[Aspirant! Welcome to the Nightmare Spell. Prepare for your First Trial…]

'...what…?'

A strange voice spoke in his mind. Hope wasn't sure if he caught its words clearly. His mind still felt disoriented as he tried to process where he was now.

Hope opened his eyes and found nothing but complete darkness. At least he thought he opened his eyes. He couldn't see his hands or feet and felt like he was locked in some sort of box. His movements even felt restricted.

It was simple yet it could be felt.

It was suffocating.

'Where the hell am I…?'

At the same moment, something flickered in his peripheral vision, and he turned towards it.

A small white light flickered in the far distance like a candle almost being burnt out.

Odd. It wasn't there before, but it seemed to be the way out. Well, the only possible route to anywhere.

But was he looking at it up or down? To his left? No. Right?

Hope hesitated for a moment, but then willed himself to reach out to it, expecting to pull back some cosmic curtain or to be introduced to some chthonic god on the other side.

Suddenly, the white light burst forward and engulfed his vision. Hope felt a strong gravitational pull on his body, his limbs helpless against the force as he was sucked into the gaping maw of light.

A moment later, he was welcomed into a new world.

A wasteland of ruins.

A world entirely different from his own.

'Huh. Am I dreaming?'

Hope tried to pinch himself but realized he still didn't have a body. Yet. Well, hopefully. Maybe it was a dream, and he was seeing it all from a third person's perspective. Although he didn't have a body, he did feel a phantom pain in the back of his head. Maybe he was knocked out so hard that this weird dream occurred because of it. However, he wasn't able to view himself or fly around to scope his surroundings.

He was buoyant between the sky and the ground, viewing a wasteland that was dry and barren from any semblance of life. He looked directly below himself and saw a tall ruined cathedral in which its spires stretched high above as if it were pulled till the peaks were thin and pointy like that of a needle. Although parts of the roof were caved in and it also seemed far from its original appearance, it sat quite majestically in the middle of a village.

Or what was left of a village.

All the other buildings were blackened with soot. Coated from distant ash that stuck to their walls, doors, archways, and streets. Tumbled bricks and stones where houses once stood were scattered around, and what remained seemed to be ancient tottering buildings. There were even huge columns crashed into some of the buildings and in narrow alleys that blocked exits. But even amidst all the crash, there were noticeable dented silver claw marks dragged all over the area. As if some caged animal had been set loose to enjoy a hunt that it had longed for.

It was as if the devil himself flipped this land and turned it into his own domain.

Despite the ancient structures and the foreign barren land in front of him, it all felt somewhat familiar to Hope. Even in his Quadrant, there were still some sites like this wasteland.

Some residues of bombing cities and plains paralleled much to this gray landscape. He didn't know too much about his world's history, but it probably was a result of fighting against numerous gates and defeating its guardians. His world of course had a much more modern architecture. This, however, had a detailed archaic touch to it in which he doubted his mind was even capable of creating such complexity.

He wouldn't consider his mind to be an imaginative one.

'How strange.'

Hope paused and observed what at first looked like dull white specks littering the ground. He squinted his eyes and realized they were bones. Skulls planted here and there with cracked open jaws facing the sky as if crying out to some god to save them. Clearly, their dying wishes were all for naught.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

Hope nonchalantly blinked at the sight.

'Right. I'm dreaming. Just dreaming…but isn't this a little vivid for a dream?'

Sometimes dreams were so real that even Hope struggled to differentiate a nightmare from reality. But there would always be that small sense of detachment that helped him separate what was real and what was not. He didn't have that same feeling here though.

Suddenly, Hope felt the world shift, and the ash across the ruins had begun to ascend.

His gaze trailed the cinders from the ground towards the sky and noticed the gray clouds shifting from east to west. Slowly at first, then they scudded towards the horizon, stretching an endless blanket of itself from one end to the other. The sun wasn't visible through its thick layers so the sky shone like one giant pulse, signifying at what seemed day and night to be passing. A couple beats per second, then a thousand like gunfire spewing blinding flashes, forcing his gaze back towards the ground where the rest of the world was reversing.

Stones restacked themselves into their original stories. Streets cleared from the heaps of ash. Skulls started to roll and bounce backward toward their counterparts. Hundreds of bodies ignited in one instance, but in the next restored themselves layer by layer.

Time slowed as large fires roared back to life throughout the village, blooming through windows and corners of the streets as night took its place in the sky.

Then screams pierced the air.

