This time around I was surrounded by flesh eating undead that had their skin melting and rotting as they ran towards me. I didn't stick around to know what would happen once they got their hands on me.

I dashed across what looked like a bridge over a waterfall. The undead horde was right behind me making the wooden bridge tremble and crack beneath my feet. A lunging monster caught me by surprise. It landed between me and the end of the bridge.

My heart only sank deeper as the realization that there was no escape started to set in. I didn't give up just yet. Unsheathing my wooden sword I ran to confront the monster.

It was a feign, in reality I decided to slip past the monster by taking a leap and dodging past its grab. I used my sword to propel myself further from where I would've landed with my feet alone.

The technique I had trained during the day came to mind.

That thought quickly eluded me as I continued running for my life. I was in a forest now. I kept turning back to see the horde still after me, alongside them was the snarling monster that surprised me at the bridge.

A bad step later and I was headed face first to the ground. I quickly picked myself up and sprinted harder than before. I was getting out of breath quickly.

I turned again to see that the creatures were getting even closer. Again I seemed to fall over from the slightest obstacle in the path of my feet.

"Guagh!"

I couldn't contain the screams that wanted to escape from within.

The threat was closing in on me fast. I tried going behind every tree with thick roots. The route itself became more hazardous to me but I thought for certain even those undead would have trouble catching up with all this uneven terrain.

Unfortunately for me, something gripped onto my ankle right as I was beginning to lose some of the accumulated tension. I turned to see it was a branch of the tree itself that latched on. The tree was alive as well.

The gnarled appearance of the tree gave it the look of flesh twisted and bent in a way that was inhuman and far more frightening than the average monster.

I managed to break free. I didn't dare look back anymore. What awaited me now was the end of the tree line. My legs started to drag from exhaustion as I made it out of the forest.

Laughter rang through the air, it was a sinister cackle, it sounded like a girl. The direction of the laughter steered me towards a decrepit stone mansion.

Dreading to even look behind me I dashed inside of the mansion. I shut the door behind me and set down the wooden board left behind to secure it.

The laughter that I heard subsided the moment I entered the mansion. The foyer was empty with only the moonlight to guide me to a stand with a candle conveniently seated next to a match.

Creepy as it is some light is better than none at all. I lit the match and brought the flame to the candle's wick.

The candle holder was nothing special, it held the candle in place while the metal pan caught the dripping wax, the handle itself was a twisted piece coming from beneath the pan of metal.

I made my way past the foyer into the grand hall. The stairs were split in two but met in the middle before the final ascension to the second area. There was enormous space in the moonlit room. I wasn't familiar with the place at all.

I heard that giggle again it left me in a cold sweat, after that I heard a stone dislodge but it did not make a sound when it should've hit the ground. I turned and saw a void of darkness encroaching the foyer I had been in. Squishing and popping noises rang from the advancing pit.

I couldn't wait there any longer, I decided to run through the grand hall and ascend the stairs. All the doors in the immediate balcony area were locked shut.

A faint light at the end of the left hall drew my attention. The laugh rang out again, but it was coming from the opposite end of the hall, I was sure of it.

I had no way of knowing which one to trust. Figuring the laughter didn't come off as inviting I chose to seek out the source of the light first.

My legs were rested enough to continue running, but I was too scared of what I might find to approach any quicker.

A man stood at the end of a hall holding a torch. He looked normal enough but there was something about him that made his body glint in the light of the torch he was holding. As I got closer I realized the man was drenched. Once his eyes locked onto me the torch in his hand twitched.

"Wait, no don't!"

The man set himself ablaze, his howling screams filling the entire empty hall. Rooted to the floor I was unable to move and could only stare with eyes wide open the flesh fry to the bone. Then a red glare peered out from the skull of the blazing man.

Leaving behind chunks of flesh from his charred feet the flaming skeleton started walking towards me.

I reflexively took a step back and the feeling of control over my body returned, the knob turned when I tried opening the door beside me. I busted inside to find a library with plenty of bookcases to hide behind.

As I crouched and hid behind the shelves I peered in the gaps to see that the burning man followed me inside. My candle would make it impossible to hide.

