured by our sleeping minds beneath fluttering eyelids, woven from both conscious thoughts and shadowy subconscious depths. Every fleeting vision pulses with latent power drawn from the dreamer's own psyche.

  But Denise's dreamscape now festered like mold-riddled fruit, its essence choked by invasive tendrils. Some alien presence had taken root here, transforming the landscape into a writhing nest of vines that recoiled from Yvette's footsteps like startled serpents.

  Left unchecked, this interloper would claim Denise's entire dreaming world—and through it, her very soul. Like contagion spreading through ripe fruit, corruption demanded immediate excision.

  Yet here, the rules favored the invader. As co-regents of this dreaming space, Denise and the entity held absolute sovereignty—a truth made plain when Yvette found herself unceremoniously ejected earlier. If force couldn't prevail from within...perhaps she could reshape the battlefield itself.

  By merging her own dreamscape with Denise's, might she claim equal footing against the trespasser?

  She stood poised at the parlor threshold where history was about to repeat—another doomed séance unfolding in the girl's nightmares. Closing her eyes, Yvette plunged into meditative depths, sifting through flesh and bone for buried memories like an archaeologist in some interior desert.

  Beyond the windows, her gathered past coalesced into a secondary world—a vast enclosing sphere around this fragile bubble-reality. Glimmering eyes pressed against the glass like starved predators.

  Shedding Denise's childish form like a outgrown chrysalis, Yvette emerged from the girl's back in her true aspect—an eclosed butterfly of luminous energy.

  The sudden absence made Denise whirl around. The comforting presence she'd known in dreams had vanished—replaced by the kind stranger now materialized behind her.

  The sealed chamber erupted into chaos. Wind shrieked through nonexistent gaps while the floorboards buckled. Animated vines lashed toward Yvette, only to dissolve into smoke before reaching her.

  She felt the sickening lurch of freefall—or was it ascent? Gravity lost all meaning as the very architecture collapsed around them, the house tumbling through void alongside her.

  "Run, Denise! Find somewhere without vines—now!"

  Though the world seemed to end around her, Denise obeyed, spurred by instinctive trust.

  Outside the disintegrating house, colossal shadows circled—nightmare creatures from Yvette's deepest subconscious, drawn forth like sharks to blood.

  With a thunderous crack, the building split asunder. Denise barely reached a side closet before the tempest hit, pressed against its back wall as vines slithered under the door toward her—

  Then absolute darkness. The room sheared in two as effortlessly as snapped chalk. Through the gaping fissure, Denise watched in horror as the main house—now a squirming mass of vines—plummeted into abyssal depths...

  Where something vast and scalid stirred. A leviathan surge, a flash of impossible jaws—

  Her mind mercifully snapped before comprehension registered.

  ...

  In another place beyond places, tremors subsided. A maid straightened her cap as a physician dusted off his coat.

  "False alarm," the doctor muttered. "No fresh converts tonight."

  "Just an empty chamber spawned," the maid sniffed. "Though that deranged Snake fellow's overjoyed with the new vines. I warned him about muddying my clean floors."

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  "The Other Master must remain oblivious," came the sharp reminder.

  "Obviously! When has Snake ever erred? He was harvesting souls before you could spell 'scalpel'."

  From deeper within drifted discordant singing: "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here..."

  The maid rolled her eyes. "Must your pet lunatic keep caterwauling? Just remove his tongue already."

  "Now Miss Moore, where's the artistry in that?" The doctor's scalpel glinted. "His screams compose the loveliest requiems... Such potential wasted on mortal terror. Soon he'll sing praises to Our Master like the rest of us."

  ...

  Before Winslow, the illusions melted away revealing dozens of unconscious victims. Then—Denise emerged from a miraculously intact room, rubbing her temples.

  "This place...wasn't it destroyed?" The memory of her final dream already faded like a childhood nightmare—better forgotten.

  Her gasp echoed. After years of silence—her voice had returned.

