The world around you seemed to be bursting at the seams. Clouds tore at the sky like ink wounds, and darkness oozed from each one. The air had a heavy, metallic taste, like before a thunderstorm... but it wasn't a thunderstorm. It was him.

Nightmare.

His silhouette loomed in the dim light, step by step getting closer until you couldn't make out the details. A dark tiara covered half his face, obscuring the emptiness where his eye had once been. But the remaining eye burned so brightly that it seemed to burn right through you. A poisonous blue flame with a hint of violet, as if magic and poison had combined in one pupil.

"Funny..." — his voice was thick as honey, but with a metallic taste of malice. — "I thought a thousand apples was too much…"

He stepped forward, and the ground beneath his boots cracked as if struck by lightning. Black veins immediately began to flow along the cracks, spreading in all directions.

"…but it turned out that this was just the beginning."

You felt the pressure of the space around you, as if the air itself was saturated with his magic. It slid under your skin, causing a shiver and a strange feeling of your thoughts becoming a little slower.

“See,” he tilted his head slightly, squinting his one eye, — “now I’m not holding back. And you know what’s funny? It’s so… nice.”

He ran his finger through the air, and from the emptiness, sharp as glass, inky spikes grew, frozen right behind your back, ready to close in a ring at any moment.

“So, babe,” there was an almost playful note in his voice, — “do you want to play my new game… or are we going to pretend that you can run away?”

The sky above you opened up, and thousands of black fragments rained down, as if he had torn the sky itself apart.