That was when Hope realized, time resumed back to its usual pace.

'Huh. Maybe it's not a dream... So did I…die?' Hope frowned. 'The hell?'

Well, ironically, it really looked like hell. Not that he saw any images of it before. But he had heard tales of writhing bodies and gnashing of teeth. Which was similar to what he was witnessing right now.

Hope blinked and found himself standing on a balcony of the once ruined cathedral. He was peering from a distance at the desperate townsfolk clambering over each other to escape the hungry flames. From afar, it looked like molded bodies in a disturbing pile of jerky limbs.

And the smell of burnt flesh and smoke started to clog his throat-

Hope jerked back and covered his mouth with his sleeve.

He felt a rough fabric brushing his skin and he froze.

He looked down at his sleeves that were loose and black. In fact, his whole outfit was a long priest garment in black with gray buttons sewn down his chest and its collar clasped tight around his neck. He even had a short elbow length cape attached to his shoulders. However, what was stranger was the stark rich blue color underneath his cape. Richer than any clear sky he'd ever seen.

Would one wear such attire when they wake up in hell?

Hope blinked at the appearance.

He had to admit that the outfit wasn't so bad.

"Well, you can never go wrong with the color black-"

"Priest!"

Hope flinched as he turned away from the balcony and faced the inside of the room. The call came from just on the other side of the door. Hope subconsciously reached for his gun, but realized it wasn't there.

Of course it wasn't there. This wasn't the waking world.

'Wait…' Hope frowned at that thought.

Hope then heard a rush of heavy footsteps storming down a hall heading towards the room he was in. A moment later, the door burst open frantically. There appeared a young knight in chainmail armor with a blue tunic and a long cape draped over him. He had blonde damp hair, disheveled in all angles with sweat sticking to its ends as he looked hurriedly around. He seemed to be about Hope's age of sixteen. Or eighteen?

The knight turned towards the balcony and finally met eyes with Hope.

"Priest, please get away from the balcony!"

Hope raised his hands. "Hold on-"

The knight dashed forward and yanked on Hope's wrist back inside the room. A sharp pang shot through his arm causing Hope to slightly wince. That felt more real than he'd expected.

"We have to leave! Hurry!"

"...Huh...?" Hope blinked.

Hope watched him with a blank expression as the knight rushed over to a far cornered table in the room where some maps and scrolls were sprawled out.

It was only a glimpse of what seemed to be of tunnels or sewage lines and marked symbols with scrawly notes scribbled around the edges, but the knight quickly crumpled it all up and threw it into a fireplace, along with a bunch of other scrolls that were on the bookshelves. He even accidentally spilled a bottle of ink and knocked small decor items in the process.

"…"

'…those seem important. But then again, there are people burning just right outside so is that even a priority…?'

Hope sighed and crossed his arms as he leaned against a wall.

He closed his eyes and tried to recollect his thoughts.

'So an inferno. Possibly a mob attack. Possibility of being tortured and captured. Right. A dream. A stupid dream. But the worst kind.'

Hope wasn't sure when was the last time he had a dream like this.

Almost every time he'd close his eyes to rest, the next thing he knew was that four hours had already passed.

Sleep was always tricky like that for him. It was as if his mind didn't want to waste the energy of convoluting dreams but instead skip to the next waking moment.

If he dreamt of anything, they were mostly nightmares. His nightmares were a variety of horror from being buried, chased, attacked, etc. His situation now seemed to fit the criteria of a normal nightmare.

Although strangely he was a priest. Not a soldier or a regular civilian but part of some religious faction.

"Uwaaaack!"

"A-aaaaaah!"

"P-please help us!"

Ear-splitting screams interrupted his flow of thoughts from behind where all the chaos was. Hope glanced back at the scenery and frowned as he saw people running with flames caught in their hair and garments down the streets. Some clawed at their faces as their skin was slowly being incinerated. Others rolled on the ground more helpless than ever in the sea of fire; their bodies charred from pink, to red, to black.

Too vivid.

'How strange.'

Hope tapped his fingers nonchalantly on his arm.

'What to do, what to do, to wake up from a dream…'

He paused.

'Huh.'

In the meantime, the knight burned the last of the unknown scrolls into the fireplace and dragged his gloved hand across his sweaty brow.

"If we head to the back corridor in time, we might be able to escape by the river! Hopefully by then we can either sail across or-"

The knight looked back at Hope…who was perching on the balcony's ledge.

"PRIEST?!"