Chapter Text
His nightmares hissed at the stupid little creatures below. He didn’t care for their names—why would he? They were insects. Inferior. For beings who could see the future, they weren’t particularly bright.
It had taken less than a second to claim their planet.
A breath.
A blink.
A laugh.
Their leader—king, emperor, priest, whatever it fancied itself—stepped forward on trembling legs, forcing strength into its voice.
“We ask for your mind, Pitch the Nightmare King!” it cried, raising its voice above the soft sobbing of its people.
He snorted. The sound was low and ragged, like wet gravel dragged across rusted metal. A chuckle followed—soft, deliberate. To them, it sounded like disjointed screams layered atop each other, as though a thousand voices were trapped inside his lungs, clawing to get out.
Many flinched.
Some screamed.
Others dropped where they stood, writhing beneath the weight of what they heard.
He could feel their fear thickening the air, feeding his herd, strengthening it.
He decided to humor them. After all, this was their last day of life. Their last moment of thought. Their final illusion of hope.
His shadows recoiled as he began to take form, curling around him like worshippers before a god.
Darkness from the farthest reaches of space—untouched by stars, never meant to be seen—poured in like liquid ash. It churned and twisted into a towering mass, writhing and pulsing like it was alive. Like it was hungry.
From its surface emerged thousands of eyes—blinking gold, then silver, then vanishing altogether like dying stars. They watched everything and nothing all at once, and each glance burned like frostbite.
Then came the mouth—or what could be called one.
It gaped open suddenly, splitting his face down the middle, revealing rows upon rows of needle-thin teeth that continued far beyond what should be possible, vanishing into a black throat that whispered in languages never meant to be heard. There were no jaws—only a void, stitched together by slow-moving shadows that sewed his mouth shut again, until it looked as if it had never been there at all.
Several twisted masses erupted from his back—sinewy and malformed—jutting out like broken wings made of agony. They moved with unnatural purpose, dragging against the ground before splitting into thousands of long, thin claws. The claws sank into the planet’s crust like it was soft flesh, gouging deep holes that oozed thick, pulsing darkness.
Screams rose like a chorus.
Most of the creatures dropped in heaps—unconscious, trembling, or driven mad. Their minds were too fragile to bear the weight of what they had summoned.
Only the leader remained upright, though its body trembled. It stood as if frozen—eyes locked on him, expression unreadable.
He smiled. Or maybe he didn’t.
Maybe something behind his stitched lips smiled for him.
“What will you give,” Pitch whispered, his voice cracking the air like shattered glass, “in exchange for your sanity?”
The creature’s breath shuddered in its lungs. Eyes glassy, skin slick with cold sweat, it took one faltering step forward and raised its trembling arms.
It did not speak with its own voice.
It spoke with prophecy.
“Lo… from the wound of the cosmos shalt rise a twin flame: one of frost and folly, of mirth born in madness.”
Its voice echoed strangely, as if time itself recoiled from the sound.
“He who shall laugh in the maw of ruin, and fear not the teeth that gnaw the stars.”
Pitch tilted his head slowly, like the turning of an ancient, rotting wheel.
The shadows around him pulsed—curious.
The prophet’s eyes glazed. Pupils vanished. Light poured from its mouth as it spoke again:
“He shall come when night is weakest.
When the world hath scorned the dark.
When joy is false, and fear is called myth.
And lo, he shall not flinch. He shall smile.
And with but a laugh, awaken thee.”
Silence followed.
Thick. Suffocating.
Then came Pitch’s reply.
Not spoken— uttered.
His voice seeped into the world like ink in water—slow, staining, permanent.
“Hark, thou frail flicker of time’s decay…”
It scraped across the bones of language itself—too ancient for comprehension, and yet utterly understood.
“Thou speakest riddles as truth. Promises as prophecy.”
He towered over the creature, claws dragging gouges into the earth. His stitched mouth did not move—yet the voice bled from him all the same.
