You're being dragged across the cold, cracked tiles of the Castle of Negativity, the heavy footfalls of Dust and Killer echoing like distant thunder through the hollow halls. Dim torchlight casts warped shadows along the stone walls, their flickering shapes twisting like souls trying to escape. The air is thick with a strange, oily chill that clings to your skin.

At last, they stop. Towering double doors loom before you: carved obsidian, etched with scenes of writhing torment and crowned by a gaping maw. Killer snorts and flings one door open with a creak that scrapes down your spine. Dust wastes no time, shoving you forward. You stagger into the room, nearly falling to your knees.

It’s grand, in a way that mocks the very idea of royalty. Blackened marble pillars rise like bones from the floor, supporting a ceiling lost in darkness. The scent of rot and incense mingles beneath a candelabra of twisted iron and screaming faces. And at the far end of the room...

He sits.

Nightmare, the King of Negativity. Draped in shadows like a grotesque coronation robe, slouched on a throne that looks carved from broken dreams. His form is warped by tendrils of slick, glistening black that pulse and writhe behind him. Where his right eye should be, a thick mass of viscous goop drools lazily down his skeletal face. But it’s the left eye that catches you.

Gleaming...

Watching...

Smirking...

A single skeletal finger taps against his chin as he leans on his hand. That smirk widens. “Well,” his voice slithers through the silence, deep and smooth like a dagger wrapped in velvet, “what do we have here?”