As Cory slipped into unconsciousness, he found himself in a lucid dream—or something that was eerily reminiscent to one.
Gray mist stretched everywhere, dense and featureless. There was no wind to be felt, no sound to be heard—just a heavy stillness that shouldn't exist.
Even though fear hasn't settled in yet, the silence felt...wrong.
...If anything, this should be called a lucid nightmare instead.
'What's with this mist?! Why is it so foggy?!'
After wandering for a while, Cory couldn't help but look around dubiously.
'...There's nothing but mist... what kind of dream is this?'
He wandered aimlessly, the mist coiling at his feet like smoke. After what felt like hours, a figure finally emerged from the haze—a silhouette, kneeling, muttering something to itself.
Cory eyed the figure suspiciously.
'...a person?'
While looking at the figure, he couldn't help but feel a certain sense of unease crept over him, there was no reason for him to feel this way, but he did.
Perhaps, it was just paranoia, so he just left it at that.
'Everything's just a dream, anyway...'
Curious, he decided to approach.
As he got closer, the mist parted, revealing a knight draped in a heavy fur mantle.
But something was wrong...
The knight's armor didn't look like armor at all. It resembled a second skin—flesh-like and undulating. From a glance alone, it seemed alive.
However, that wasn't the thing that kept him on guard.
His brow furrowed.
'...What... is that?'
Upon closer inspection, the knight was holding something in its hands. Too far to make out what it was, Cory moved closer for a better view.
He didn't know what it was, but he could distinctively feel its presence...and when he saw it, a primal, indescribable fear blossomed within him.
It had no form he could name, but it was alive—truly alive, unlike the armor that only seemed animated. The knight merely existed, but this thing... it watched him. It felt as if it knew him.
Deathly pale, Cory involuntarily took a step back.
Then—
A twig snapped.
Cory's eyes widened.
'Damn it!'
The knight and its whispers evaporated instantly and without even a second to react, everything suddenly spun and went black.
Unaware of what happened just now, Cory's consciousness drifted amidst the darkness...until he started hearing sounds...the distinct sound of crunching.
The same kind of crunching he'd usually hear at the arena.
But...aside from Cory and the knight, there were no other beings here...so how was it possible?
As the disturbing crunching continued, Cory started to wake up.
Eventually, he did...and what he saw only left him frozen.
He was no longer whole...
His own severed body was laying in front of him, leaving him only as a head on the ground... and the knight...the knight was feasting on it with feral hunger.
As a mere head, Cory could do nothing but only stare in silence, his thoughts ricocheting in his mind.
'How am I still conscious...? No, how am I still alive...?'
But before being able to finish that thought, the creature sensed his gaze.
Turning, the creature seized his head and commanded its flesh-like armor to open, revealing its ghoulish appearance behind the helm.
'No... No!'
Just as it was about to devour Cory, something overcame it, causing it to clutch its head and scream in great agony.
The object the creature held, started acting oddly as well in ways Cory couldn't comprehend.
At the next moment, it dropped Cory.
'W-what...?'
Suddenly, the creature knelt down and began carving symbols into the stone floor effortlessly with a certain kind of desperation to it. Cory, trapped behind it, could only hear its low chants.
Now that he was closer, he was able to hear what the knight was saying to a better extent, and what he heard was unsettling.
...There was a certain kind of rhythm to the words it was muttering. Not like chants—but more like a man trying not to forget how to speak...
Despite the surreal nature of it all, he concluded this was simply a lucid nightmare... he just needed to wait for it to end.
But the creature only grew more disturbing and articulate with time.
Startled, Cory couldn't help but think:
'Is it... becoming human?'
Then, it rose, seizing his head once again. However, this time, it wasn't trying to devour him. Instead, it chanted something ancient.
'Huh...?'
With every word, something stirred in Cory's mind.
At first, it was a mild discomfort, but then pain surged into his head, making him scream.
Gritting his teeth, he felt his mind begin to unravel, as though something was invading it.
As he stared into the creature's helm in agony, a terrifying thought crossed his mind:
'Is this not... a nightmare?'
Just before Cory passed lost consciousness from the pain, the creature spoke again. The words were the same, but this time they felt different...this time, it felt like they were directed at him.
As if some unseen force seized him, he was unable to look away, his eyes locking his to the creature's abyssal stare. It made him listen—to every syllable, every dreadful murmur it had uttered before.
But now… something had changed.
It seemed as if it were trying to say something—but couldn't. As if it were restricted by something unknown.
And the creature's eyes, that was once voids of malice, now seemed strangely composed. Almost human. And beneath the surface—there was a shimmer of hidden emotion of what seemed to be sorrow, desperation, and... something else.
Cory strained to hear, to understand.
Before he could comprehend it, darkness took over, with the creature's gaze as the last thing he saw.
When he woke again, this time he was in the cellars.
Reality.
Drenched in sweat, he lay still for a few moments, gathering himself.
Unable to accept what had happened, Cory stared at the ceiling with doubt.
'Was...Was that really just a nightmare...?'
He tried to recall what the creature had said.
Inhuman as it was, it resembled human speech at some point. After observing its actions for what felt like an eternity, Cory pieced together the fragments but could only figure out a fragment the creature had said.
'A tree...?'