“Know this: I hath devoured prophets before thee. I hath waded through oceans of vision, and burned futures from the eyes of gods.”
He leaned in.
The creature collapsed to its knees—not from force, but from knowing.
“Yet… thou speakest of one who feareth not the dark?”
The shadows coiled tighter. Some began to hum—a note that didn’t exist in mortal sound.
“One who shall laugh where others weep?
One who shall feed the void… and leave none for hunger to claim?”
The creature—prophet, husk, vessel—nodded slowly.
“He cometh, O Nightmare. And he is thine.”
Pitch was still.
So still, the universe itself seemed to stop spinning.
Then—
“Very well,” he murmured.
And though the words were few, they rolled out like a death sentence carved into the bones of time.
“I shall sleep beneath silence.
I shall wait in the marrow of shadow.
I shall fold my limbs beneath the grave of stars…
And dream not, until he calleth me forth with mirth and ruin.”
The darkness surged around him—rising into a cocoon of whispering madness, a cradle of absolute void.
But before it closed, one final breath of horror spilled from him. His voice, low and soft, etched into the soul of every living thing on the planet:
“Let all things know—be they god, beast, or dream—
Touch not what is mine.
Lest I wake too soon…
And end the world unfinished.”
Then the cocoon sealed.
And the Nightmare King vanished beneath the folds of space—waiting to be summoned not by fear…
…but by laughter.
And the universe held its breath.
12,957,030,700 years later
Planet: Unknown…
Jack practically vibrated with excitement as the shuttle pierced through the cloud-thick atmosphere. His nose was nearly pressed to the window, eyes wide with wonder. It was the first planet he’d ever explore—and it looked awesome.
Purplish mountains stabbed into the sky like the bones of long-dead titans, and strange plant-like growths pulsed faintly with bioluminescence even in the daylight. The terrain looked alive, somehow. Waiting.
The shuttle touched down with only a minor hiccup—something clunked ominously near the thrusters—and Jack was already halfway down the exit ramp before it even lowered fully.
“Whoa! Settle down, mate!” Bunny barked, chasing after him. “I know it’s your first time, but you gotta be careful and follow protocol!”
Jack just laughed, arms thrown wide as he leapt into the alien soil. “C’mon, Bunny! We’re standing on a brand new world! Protocol can wait like… ten minutes, right?”
“Oh let him have his fun,” Tooth said with a smile, adjusting the pressure valves on her air-sculpted wings—custom-built by North himself. “It’s not every day you get to explore your first planet.”
She stepped gracefully out of the shuttle, wings whirring faintly, her suit glittering like the inside of a geode under the foreign sun.
Back aboard the research ship floating in the upper atmosphere, North and Sandy remained behind. North was hard at work tuning up Sandy’s gear after their last mission… the one where they’d accidentally triggered a dormant defense system and ended up pinned under a collapsing jungle temple. North grumbled about “next time making Sandy a bomb-proof hat.” Sandy just smiled, singing back in amused agreement.
Everyone’s gear was uniquely crafted. North made it a point of pride to give each of them tools that reflected who they were.
Tooth’s winged jetpack gave her stability and grace, letting her glide with absolute control.
Bunny had his signature kinetic boots that launched him in long, bounding leaps. He refused to fly, no matter how many times North offered him a jetpack. “Flying’s for birds and bugs,” he always muttered.
Sandy’s cloud-hoverboard allowed him to drift silently from place to place, seemingly gliding on dreams.
And Jack… Jack had the hardest rig of them all. No wings, no hoverboard. Just him and the wind.
His suit was built to let him ride the air itself. Not steer it. Not command it. Sync with it. There were no handlebars. No guide rails. Just endless space and the art of throwing himself into it with a grin and reckless faith.
It gave him freedom. Wild, exhilarating, stupid freedom.
He took a breath and kicked off the ground, spinning into the air like a leaf in a storm. The boosters hissed around him—noisy but responsive—and within seconds, he was weaving through rocky crags and strange, shimmering trees.