Scurrying through the labyrinthic library I found another door to an adjacent room. Inside the room was desk, window and an open book. I peered the page the book was opened to.

It read cryptically.

'The key to answering your questions lies in the air of the moonlight waltz. Understand, not all locks open the same way.'

Nothing about it made any direct sense, but lying on the page was a pair of scissors. I placed them in my pocket before leaving the study through another door than the one I came in.

I was back in the hall but I turned to the end I came from and found it deeply engulfed in the void from the foyer.

The door I just closed began turning to ash. I didn't wait for the immolating skull to show up, I barged into the next room that was open. It seemed be a lab of some sort. A bottle close to boiling was enclosed in a glass case fastened by a simple rope knot. It was placed on a central table that stretched to the entire room, with counters on the walls giving very little space to walk around in.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

I couldn't get it to open with my hands alone. I looked to the exit at the far end of this lab. When I approached close enough the door was held shut by a thick set of iron chains.

The thought came to mind that the bottle in the glass case was acid and the chains would melt once I pour it onto them. I went back to the glass case. The door I came into the room from was suddenly bursting into flames.

Not much time remained so I had to find somewhere to hide quick. After cutting the knot with the scissors in my pocket I looked around. The storage closet would be big enough for me to fit in, I placed my candle inside before crouching beneath the large table.

The incendiary man entered the room in no time.

I made my way slowly to the chained door. I heard the smash of the closet by the pursuer. The noise persisted as I got to the door and poured the vial on the chains. The sizzling sound was too loud to be ignored. I turned to the see the walking bonfire coming after me once more. The acid was taking too long to do its job. No, it's more like I didn't have enough time to sit and wait for the chains to dissolve.

I grabbed a crate from the counter next to the doors and tried to throw it with all the force in my small body.

The burning man was unfazed by my poor attempt to stall him. In fact, the stride of the man was quickening. I ran around the table. For a second he would continue around but then as I quickly met the other corner he would turn to the other side.

A stupid mind game began as I tilted to run one way and the burning man turned to follow before I dashed the other way, and he'd suddenly speed up to react and return to where I would head if I kept going.

I reached the smoldering closet that the burning man had initially destroyed. My candle was still burning faintly inside. I grabbed it, in that moment the burning man intensely burned through the table to try and reach me. I kicked off the burned closet and used my free hand to ensure I would continue with momentum to the door where the chains had finally fallen off of. I made sure not to let the candle go out in my frantic movements.

The burning man was still in the middle of the table before he broke it down to chase after me. I opened the doors and ended up in a supply room.

I opened the door to the hall and found myself on the other end of where the void had blocked off. I could now return to the grand hall from here.

Without warning the burning man broke down the door of the supply room and entered the hall.

The chase ensued with the fire man no longer taking thundering steps, now he was intent on catching me as he willed his bones to rattle and sprint.

I didn't need a starting gun to dart down the way I came. Right as I got to the balcony of the grand hall I felt a tug at my foot before I was nearly face first onto the floor. Once again my free hand moved like a third foot and pushed off the floor to help me forward and regain my balance.

I turned to see the burning man reaching out to me but he couldn't get near anymore. No, instead the burning man was now falling into the dark pit that had been eating away at the wing while we fled to the balcony. The flicker of the burning man's flames descended until the light finally disappeared.

I felt a sense of ease but the terror continued when I saw just how far the dark void had spread. The grand hall's ground floor was a third of the way consumed and the wing I had just left was gone. Even though the windows seemed to still illuminate from the moon, the windows swallowed by the darkness did not suddenly become holes in the mansion. Instead it was as if the darkness was starting to eat at the reality of this world.

I decided to head towards the other end of the hall where I originally heard the laughter.

It was calm, no squeaky doors or loose stones. There didn't seem to be any doors throughout the entire hall save for the one at the end.

There was no lock or anything that hindered me from opening the door. Beyond the door was a spiral staircase that made the interior of the tower. I made my way up the stairs, still in the back of mind there was the inkling that something wrong could happen at any moment.

Nothing ever did as I went up to the very top of the tower. It was empty and desolate.