  "Where is she?" Winslow grasped the girl's shoulders. "The one who brought you here!"

  "That kind man...in my dream he warned me to..." Denise faltered.

  A yawn interrupted them. Yvette descended the staircase. "Lower your voice. Her parents sleep unharmed upstairs." Turning to Denise, she delivered the inevitable verdict: "The world holds darker truths than you imagined. What sleeps inside you demands a new life—one far from ordinary."

  Much like her own first days in this world, Yvette—alongside Winslow—shared with Denise fragments of the veiled truth. Since the Familiar had channeled its power through the girl, Yvette also touched on the origins of the "specter" behind it all: the Bilodo couple’s reckless games had summoned it, and Denise’s latent talent had unwittingly become its doorway into reality.

  "It… happened because of me?" Denise gripped her skirt, her knuckles bone-white.

  "Don’t think like that," Yvette said firmly. "These things are like storms or wild beasts—they follow no logic. No one’s to blame here." If pressed, she’d argue Denise’s parents bore more guilt—their games had invited a real monster, while Denise’s nature was simply immutable.

  "My brother… did you find him?"

  Denise’s brother wasn’t the Familiar-seed her mother had clutched days ago—that thing now lay shriveled in a child’s outfit beside the unconscious Bilodos. A search confirmed no other children remained upstairs.

  Under cover of darkness, Yvette used the Nightmare Ring’s last spark to sedate the household while Winslow guided sleepwalking servants through a grim scavenger hunt. They found the infant’s body in a refuse pile.

  "Dehydration, starvation," Winslow muttered. "The Familiar made everyone forget he existed—" He winced as Yvette’s elbow silenced him.

  Denise’s tears fell unchecked. She knew the truth: if her family had erased her from memory, why would they recall a crying baby? His wails would’ve gone unanswered—no milk, no clean swaddling.

  "Had I ignored that stranger… would he still—?" Sobs fractured her words. Yvette knelt, cradling the girl’s tear-streaked face.

  "Listen," she said gently. "Some dangers slink away if ignored—but others must be faced.

  "Once, a clever man met a devil disguised as a traveler. He noticed its hooked tail and knew revealing his awareness meant death. So he laughed and joked until they left the forest. Even he couldn’t have escaped your fate.

  "The Familiar preyed where it pleased. You might as well blame a lamb for being born on a farm.

  "Learning caution matters, but guilt does not. You found us. You saved your parents. That’s heroic."

  At dawn, the organization’s cleanup crew arrived. Denise—calmer now—was taken for evaluation; Familiar exposure demanded rigorous checks.

  "What becomes of her?" Yvette asked later.

  "If cleared, she’ll return under our watch," Winslow said. "Unlikely, though. Her parents’ memories of her are probably gone. If unrecoverable, she’ll join a monastery for gifted orphans—our standard solution."

  Yvette’s fists clenched. "Losing her home is brutal."

  "It’s mercy," he countered. "And your words? If she grasps them, they’ll armor her. Suffering teaches faster than kindness ever could. She’ll never again trust pretty lies about gods or monsters."

  Yvette whirled on him. "Pain isn’t a teacher—it’s a whip. People grow despite it, not because of it.

  "You survived your past not due to misfortune, but because resilience was always in you. Hardship merely proved it."

  Winslow laughed—a raw, jarring sound from a man of porcelain smiles. When it faded, his gaze held something new.

  "Then we’re the same breed after all," he murmured.

  The past rarely haunted his waking hours—yet sleep brought echoes: mildew, skittering husks, nails screeching down oak…

  Worst was the recurring nightmare of his father’s face post-ordeal—staring at him like a man beholding a revenant.

  No joy. Only dread.

  "You’re no curse, no aberration.

  Like all things, you belong to this world—

  though you walk its edges.

  Our souls hail from light’s domain,

  marooned now in shadow.

  But this too shall pass.

  Stand fearless—

  for pain is not our birthright."

  Another lifetime ago, those words had salvaged him. Today, this girl’s fire resurrected them.