“Jack!” Bunny called, watching nervously. “That suit ain’t a toy! You break your face and I’m not draggin’ ya back in a mop bucket!”
But Jack was already gone, laughing as he arched high into the air and hovered upside down for the sheer joy of it.
He loved this. The motion, the chaos, the sky itself.
But then—
His laughter faded. The wind… changed.
There was a chill that shouldn’t have been there. Not in this sunlight. Not on this warm world.
Jack hovered midair, brow furrowing.
Down below, the others were still unloading gear and marveling at the vibrant, shifting landscape. But something gnawed at the edge of Jack’s awareness—something like a whisper in the breeze. A wordless tug in the air currents. A directionless pull.
The wind was… calling.
Not blowing. Not drifting. Calling.
Jack’s fingers twitched against his suit’s controls.
He shifted direction, slow and cautious now, angling toward a strange outcropping of black stone poking out from the hills.
It was colder here. The wind was sharper. Focused. Deliberate.
Jack touched down gently on the stone and knelt, brushing frost from its surface—frost that hadn’t been there a second ago.
And then he saw it.
A symbol. Barely visible.
Etched deep into the stone like it had been burned there not by heat… but by absence.
He didn’t recognize the language. But the moment he looked at it, something inside him stirred.
Something old.
Something waiting.
“Jack!” Bunny’s voice came over the intercom, startling Jack out of his stupor.
“Hey, Bun-bun, I think I found something,” Jack said into the comms, fingers brushing against the strange, frost-laced symbol. “You guys really need to get over here and see this.”
“Be there in a minute!” Tooth squealed, her wings already humming as she launched into the air.
A few minutes later, she landed beside him with Bunny bounding up right behind.
“Whoa…” Tooth breathed, eyes wide as she took in the black stone jutting from the earth like a jagged tooth. “What do you think it is? An ancient temple, maybe?”
“Aye, maybe a buried castle,” Bunny muttered, crouching to inspect the half-submerged structure. “Or somethin’ older. Look at this stone—this ain’t natural. Too smooth. Too… carved.”
“Nah, it’s definitely the resting place of an eldritch horror!” Jack declared with a grin, skipping over to what he thought was an entrance—half-buried beneath overgrown vines that shimmered like liquid glass. “This is exactly how all those stories start. Ancient thing sealed away. Unmarked planet. Weird whispers. We’re gonna wake up a world-ending nightmare, and I get to be the guy who poked it first!”
“Please don’t poke the eldritch horror,” Tooth sighed, already pulling out a scanning device.
Bunny rolled his eyes. “I told North we should’ve left you tethered to the shuttle.”
“I’d just chew through the line,” Jack shot back, eyes glinting.
As he reached the edge of the overgrowth, the wind around him shifted again. A low hum—faint, barely audible—seeped into the air like pressure in the skull. The plants recoiled at his touch, curling away as if afraid.
The dark stone door—or maybe it was a wall—shuddered beneath his fingers.
Without warning, the symbol lit up beneath his palm.
Not with flame. Not with light.
With cold.
A pulse of frost rippled outward from the mark, racing through the stone like veins of ice. The ground trembled softly beneath their feet.
Jack stepped back instinctively.
Tooth froze mid-scan. “Did you do that?”
“Nope,” Jack said quickly. “Unless just being awesome counts.”
The ice continued to spread, revealing more of the structure as it melted away the vines. Strange carvings began to emerge—swirling, looping glyphs that seemed to shift when you looked at them too long.
“That… ain’t right,” Bunny muttered, ears twitching.
Jack’s grin faltered. Just a little.
“…Okay,” Jack admitted, eyes widening. “Maybe it is the resting place of an eldritch horror.”
The symbol pulsed again—brighter, sharper—followed by a crack beneath his feet that split the silence like shattering bone. The stone ahead groaned as a thin seam tore open in the black rock, exhaling a slow breath of cold mist into the air.
Jack’s grin returned.
“Well, time to go wake it up!” he said, far too eagerly, and slipped through the narrow opening before either of them could react.
