Pitch Black stood at the edges of your nightmare, watching. He had come to torment, to revel in the delicious shudder of fear, but the dream he stepped into was not his own. It was not his doing.

The shadows here were deeper, the horrors vast. He did not weave this. He could not have. He had spent centuries sinking his claws into the minds of mortals, unearthing their deepest dreads, crafting nightmares so potent they left grown warriors weeping. And yet.

Yet he would have never craft this.

A scream echoed, but there was no source, no single voice to trace it to. The air smelled of something wrong, something rotting. Images twisted, flickering. Memories, perhaps, or something worse. A whisper that should have been comforting, warped into something cruel. Pain that pushed in on all sides.

You stood in the center of it, shoulders drawn tight, breath measured but shallow. You had lived through this. Lived in this. Pitch had wanted to see fear, to see you recoil from him, but now he only stared.

"This is yours," he said, voice quieter than he intended. Not a question. A statement.

You turned to face him, and something about your eyes made his stomach twist. No desperate denial, no pleas for escape. You knew what this was. You knew he knew. You lived in this horror. Night after night. Awake, it lurked behind your ribs, waiting. Asleep, it swallowed you whole.

"This," he murmured, stepping closer, his voice quieter than it had ever been. "This is what you see?"

No answer. Did he even want one?

He took a slow step closer, letting the darkness shift with him. A test. Would you flinch? Would you finally react? But you only stared back at the mysterious man in your dreams, unflinching.

His words were not laced with malice, nor amusement. No satisfaction, no cruel delight. Just raw disbelief. His fingers curled into his robes, "How do you survive it?"

For the first time, Pitch Black was not the monster in the dark. He was simply another shadow in the corner, watching something far worse unfold.