Confusion overtook Vahl when he came to be aware of himself. He was lying on the ground, staring at an off-white ceiling. The walls and ceiling appeared to be composed of bone. The ground was uneven and had a texture that reminded Vahl of deathly pale skin. Upon a closer examination, a conclusion was arrived at: he was in a castle created out of bones. Limbs of animal, human, and monstrous proportions melted together into this unholy abomination.

  And yet Vahl didn’t despair. For he knew full well what he was getting into. This trial was one that every member of the An Louviel family went through. Vahl’s grandfather, father, and mother had managed to survive this accursed dreamscape. Now Vahl, the last of his line, had to go through the same trial. The rewards were certainly worth it. After all, the ability to cast spells was the only thing that separated one from the dreamless nobodies. It was the main difference between a commoner and a noble, if such a distinction could still be drawn today.

  Vahl was delighted with his starting position. Colors held significant meaning in the dream world and had a massive impact on your decisions. The dreamscape was inconsistent and quirky in its design. Whatever god had created it was clearly a capricious one. Environments were often hostile or tricky to navigate. Spawning in a white room was as good as it gets. White is a symbol of neutrality and peace. So, despite the eerie bones, Vahl was feeling quite motivated to press on.

  When visiting the dreamworld, normally, one can simply wait till morning and wake up. But trials were different… Drastically so. The only way to complete a trial is to find the exit. The word trial is, in fact, greatly misleading. Vahl knew of no checklist to complete or story to resolve. His ancestor’s dream journals indicated that simply staying alive and finding the exit was a monumental success.

  Vahl made his way down the bonecastle’s corridor. The remains seemed to neatly fit next to each other, melting together at certain points. The tunnels seemed to stretch forever, and the only source of light was black metal lanterns that burned with a dull green flame. The sparse light created sharp contrast and shadowy corners that would make someone with nyctophobia unable to take a step forward.

  However, Vahl was no ordinary explorer. Armed with ancestral knowledge, he knew what his priorities were.

  “In Dreamland, your first goal is always to secure a light source and then a weapon in that specific order.”

  He used a ribcage that was slightly sticking out of the wall to boost himself upwards, grabbing a hold of a greenfire lantern. The torch was immediately torn out of the wall with no resistance.

  Armed with a lantern, Vahl started demolishing the wall in search of a weapon. According to his father’s notes, the most common monsters in the dreamworld use cheap tricks like sucking light away or traveling through shadows, or they’re simply composed of a dark material. The environment might also change unexpectedly.

  Armed with a sturdy white claw and a yellow bone staff, Vahl continued his journey. Unlike characters in horror movies, he was smart. So, he decided to follow the right-hand rule. This is an algorithm that suggests keeping your hand on the right wall at all times and simply walking forward. Naturally, he also used the sturdy claw he obtained to leave obvious signs in case he somehow fell into a loop.

  And so an hour passed without even a squeak. The only companion was the ever-twisting boneyard of corridors and the weak pulses of greenfire.

  Vahl felt tired. Unreasonably tired. It had only been an hour, and yet his mind protested that he should stop moving. Perhaps it was the effect of the ghastly scenery. Vahl stumbled and barely managed to catch himself with his staff.

  And in that moment, his body tensed in horror. In the act of stumbling, his regular footsteps paused for a brief window of time. And in that timeframe, he heard a second set of footsteps behind him. Footsteps that were perfectly matched with his own.

  He dashed forward without a second thought and swiftly spun around to gather information on the possible assailant.

  He came face-to-face with a brilliantly crafted but nevertheless creepy statue. A weeping female angel was depicted in inhumanly precise detail. Every feather and strand of hair was distinctly engraved into the massive stone slab that towered before Vahl. The worst of it was the pair of red gemstone eyes. Eyes that glowed with an intense hatred. Vahl could almost feel the statue’s bloodlust to the extent that the air appeared to become reddish around it.

  “How could such a thing match my footsteps?” Vahl lamented in horror.

  Still, he remained stoic. A lesser man might have run, but not him. Obviously, this decision didn’t come from a misplaced sense of bravado but from the memory of one specific passage in his father’s dream journal.

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  “All nightmares follow a certain set of rules. In this way, they are constrained by the logic of the dreamworld, as esoteric as it might be. A commonly cited example is a gargoyle that only moves when you aren’t looking, or birds smashing into you and exploding due to…”

  This bizarre piece of trivia had quite possibly saved Vahl’s life. The angel statue was clearly unable to move as long as he maintained eye contact.

