{Aspirant! Welcome to the Nightmare Spell. Prepare for your First Trial}
The words didn't echo—they simply existed inside his head, cold and absolute. There was no voice, no direction, just the knowledge that something vast and unseen had spoken.
Kellan opened his eyes.
Or thought he did.
Darkness surrounded him, thick and slow, like the world was submerged in ink. The air pressed against his skin—damp, heavy, carrying the faint scent of stone and rot. Beneath his bare feet, the ground was uneven. Rough. Wet.
Another whisper rolled through his mind.
{Your soul is bound. Your fate—uncertain}
He froze.
He knew that voice.
He shouldn't have. But the phrasing, the tone—it hit him like a cold nail through the chest.
No way.
No fucking way.
He remembered reading those words. Lying in bed after another sleepless night, phone glowing in the dark, scrolling through chapters of a webnovel called Shadow Slave.
The Spell's voice. The First Nightmare.
And now it was talking to him.
His stomach lurched. He tried to speak—maybe to deny it, maybe to laugh—but his throat was dry, every sound strangled. The air here was too heavy to breathe right.
More words appeared inside his mind—pale, sharp lines forming runes that carved themselves into thought.
Name: Kellan.
True Name: -
Rank: Aspirant.
Soul Core: Dormant.
Memories: None.
Echoes: None.
Attributes: [Touched by Desire], [Mark of Divinity].
Aspect: [Hope's Spark].
Description: You carry the echo of a forgotten desire—the faint light that persists after every other flame has died. It cannot be seen, nor grasped, nor destroyed. When all is lost, you will still believe that something remains.
The light of the runes faded like mist under a breath.
He was alone again.
"...Great," he muttered, voice rough. "Of course it's real. Why wouldn't it be?"
His pulse thudded in his ears.
Touched by Desire.
He swallowed, throat suddenly dry..... Hope? The Daemon of Desire? He remembered the stories, the fan theories, the speculation threads that went on for thousands of comments. Hope wasn't just a Daemon; she was the most enigmatic one. The one who, if the lore was right, could twist the very nature of yearning.
And the Spell just branded him with her touch.
"You've gotta be kidding me." He rubbed a hand over his face, but the chill wouldn't leave his skin. "I'm screwed."
Kellan exhaled slowly, trying to keep the panic from climbing his throat. In, slow. Out, slower. He'd learned that trick the hard way—back in a life that already felt like it belonged to someone else. Panic was just drowning from the inside.
He didn't plan on drowning again.
The world around him began to take shape as his eyes adjusted.
He was standing on the slanted roof of an old stone building. The tiles beneath his feet were slick with moisture, and water dripped steadily from the edges. The sky above was a dull, bruised gray, clouds sagging low and heavy.
Tiny droplets hung in the air like dust motes, falling in slow motion.
A city stretched out around him—or what was left of one.
Towers rose from a vast flood, their lower halves swallowed by dark, motionless water. Bridges connected rooftops, creating pathways above the drowned streets. Here and there, marble statues stood half-submerged, their stone faces tilted toward the sky as if begging for something that would never come.
Kellan stared, unable to look away.
It was haunting. Beautiful, in a dead kind of way.
And wrong.
Every instinct screamed that something was watching him.
He wrapped his arms around himself, suddenly aware of how exposed he was. His clothes were simple: dark, unfamiliar fabric that clung to his skin. No shoes. No pack. No weapon.
No safety.
He swallowed hard and whispered, "Okay. Think."
The Spell hadn't said anything else. But there was a feeling—a faint echo in his mind, like a thought that wasn't his.
{The kingdom has drowned. Its heart still beats beneath the water. Save it, or let it die forever.}
A quest description? A hint?
He looked out across the skyline.
Far in the distance, at the center of the sunken city, a palace rose from the water. Even half-submerged, it was enormous. Spires pierced the gray sky, and a faint light pulsed from a crystal dome at its peak—rhythmic, steady, almost like a heartbeat.
"The heart..." he murmured. "Has to be that."
Or it could be bait. The Spell wasn't known for mercy.
Kellan exhaled through his teeth. Either way, it was a direction. And directions usually meant survival.
He turned his focus back to the roof he was standing on. To his left, a narrow bridge connected this building to another, slightly higher. The stones were slick, the handrails half-broken.
Below, the water waited.
He couldn't see through it. The surface was black, almost oily, with faint movements underneath—things too slow and too deep to name.
Yeah. Definitely not falling in there.
He crouched, pressed his palm against the roof tile, and felt the faint vibration of the water below. The city wasn't silent. It breathed. The whole place felt alive in a dying way, as if something massive was holding its breath under the flood.
He stood again.
"Alright, Kellan," he muttered. "You're in the book. You know how this works. Nightmares are echoes. This place died once, and now you get to fix it. Or die with it."
He started across the bridge, stepping carefully. The air was cold, the kind that made his lungs ache. Every sound seemed too loud—the scrape of his foot on stone, the faint rustle of fabric.
Halfway across, he glanced down.
For a moment, he thought he saw a pale shape beneath the surface—something humanoid, drifting slowly upward.
Then the light shifted and it was gone.
"...Yeah, no," he whispered. "Not dealing with that yet."
He picked up the pace.
When he reached the next roof, he paused to look back. The building he'd started on was half-collapsed, part of its rear wall missing. Water lapped quietly at its base. If he hadn't woken on the roof, he would've started underwater.
That thought made him shiver.
From this higher point, he could see more of the city—narrow alleys turned canals, bridges covered in moss, and the endless rain that never quite fell. He squinted at the palace again. That slow, pulsing glow was steady, like a promise he didn't trust.
Something about it drew him, though. Maybe it was the only thing here that wasn't dead.
