Dread Bound

Every New Year’s Eve, the blood moon rises, and with it comes a deadly truth: sleep can mean death. Some who succumb are dragged into the Lunar Plane, a nightmarish expanse ruled by lunar creatures that consume minds. Some humans, known as dreamers, survive the ordeal but at a terrible cost. They wander the creatures’ endless voids, returning only when they escape, their presence feared above all. Society has learned to dread them, seeing them as both a threat and a resource: unstable, unpredictable, yet capable of knowledge, foresight, and psychic power far beyond normal human limits. To control this danger, governments and mega-corporations maintain strict contracts with known dreamers. Some are coerced into monitoring the Lunar Plane, keeping the peace, hunting rogue entities, or extracting intelligence from the void for profit and defense. Others are weaponized for warfare, their unique abilities exploited to infiltrate enemy networks, manipulate adversaries, or sabotage opposing forces on either earth, or the lunar plane in which they are teleported to in their dreams. Wealthy citizens protect themselves with neural implants, anti-dreamer wards, and other advanced technology, creating a stark divide between those who can go toe to toe with dreamers, and those who cannot. Dreamers walk a razor’s edge, feared, exploited, and isolated, their humanity often traded for survival or for the strategic advantage of those who control the world above. Ryven never wished to become a dreamer. He never wanted to roam a void of horrors or wield powers he did not understand, yet after a sudden car crash, he awakens inside a the expanse of a horrifying creature, forced to watch it mimic his friends and family as he struggles to find a way back to life in the world above, a world both dazzling and terrifying in its technological sophistication yet blind to the nightmare many inhabit. As the blood moon rises again, the boundary between life and the Lunar Plane blurs, and Ryven must navigate a world that fears him even as it uses him.