“Oh, for stars’ sake— Jack! ” Bunny groaned, bounding after him with a muttered string of curses.
Tooth followed close behind, wings humming nervously as she activated her wrist-light. “Why is it always you that runs toward the nightmare?”
Jack’s voice echoed from deeper inside. “Because nightmares are more fun than paperwork!”
The corridor beyond the entrance was narrow and carved from the same strange black stone, but it had a curious warmth to it—like the chill from outside couldn’t quite reach here. Their footsteps echoed softly, swallowed quickly by the hush of the hall, as if the place wanted silence.
Suddenly, Jack paused, craning his neck upward.
Bunny and Tooth joined him, their flashlights revealing massive tapestries stretching high along the curving walls. Dozens of them—maybe hundreds—hung in a winding procession down the corridor. They were almost eerily pristine, their fabric untouched by time or decay.
“Those look… new,” Bunny muttered. “Like someone just hung ‘em yesterday.”
Tooth moved closer, brushing her fingers against one. “They’re woven from something I don’t recognize. Not silk, not thread. It’s like… light. Frozen light.”
The images stitched into the fabric were horrifyingly vivid. One tapestry showed a planet crumbling to dust, its core devoured from within. Another depicted cities drowned by oceans of shadow. Still another showed stars going dark, their light consumed by clawed tendrils reaching from a black void.
Every scene showed a different form of death—but all ended the same way. With the rise of a single race.
Tall, slender beings made of flickering starlight and darkness intertwined. No eyes, no mouths, just swirling masks of shifting color and shadow. They stood at the center of every apocalypse, arms raised to welcome the end.
But what truly caught their attention was the final tapestry.
It spanned the far wall—twice the size of the others—and unlike the rest, it was alive with motion. Threads shimmered as though touched by starlight, and the air around it pulsed gently, like the heartbeat of a sleeping god.
The scene it depicted sent a chill down their spines.
At its center loomed a colossal being—far larger than the others they’d seen in the earlier tapestries. Made of writhing shadow and void, crowned with horns of curling dusk and limbs like reaching smoke, it dwarfed cities and swallowed stars. Eyes—hundreds of them—burned across its body like dying suns. And its mouth…
Its mouth was stitched shut by strands of shadow, but something behind it smiled.
“That’s…” Tooth whispered. “That’s not just one of them. That’s him. ”
“The Nightmare King,” Bunny muttered. “That’s gotta be him.”
The sheer scale of him in the tapestry made all the previous horrors seem like footnotes. Even the earlier destroyers paled in comparison. This was not a conqueror. This was the end of ends —the thing that broke the things that broke the world.
But he wasn’t alone.
Before him stood a smaller figure, just barely reaching the height of the Nightmare King’s clawed hand. This one radiated a cold, luminous white—frost and light wrapped in the shape of a person. A trail of blue flame curled from his feet. Mirth danced in the tilt of his shoulders, though his face was turned slightly away, unreadable.
The frost-being wasn’t fighting the Nightmare King.
He was reaching up to him.
One hand outstretched, palm open, fingers brushing just barely against the Nightmare King’s chest. And everywhere that touch landed—where white met black—the shadow ceased to writhe. The mouths went quiet. The eyes dimmed.
Calm.
A stillness so foreign it looked like silence painted into chaos.
The white being brought no weapons. No fire. No warnings.
Just… peace. And laughter.
And in return, the Nightmare King knelt—just barely. Head bowed. Not defeated. Not tamed.
At rest.
Jack took a step forward, eyes wide. He lifted his hand unconsciously, fingers nearly mirroring the white figure’s gesture in the tapestry.
“They weren’t partners in destruction…” he breathed. “They were opposites. A balance.”
“To calm that thing?” Bunny said in disbelief. “That monster’s not just death—it’s what comes after death.”
Tooth tilted her head. “But maybe that’s the point. He wasn’t made to destroy. He was made to follow. To answer.”
“To what?” Bunny asked, furrowing his brow.