He was about to move again when a sound cut through the quiet.
A soft dragging, wet and heavy.
Kellan froze.
It was close—not from the water, but somewhere below him. A window, maybe. Something was moving. Climbing.
He crouched and peered over the edge of the roof.
A pale hand slapped against the stone wall. Fingers bloated, translucent. Skin stretched too thin over bone. The hand gripped the edge and pulled.
A face followed.
The drowned.
It looked human, once. Now its skin was swollen, its hair slick with slime. Water poured steadily from its open mouth, trickling down its chin. Its eyes were cloudy, unfocused—like dead fish eyes.
Kellan's stomach turned.
The creature paused, head tilting. Listening.
He held his breath.
It turned toward him.
Their gazes met—or whatever passed for eyes met his. For a heartbeat, nothing happened. Then the drowned thing's lips peeled back, releasing a gush of black water as it lunged.
Kellan threw himself back on pure panic. His heel slid on wet tile and he almost went over the side. Wind rushed past his ear. The thing's hand swiped through the space where his throat had been a second ago.
"Shit—"
There was no time to think.
The creature hauled itself fully onto the roof. Water streamed off it, pooling around its bare feet. Its skin was swollen and pale, like meat left in a bucket too long. Its eyes were wrong. Not empty… drowned. Like something behind them was still down there, deep under the surface, looking up through murky water.
It opened its mouth. More water spilled out.
Kellan backed up, hands out, looking for anything to use. There was nothing. No sword, no staff, no convenient iron pipe. Just broken roof tiles and a strip of cracked stone running along the ridge.
The drowned shambled toward him. Its joints creaked. Every step left wet footprints. When it moved, he could hear fluid sloshing inside it.
"Alright," he muttered, voice shaking. "We do it the hard way."
He darted to the side and snatched up a fist-sized shard of tile. The edge cut his palm. Good. Pain meant he was still here. Still alive.
The creature turned with him, faster than it looked. It hissed, a wet, bubbling sound. Then it charged.
Kellan didn't try to block. He ducked low and rolled across the slick roof. Tiles scraped his back. Cold soaked through his shirt. He came up near the ridge and swung the shard at the thing's head as it passed.
The tile cracked across its temple.
It didn't scream. It didn't even reel properly. It just jerked, water spraying from the impact, and kept going. The strike had split its skin, but instead of blood, dark water leaked out and ran down its cheek.
"Yeah," Kellan panted. "Knew you were gonna be like that."
This was exactly how it was in the novel. First Nightmare monsters weren't complicated. They just didn't stop. You had to break them completely or throw them somewhere they couldn't crawl back from.
He didn't have the power to break it.
So that left the other option.
The edge.
He risked a glance. The drop to the water wasn't far, but it was straight down. If he slipped, he'd go right in. And he had no idea what waited below. The drowned was bad. Whatever was making that slow movement in the deep was worse.
The creature came again.
This time it didn't rush. It crept forward, arms spreading, trying to corner him against the open edge. Its head twitched, listening. Maybe it wasn't blind after all. Maybe it just hunted by sound and movement, like something that had spent too long in black water.
Kellan's breath fogged. His arm throbbed where the tile had cut it. His heart hammered hard enough to hurt.
He waited.
The drowned stepped closer.
He waited.
Another step. Water dripped from its fingertips.
Now.
Kellan lunged forward and to the side, slamming his shoulder into its chest. The impact rattled his bones. The creature was heavier than it looked, dead weight packed with water. It snarled in that horrible wet way and clawed at him.
Fingers raked across his forearm. Skin tore. Fire shot up his arm. He hissed and shoved harder.
"Go down!"
The drowned tottered. One of its feet slipped on the slick tile. For a second it windmilled, arms flailing, water flying off in arcs.
Kellan didn't let it recover. He slammed into it again with everything he had.
This time it went over.
The creature fell backward off the roof, arms reaching for him, mouth still spilling water. It hit the surface below with a thick splash. Black water rose up in a column, then spread in slow, heavy ripples.
Kellan staggered back from the edge and dropped to one knee, clutching his arm. His breath came in harsh pulls. The cut wasn't deep, but it burned like he'd scraped it on salt. The creature's nails had not been clean.
"Fuck…" he muttered. "That was stupid."
{You have slain a Dormant Beast, Drowned Ghoul}
He forced himself to crawl back toward the middle of the roof. The height felt unsafe now. Every gust of damp wind felt like a hand on his back.
He sat there for a few seconds, just breathing.
He wiped rain and sweat from his face with the back of his wrist and peered over the edge.
The water was still again. Dark. Flat. No sign of the drowned.
"Stay gone," he whispered. "Seriously."
A low sound rolled through the drowned city. Not loud. Not close. Like a bell heard through walls and water. It seemed to come from the direction of the palace, that glowing dome at the city's center.
He looked toward it.
The light pulsed again. Slow. Patient. Like the city really did have a heartbeat.
"Fine." Kellan said under his breath.
He pushed himself to his feet, wincing as his arm pulled. The cut had already started to clot, but the skin around it was red and angry. He'd have to keep it clean. As if that was possible in a place like this.
He crossed to the far side of the roof. Another bridge waited there, narrow and broken in the middle, connecting to a lower structure. The path toward the palace wasn't straight. It zigzagged over roofs, half-collapsed walkways, balconies that leaned over the water. A single bad step could put him in the flood.
He hated that.
He stood on the lip of the roof for a moment, listening. The city was quiet again. The statues stared at the sky. The rain fell in slow motion. The only real sound was the soft, constant lap of black water against drowned walls.
This place is dead, he thought. But it knows I'm here.
He glanced at his arm one more time, then at the water below.
He moved on.