I looked outside and noticed a shining object in the distance. It was strangely floating above the mansion below. The window I noticed it through was directly level with where the object was laid.

The note from the page in the study came to mind. I remembered the strange floor of the dojo's false room.

I placed my hand passed the edge of the window and found that it could not go further down. There was the same invisible barrier that made a surface I could walk on.

I'm already used to this trick so it doesn't cause me as much distress to climb out of the window and trust the invisible path to the shining object.

At the end of the path was a bird cage. It didn't look like there was any bird inside of it. I attempted to get closer and inspect it but I suddenly took a step and knew immediately the path ended here. Balancing myself back onto the invisible path, I felt gravity pull me making me nauseous. If I hadn't been careful I would've plunged right into the mansion and likely splattered over the stone roof.

I observed as much as I could and realized there was still a ring around the bird cage that was still made up of the air walkway. However, none of the circular path was any closer so I had to make due and examine from the distance I was limited to.

The change was nearly translucent as if a clearer material than glass was used to construct it. I tried reaching it with my wooden sword. The sound of the bird rattling the cage echoed into the night. My sword gripped onto the cage before coming loose after a careful pull. I felt the edge that had latched onto the cage, it was painfully cold.

If not glass, then ice. I was never someone who had much fondness for puzzles, but the simple and obvious solution came to me in such a way that I felt a hint of pride.

I carefully balanced the candle onto the edge of my blade and leaned it over the cage. Like I imagined it would, the cage started to melt, a sizable hole was now open.

There was a flutter and then a glittering light descended down back to the mansion. I almost dropped the candle from the suddenness of the bird's flapping.

As soon as I had begun to feel the least bit of comfort the pit began to swallow this side to, starting from the invisible platform.

I quickly jumped back in through the window and descended the tower. Looking back up at it the entire structure collapsed and became swallowed by the emptiness.

The same happened to the hall as I made my way back to the balcony.

There was hardly anything left. The entire grand hall was nothing more than a black space in my retina. The floor itself had pits in it of pure void. The only object spared was the radiating open door. A white light poured from its edges.

I didn't hesitate to throw myself in.

"Hahahah! That was simply hilarious, I can't believe you ran through all that and only screamed a single time. Ah. This has been quite fun."

"Who are you?"

I stared blankly to the girl who just finished wiping away a small tear of joy. She still smiled as she put her attention to me.

"In a way you could say I'm like a teacher, but I'm much too young to be that. Oh, I know of a better idea. I'm your dream godmother!"

This strange girl made even my old self cringe. I knew she noticed my confused expression because she proceeded to pace around the room and rub her head.

"What's going on?"

"Well, it's a little complicated. And you asked me who I am but I can tell you're not happy with what I said. Oh, this is much too hard for me to explain."

"You could at least try to."

"I wish my father was here, he could clear this all up. Hmm."

"You can start with where we are, it shouldn't be that hard, it could be on a map you have or written on some sign a walk from here away."

"That's just it, we aren't in some physical place this is a dream."

"A dream, no way, is this some lucid nightmare then?"

"That's the right word, lucid, but no this isn't a nightmare, it's just a dream. My father told me to put as many frightening things inside of it as long as it's someone who wants to learn how he fights. It's been lonely so I'm glad you haven't given up yet."

"Wait what? How he fights? Was your father someone who fought with a sword style?"

"Yes, he was good at it. Although one day he told me to stay put and that he'd love me forever, but he hasn't come back. He left me with this small task of scaring anyone who starts thinking about his way of fighting."

"Okay but isn't this my dream? How are you in my dream?"

"I'm not in your dream, you're not really in my dream either. See? It's complicated."

"So, it's like a bridge then, one between my dream and yours. Then-"

I couldn't finish speaking something was dragging me away.

"Time's up. Go on and wake up, maybe we'll speak the next night."

"What about you!"

I managed to yell back somehow.

"I can't wake up anymore. So, I'll wait, like always."

The dream was over. I could hear my yell echo in my room. I might've yelled out my last words to her as I awoke.

One thing was certain, the memory of this dream would never leave me. The nightmare turned dream ended up leaving me rested, something about the end got rid of my tension and replaced it with sorrow.