Cory sighed.
Then a sharp pain seized his chest.
"Argh! Damn!"
The pain reminded him of his situation, and he suppressed the urge to yell any further. After a brief pause, he relaxed slightly.
'...But it's odd... why is it so quiet...?'
Usually, the arena was filled with agonized cries and the sounds of combat... yet today, there was nothing. This silence made Cory more uneasy than ever.
'Something's wrong...'
Of course, to know what was happening outside, he would have to stand. And standing, in his current state, was agonizing.
Summoning what little strength he had left, he crawled to the wall, leaning against it, breathless.
Exhausted and starving, he knew he couldn't stay still. It would only make things worse.
Muttering a curse, he forced himself up, slouching as he grabbed the bars of the cell.
Then, a sound like the drums of war echoed through the air—at least, that's how it sounded to Cory.
He grunted.
'Now, of all times...?'
The noise came again... the unmistakable sound of his stomach growling.
Resisting the urge to collapse, Cory gritted his teeth and shuffled out of the cell. What he saw made his heart drop.
Instead of the usual brutal fights, everyone was dead— hordes of bodies littered the floor.
He stared, noticing one of them wore a guard's uniform, though it was still hard to tell despite the cracks from the sun in complete darkness.
Cory sighed softly.
'Guess spending a month in here doesn't give you night vision.'
Stumbling forward, he approached the guard.
Kneeling, he turned the body around... and found a skeleton.
He looked at the other corpses scattered around—some missing limbs, others seemingly drenched in acid-like substance, exposing bones or melting parts of them.
The one thing they all had in common was their expression—fear. The primal terror that appeared when one faces a fate worse than death.
'Just like that time with the knight—creature...'
Cory frowned.
"What killed you all...?"
Then came the rapid clicking of something above.
Looking up, Cory felt his blood run cold.
Dozens—no, hundreds—of corpses were strung up in a massive web of fine threads. At the center of it all, a figure gazed down at him.
It was hard to make out clearly, but Cory could tell from the shape that it was a spider—a spider at least a hundred, maybe a thousand, times his size.
'What... the fu—'
Without warning, the spider spat something—or mimicked the motion of doing so.
Cory sensed something was wrong and acted fast.
Forcing his legs to move, he dodged just in time.
The ground before him dissolved.
The spider's venom—a nearly transparent liquid—was melting everything in its path, even bones.
Cory's mind raced.
'Am I still in the lucid nightmare...?'
Then he heard a faint voice from one of the corpses.
Turning, he saw a man barely clinging to life.
"S-save me... p-please..."
Cory snapped back to reality.
It was no longer a dream. This was real.
Frantic, he turned to where the spider had been, but it was gone.
A sense of déjà vu hit him hard.
Without the strength to dodge, Cory let his legs give way, dropping to the ground.
At that moment, something sliced the air like a lethal blade, severing the man and the surrounding corpses in half.
The attack was so massive, it didn't matter if Cory had dodged—everything within a hundred meters was cleaved in two by sheer force of the wind.
...Or was it wind at all?
The spider, though, seemed to lose focus, dazed.
Cory knew he couldn't kill it—not yet. His only chance of survival was finding an escape route.
If a creature that size had entered the arena, there had to be a way it got in.
He had to find it.
In the split second of clarity, Cory scanned the area, desperate.
'Where is it... damn it!'
Finally spotting a gap, he sprinted towards with, adrenaline surging through his veins.
But something wasn't quite right.
The gap was too narrow— it was far too small for the spider of this size to have entered through. It was as if...the creature had been always here.
Without time to question, he focused on escaping. After all, the spider was starting to shake off its daze.
As it came into view, mist flowed from it, like a wall of uncertainty, it masked everything beyond it.
Cory suddenly felt a sense of unease.
'This is just like the nightmare...'
Then, just as he was within reach—
Something stepped out of it.
It was also at that moment something shot into his abdomen.
"...Huh?"
He looked down.
An arrow—or rather, something that appeared to be a jagged fang was now protruding out his stomach.
His gaze rose to the figure at the top of the gap.
And there he saw a creature that resembled a spider yet also human, it was grotesquely fused with human anatomy in ways that would be indescribable.
Whatever it was, Cory knew it didn't belong to the natural world just as the spider did. However, this one...this one especially emanated a certain kind of unfathomably ancient and primal fear to those who saw it...
Just like the knight.
Without a moment's notice— Cory felt something spread into his body...something akin to fire...no—worse than that. In mere moments, he felt it course through his body, rushing from every nerve to every muscle. His screams tore through the cave, raw and ragged.
As this happened, the creature just watched.
Its many eyes shimmered with something that resembled pleasure, and as the screams continue, its mandibles slowly twisted into something disturbingly close to a smile.
Cory thrashed in agony. The pain was like nothing he'd known—it felt like molten lava searing him from within, breaking his body down piece by piece. His legs went numb first. Then his arms. The rest followed, in a slow, unbearable collapse.
His body was slowly disintegrating from the inside, and with no way out, he just waited in agony for the slow embrace of death to come to him—so that his suffering would end right there.
And just as his mind was about to slip into the cold darkness—
Something strange happened.
He saw a memory.
One that didn't belong to him.
'...What is this?'