  ‘I need to measure its speed. Blinking is completely involuntary, and without an appropriate sense of danger, I won’t be able to think of a countermeasure,’ Vahl narrated his situation inside his mind.

  He paced backwards while maintaining eye contact until he hit the wall with his back. Upon closing his eyes for a short moment, he experienced a horrible shiver. It felt like his entire spine was tingling with morbid anticipation.

  He opened his eyes after the second had passed.

  ‘Thankfully, the statue is not as fast as I originally assumed.’

  The angel had moved by three paces while Vahl wasn’t looking. Still, this was far too fast for Vahl to outrun it. And even if he could do so for a while, he would inevitably become exhausted.

  The consequence of losing consciousness in the middle of a trial is sure death. Your body in the real world slowly gets colder and breaks down in a matter of hours. Or in the worst-case scenario: something else takes your place at the wheel. Hence, the need for steel coffins and mnemonic locks.

  Vahl realised that he only had two options: take on the weeping angel statue or try to find the exit while keeping the statue in his sights. The latter option was most likely suicide because any other creature could exploit his inattentiveness.

  He didn’t know much about stonemasonry, but he was sure that he would lose a direct confrontation. However, it’s not like the statue could move while he was observing it.

  ‘Maybe if I chip away at it piece by piece without closing my eyes?’

  And so the anticlimactic but anxiety-wrecked attack began. The target was the statue’s neck. The ruby gemstones glared at Vahl with hostility as he used his sturdy claw and shaft as a makeshift whittle and hammer.

  First, he had to test the effectiveness of his tools. Then he needed to take a break. Humans have an involuntary need to blink every thirty seconds or so. If he were to close his eyes while he was working on the statue, he would face certain doom. Whenever he had to rest his eyes, he could step back and selectively close one eye and keep watch with the other.

  After a few tests, he decided to use the plug and feather approach. You drill a series of holes and hammer bone pieces into all of them, which creates an artificial crack that splits the stone in half.

  ‘If I make a minute mistake, the punishment is immediate death. Perhaps this is an allegory for bad life decisions,’ Vahl lampooned.

  However, Vahl wasn’t the sort of person to throw in the towel just because something was hard. And so he persisted for hours. Whittling away at the hostile statue’s neck under the bright light of its incandescent red eyes. The work was starting to come together, and in a moment of carelessness, he slipped while retreating from the statue. For he had underestimated his own endurance and strength. His legs buckled, and his world spun. Vahl was looking at the ceiling rather than the monster, and before he realised it, the creature was upon him.

  But before it could drive its icy stone claws into Vahl, he managed to catch a glimpse of its eerie head.

  Vahl stood up, and only then did true horror overtake him. The fear of death was not as horrible as the realisation that dawned on him in that moment. The reason the weeping angel was able to reach him with such haste was that during the test, the monster was pretending to be significantly slower than it really was. It was this human-like cunning and ruthlessness that pushed Vahl to the brink. He crawled with his back to the wall, and his eyes became moist as tears fell down his cheeks from the sheer eye strain.

  His vision began to be consumed by blackness, and he jumped to his feet in panic. His hands shook as he frantically wiped away the tears. Vahl’s vision was becoming foggy, and he felt like he might lose consciousness at any moment.

  The angel stayed still. Unmoving. Its malicious gaze was drilling into Vahl. Unconcerned for his suffering or even survival. A sort of pure hatred that wanted only to destroy.

  “The dreamworld is host to a variety of nightmares. Some cartoonish and some utterly bone-chilling. There seems to be no consistency to their appearance or rules of conduct. Defeating one rewards you with the greatest of boons: A spell orb.” Vahl recited a passage from his father’s journal that he had memorised.

  In that moment of anguish, a fiery and passionate sentiment overtook Vahl. Instead of despairing, he was going to fight back! An expression of pure hatred twisted Vahl’s face as he climbed back on his feet and limped towards the unmoving statue.

  “Purge! I’ll purge you from this realm! You are an affront to human eyes!”

  And so continued the work. Vahl attacked the creature with methodical precision while muttering the vilest of curses. After what felt like a day, he finally finished the work by hammering in the last bone fragment.

  The crack spread slowly and unceasingly, drawing a line over the nightmare’s neck and ultimately decapitating it with a loud bang. The gemstones shimmered for the last time, and Vahl collapsed exhausted after witnessing the statue melt into the floor, leaving behind only a single scarlet red orb.