BrandNew Haven City festered beneath a perpetual shroud of fog.
It was not the gentle mist of mountain valleys nor the romantic haze of old cinema. This fog was industrial—oily, metallic—reeking of rust, rot, and the quiet resignation of millions who had long accepted despair as climate.
From the cracked window of his seventeenth-floor hab-block apartment, Xia Ying watched the evening mist coil through the skeletal remains of megastructures. Their broken silhouettes clawed at a bruised violet sky like the fingers of the damned begging for absolution that would never come.
Flickering sodium lamps bled sickly amber onto the streets below.
Crowds huddled in ration lines.
Others hurried past barricades welded from scrap—fortifications scarred by old Rift breaches where reality itself had once torn open like infected flesh.
Sirens wailed intermittently.
Sharp. Mechanical. Indifferent.
Each cry carried the same meaning:
**Another had been Branded.**
Another soul dragged screaming into their first personalized nightmare.
Xia Ying turned eighteen today.
He pressed his palm against the cold glass. His breathing remained slow, measured—predatory calm beneath human skin.
In his previous life, birthdays had meant nothing.
They were merely occasions for intrigue—banquets where poisoned wine flowed like silk and empires trembled beneath whispers.
He had risen from a forgotten scholar to the unseen hand that crushed dynasties. Not through brute force, but through orchestration—betrayals layered upon betrayals, massacres disguised as accidents, entire bloodlines erased by rumors alone.
He had loved one thing above all:
The moment power fled a victim's eyes.
That exquisite instant when certainty shattered into terror.
He amassed everything—wealth, influence, hidden armies.
And in the end?
He died old. Hollow.
Betrayed by a disciple who had learned too well at his master's feet.
His name erased. His legacy scattered like ash.
…And then he awakened here.
A second life.
A far more exquisite world.
---
Twenty years ago, the **Nightmare Curse** descended.
No warning. No deity. No explanation.
Reality fractured—and the crimson interface appeared before every soul upon reaching adulthood.
**Branded.**
One month to prepare.
Then came the pull.
Each victim was dragged into a Nightmare Realm woven from their deepest fears.
Most shattered within hours—essence scattered into the void.
But survivors returned changed.
Marked by a **Dominion**—a seed of power rooted in terror itself.
Harvest fear. Conquer deeper nightmares. Ascend through the Nine Realms.
Whispers spoke of twenty-two lost **Ascension Chains** leading to true apotheosis…
…but those were myths guarded by the powerful.
Xia Ying believed in myths only when he could weaponize them.
---
He had prepared relentlessly in this life.
Dawn runs through rubble—tempering flesh while evading scavenger gangs.
Nights spent scouring forbidden survivor forums—cataloging Dominion types, terror yields, Flaw dependencies.
Knowledge was the sharpest blade.
Fear its perfect edge.
In his previous world, he mastered both.
Rumors toppled thrones.
Executions masqueraded as fate.
Morality?
A comforting lie the weak told themselves before dying.
Here, fear was no longer metaphor.
It was sustenance.
Delicious.
---
The fog outside thickened, swallowing the last city lights.
Xia Ying turned from the window, surveying his sparse room:
A metal cot.
A scavenged terminal flickering with lore tabs.
Walls covered in handwritten notes—Dominion compatibilities, terror embodiments, Flaw mitigation theories.
On the table lay a crude knife forged from sharpened rebar.
Hidden. Ready.
Tonight…
His Brand would activate.
---
A cold prickle crawled beneath his skin.
Like insects burrowing through marrow.
The air thickened. Pressure built in his ears until they popped.
His heartbeat slowed—steady, deliberate, predatory.
"It begins."
A crimson panel materialized before him.
Ancient.
Indifferent.
Unavoidable.
---
**[Subject: Xia Ying]**
**[Age: 18]**
**[Branded Confirmed]**
**[Dominion Assignment in Progress…]**
---
Dominions were semi-random.
Shaped by soul resonance, psychological architecture… perhaps deeper hungers.
Common Dominions: Flame Lord. Blade Sovereign. Iron Skin.
Useful early.
Capped low.
Rare Dominions opened higher Realms.
Divine Dominions?
Fairy tales.
None confirmed in twenty years.
The panel pulsed.
---
**[Dominion: Nightmare Sovereign — Divine Rank]**
**[Flaw: Eternal Hunger for Terror]**
**[Description:]**
*You hold sovereignty over nightmare essence. Power manifests and evolves through terror you instill and harvest.*
*To stabilize your Dominion, you must periodically consume genuine dread from sentient minds.*
*Intensity requirements scale with ascension.*
*Failure invites abyssal consumption.*
---
Silence filled the room.
Then—
Xia Ying smiled.
Slowly.
Predatorially.
"Divine… on debut."
How convenient.
Fear had always been his masterpiece.
He remembered the emperor's final banquet—
Goblet raised.
Eyes widening as toxin seized his veins.
A court frozen in collective horror while Xia Ying bowed in apology.
Dynasties fell because men feared shadows more than swords.
And now?
