After spending what felt like several endless days trapped inside the [Depths], a place that warped time and suffocated all sense of direction, Alex had finally stumbled upon something that gave him the faintest glimmer of progress.
He stepped into an open clearing where the oppressive fog of the [Depths] seemed to waver slightly, as though even the realm itself was hesitant to encroach too deeply here.
[You have discovered the “Nightmare Temple.”]
The prompt echoed softly in his mind, but it didn’t bring him the kind of comfort he had hoped for.
Instead, it only confirmed that his journey through this hellish space wasn’t even close to finished.
And it was unexpected.
Contrary to what the name might have implied, the “temple” wasn’t some massive ancient structure made of black stone or towering spires.
There were no walls, no gates, no guards.
Nothing like the grand, ominous sanctuaries from places like [Dragon City].
Instead, this so-called “temple” was wide open.
A silent monument beneath the sickly sky, set atop a massive circular platform made of a smooth, dark stone.
It stretched out in every direction like a stage, empty save for the arrangement that now caught his eyes.
At the center stood a raised platform, almost like a ceremonial altar, flat and cold, with an empty recess at its core.
But what drew his attention more than that were the ten statues encircling it, spaced evenly in a perfect circle.
Ten identical stone figures, still and flawless, yet so unnerving that Alex immediately tensed.
They weren’t just statues. They were watching.
Even without movement, their presence pressed down on him.
Their hollow eyes were filled with swirling shadows and burning with a dark, flickering light that reminded him of the abyss itself.
They didn’t speak, didn’t move, yet every inch of him felt judged, dissected, even, as though these stone effigies were silently evaluating his worth.
“Ten of them…” he murmured under his breath, eyes narrowing.
Which meant ten Nightmare Echoes.
He already had four, which meant there were still six more left to find.
Six more abominations to fight.
Six more nightmares, all possibly drawn from the worst enemies or memories his mind could conjure.
The idea made his skin crawl.
Daniel, Dawn, Lucas, and Sato, those four had been relatively weak, in hindsight.
Quick battles, not nearly as taxing as they could’ve been.
But Alex wasn’t foolish enough to expect things would stay that way.
No, if the [Depths] followed any kind of logic, then the worst had yet to come.
If these nightmares scaled based on fear, trauma, or power, then what came next might be monsters he wasn’t ready for.
Still, at least now he knew he was halfway there.
Just as he was about to turn his focus back inward, new prompts began to surface before his eyes.
[You currently have four “Nightmare Echoes.”]
[The “Altar” of the Nightmare Temple has been detected. Absorbing Echoes…]
A sudden weight left his body as shadowy waves pulsed out of his core, four rings of energy, each one dark, rippling like ink across water.
The echoes he had collected, echoes of the beings he had fought and killed, flowed toward the altar without hesitation.
They gathered at its center, hovering for a moment in silence.
Then…
FWISH! BOOM!
Without warning, four piercing rays of shadow burst from the altar, shooting outwards and striking four of the statues surrounding it.
The impact was immediate. The statues began to warp.
What were once smooth, faceless humanoid figures now began to take on shape, detail, expression, identity.
A dark vortex of energy swirled around each of them, cloaking them in nightmare-born aura as their true forms emerged.
Daniel Thunder, claws gleaming as if ready to lunge at any moment.
Lucas, holding that strange curved pistol once again, its barrel still smoking from the last time Alex faced him.
Sato, sword in hand, stance heavy and imposing.
And Dawn, expression unreadable, shadow orbs floating ominously by his side.
The four statues had become shadow-clones of the beings they represented.
It was subtle, but their heads now followed Alex wherever he moved, their eerie glowing eyes never leaving him.
Alex exhaled slowly.
“Six more to go, then…”
The reality of the trial was finally setting in.
There were no instructions given at the start.
Only through surviving and pushing forward had he even begun to piece together the true objective, collect the echoes, reach the temple, and then, presumably, ascend once they were all gathered.
Most people probably never made it this far.
In fact, judging by how sparse the corpses had become the deeper he went, Alex wouldn’t be surprised if less than 0.001% of challengers had even reached this far.
But that only made him more determined.
Still, he had to remember this location.
It would be easy to get lost again.
The [Depths] weren’t just massive, they were twisted, looping, and almost alive.
Larger than the [Abyss], larger than any domain he had ever encountered.
It felt like a realm designed to break people down piece by piece.
But despite all his progress, the moment Alex had stepped foot into this temple, something had changed.
A constant sensation, sharp and insistent, buzzed at the back of his head.
His instincts, reliable and battle-hardened after everything he had gone through, had been screaming ever since he entered.
It wasn’t a normal warning.
It was something deeper.
Something primal.
It was telling him that he was going to die here.
He didn’t doubt it.
Not for a second.
So, trusting his gut, he turned his back on the altar and began walking again, continuing forward, deeper into the unknown.
Step! Step! Step!
Each footfall echoed louder than the last.
The stone beneath his boots began to feel colder.
The air was thick, dense with a pressure he couldn’t shake.
He passed two of the statues on his way out, glancing briefly at their empty forms.
Step! Step! Step!
He was nearly out of the circular formation now, just a few meters more until he was back on the regular terrain of the [Depths].
And then.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The earth shook violently beneath him, followed by a scream that split the silence like a dagger through flesh.
The sound was inhuman, raw, hateful, and filled with madness.
Even Alex, battle-hardened and numb to most horrors, felt a cold jolt run down his spine.
His head snapped back toward the temple as a storm of black aura erupted around him, swallowing the space whole.
“What the hell—”
He couldn’t even finish the thought.
FWISH! SLASH!
Something hit him.
His body was cleaved in half, perfectly and effortlessly.
His pupils contracted as pain flared through his nerves.
“Too fast!”
Then…
Destiny Shift!
[Undoing death…]
In an instant, he was back, whole again, but not safe.
Another attack came the second he opened his eyes, a slash that cut through the air with such force it sent out a shockwave, ripping through the platform and carving a jagged trench into the very stone.
Alex dodged just in time, rolling across the ground as he raised his head.
And what he saw. His jaw almost dropped.
Standing just ahead, its monstrous form glowing with hatred and power, was a being he hoped he would never see again.
[Hatred Demon – Nightmare]
“Oh god…”
This was it.
This was what his instincts had been screaming about. A true nightmare.