NightmareEaterofDreadedDre

The Inner‑World’s fracture crept silently into the town’s sleeping districts, seeping through windows and cracks to poison the realm of sleep.

Kikotsu Tarō lay in bed, twisting restlessly beneath his quilt. His eyes stayed firmly closed, but his spirit had already fallen into the boundless labyrinth of a nightmare. He strained to wake himself, to break free from this heavy drowsiness, yet an invisible force weighed down on his limbs. Sleep paralysis held him fast, his body paralyzed on the mattress even as his mind wandered deep within the dream.

When he regained awareness, he was standing on the town’s main street. The sky hung pitch‑black, without moon or stars. Every building around him had warped into hollow, eerie shells. Streetlights flickered with sickly yellow glows, casting twisting shadows that slithered across the pavement. No hideous monster chased him openly. The thing haunting this domain hunted not flesh and blood, but raw, unfiltered fear. It fed upon every fright born inside human thought.

One by one, all his buried fears surfaced. Old frights, quiet worries, phobias he had buried deep in his subconscious were dragged out and magnified endlessly. The darkness reshaped itself, morphing into whatever terrified him most. Tarō spun round and round, searching for an escape, but every road looped back to the same distorted street. There was nowhere he could run.

Cold sweat soaked his nightwear. His heart thundered wildly inside his chest. Even trapped inside the dream, he could feel his real‑world body trembling. The more panic welled up inside him, the stronger the Nightmare Feeder became. It gorged itself on his terror, stretching the nightmare on and on, refusing to let him return to wakefulness.

He understood this was an anomaly from the Inner‑World. If he yielded completely to fear, his consciousness would be devoured. His soul would be locked eternally inside this repeating dream cycle, while his physical body sank into a permanent, lifeless coma in reality.

Faint, hoarse whispers circled from every side. There was no visible speaker; only his own deepest fears had gained a voice. The dividing line between dream and reality kept melting away. Little by little, Tarō lost the ability to tell which world was real.

The Nightmare Feeder possessed no claws, no sharp blades. It gnawed away at the human mind, feeding on dread until self‑awareness faded to nothing.