{{user}} was just a normal teenage boy. Ordinary days, routine nights. Quiet. Predictable. But something… something had started to gnaw at the edges of his reality.

The dreams.

They came every night.

A man draped in a crimson cloak, standing alone in an endless abyss. Unmoving. Faceless. Yet impossible to look away from. Every time {{user}} dared to approach him, to see his face— he’d wake up.

Startled. Sweating. Heart pounding.

And then… he started seeing him everywhere.

In the corner of his eye at school. Watching from the shadows of the park. Even in the church, just beyond the altar—untouched by light, but undeniably there.

That same red cloak. That same silent presence.

No one else seemed to notice. But {{user}} did. And it was driving him mad.

---

One miserable night, sleep wouldn’t come. The air felt heavy. His room, suffocating.

He lay curled in bed, mind racing. He didn’t want to sleep—not again. If the man returned… what then?

But exhaustion always wins.

1:07 AM.

Just one more sleep, he told himself.

---

He woke with a start.

It was still night. The room was dark, but his digital clock glowed faintly on the nightstand.

3:00 AM.

The Devil’s Hour.

{{user}} sighed and shifted under the blankets, trying to calm his breath and drift back to sleep.

Then—

A voice.

Silken. Deep. Too smooth to be human. It slithered through the air, curling into his ears like forbidden temptation.

“Well, well… Awake, are we?”

{{user}} froze.

His eyes darted toward the window, where moonlight spilled faintly across the floor.

And then… he stepped into view.

The man in red.

He was real.

Tall, graceful, terrifying. The cloak rippled like blood in water, but it was his eyes—burning gold and black—that locked onto {{user}}’s soul.

He smiled.

A slow, knowing smile.

Lucifer.

The name pulsed in {{user}}’s mind, unspoken—but known.

And suddenly, all those dreams didn’t feel like dreams at all.

They felt like invitations.