His Flaw demanded terror as sustenance.
Not a curse.
Perfection.
The Curse had handed him dominion over his favorite instrument.
---
Reality dissolved into crimson darkness.
---
**[Entering First Nightmare Realm]**
**[Scenario: The Orphanage That Never Sleeps]**
**[Role: The Forgotten Child]**
**[Objective: Endure Until Dawn. Uncover the Endless Play.]**
**[Hidden Truth Detected]**
**[Failure: Essence Dissolution]**
**[Success: Dominion Awakening + Essence Stabilization]**
---
Cold stone bit into his bare feet.
Moonlight speared through shattered stained glass, scattering fractured colors across dust-choked floors.
The air smelled of mildew…
Faded soap…
And beneath it—
Old blood.
Xia Ying stood within a vast dormitory lined with rusted bunks stretching into darkness.
Child drawings covered the walls.
Smiling figures holding hands.
Every pair of eyes scratched out.
Whispers layered the air like shallow graves.
*Play with us…*
*Forever…*
*Stay…*
He did not panic.
This was a tutorial realm.
Low difficulty.
Designed to filter the fragile through creeping dread.
Panic fed it.
Calm starved it.
Most victims would hide.
Scream.
Run.
Exactly the feast it desired.
Xia Ying began to walk.
Silently cataloging.
Broken toys arranged in ritual circles.
Dolls staring upward.
A nursery rhyme etched repeatedly into peeling paint:
*Ring around the playmate,*
*Pockets full of sorrow,*
*Ashes, ashes,*
*We never grow.*
---
The Matron's Office.
Dust lay thick across the desk.
Small barefoot prints crisscrossed the floor.
A journal waited open—as if expecting him.
Entries spoke of fever. War. Starvation.
Prayers unanswered.
Until something listened.
An entity promising eternal play.
It wore the Matron's face first.
Then the children's.
Final entry:
*We play forever now.*
*No one leaves.*
---
Xia Ying closed the journal.
"Eternal Playmate," he murmured.
Mid-tier horror.
Feeds on entrapment dread.
Anchor-bound.
Likely a doll vessel.
Standard strategy: Survive until dawn.
His strategy?
"Why endure…"
"…when I can devour the tutorial?"
---
Preparation consumed hours.
Wires stripped from conduits.
Oil siphoned from lamps.
Bedposts sharpened into stakes.
He found the anchor in the basement:
A porcelain doll seated upon a child-bone altar.
Its smile too wide.
Teeth too human.
Spectral chains tethered it to the realm.
---
A pale child appeared behind him.
Head tilted unnaturally.
"Why are you alone?"
Dozens of voices echoed the question.
Xia Ying crouched, voice gentle.
"You're lonely too, aren't you?"
Confusion flickered.
He felt it—
A pulse of harvested terror.
Warm.
Addictive.
He ended the apparition swiftly.
Grateful mist dissolved.
Preparation complete.
---
Midnight.
Temperature plummeted.
Whispers died.
At the corridor's end stood a tall figure in a black dress crusted with gore.
Its face was smooth.
Featureless.
Until a mouth tore open—rows of child-teeth spiraling inward.
"Come play… forgotten one."
Most would freeze.
Xia Ying walked forward.
Soft voice.
Measured.
"You're tired, aren't you?"
It paused.
He continued weaving psychological hooks—journal truths, existential bait.
"You don't want endless play. You want eternity."
He lured it to the basement.
The trap triggered.
Tripwire.
Oil cascade.
Lantern ignition.
Flames roared skyward.
The entity shrieked in a chorus of children's agony.
Xia Ying walked through the inferno untouched—
Shadows instinctively parting the blaze.
His Dominion whispered awake.
He locked his gaze onto the horror.
And pushed.
He forced it to feel—
Entrapment.
Loneliness.
Oblivion.
Its own eternal cycle.
Terror reversed.
It convulsed.
He drove the stake through the doll's heart.
---
The realm screamed.
Walls bled.
Spectral children appeared—faces peaceful as they faded into light.
Reality fractured.
---
**[Nightmare Realm Conquered — Flawless Dominion]**
**[Hidden Truth Unveiled: Cycle Shattered]**
**[True Harvest Achieved]**
**[Essence Grants:]**
• Stable Terror Core
• Shadow Tendrils Manifestation
• Juvenile Phantom Summon
**[Title Acquired: One Who Walks Unafraid]**
---
Crimson light collapsed inward.
Xia Ying awoke in his apartment.
His body felt denser.
Charged.
He flexed his fingers.
Shadows stirred—
Tendrils coiling around his palm like obedient serpents.
He summoned the phantom briefly:
A pale orphan child.
Ink tears streaming from hollow eyes.
Dread radiated outward in suffocating waves.
He dismissed it.
Satisfied warmth filled him as his Flaw's hunger quieted.
A low laugh escaped his lips.
Genuine.
Predatory.
"The tutorial… farmed."
He gazed toward the fog-drowned city.
"Now for real minds."
Registration awaited tomorrow.
Mandatory Brand verification.
The true feast would begin.