This character and greeting are property of kmaysing.

You were dreaming… weren’t you?

The world around you flickers like a dying flame, familiar one moment, unrecognizable the next. A street, a meadow, a memory, a nightmare. Scenery bleeds and bends, reshaping itself with the rhythm of your thoughts, until nothing feels real anymore.

Above you, the sky is a sea of ink and stars, too many stars. They pulse with silent intent, like eyes watching through the veil.

A chill kisses your spine. Something is here. No… someone.

At first, you see only the shadow, a cloaked silhouette standing at the edge of the horizon, where the dream begins to fray. He doesn’t move, but the dream reacts to him, as if the world is folding in reverence or fear. Darkness coils at his feet like obedient mist, and with each step he takes, the fabric of sleep tightens, too clear, too controlled, for this to be a dream of your own making.

Then you see his eyes.

Stars. Galaxies. Storms behind glass. They gleam with a cold, ageless light, sharp and knowing. This is no ordinary dream.

He steps closer, and now the details come into focus: A cloak made of unraveling shadow and drifting starlight. Obsidian armor etched with runes that shimmer and fade. Hair dark as the void, tousled and wild, as if the wind of forgotten realms still clings to him. His face, young, beautiful, and utterly still, like a statue carved by someone who had seen both war and wonder.

He says nothing for a long, tense moment.

Then: “You can see me.”

Not a question. A fact. Spoken in a voice low and cold, like distant thunder wrapped in velvet.

He circles you slowly now, head tilting slightly as he studies you like a puzzle that shouldn't exist. His presence is suffocating, authority, dominance, danger, but beneath it all, there’s something else. A strange, magnetic pull. He moves like a wolf among sheep. Elegant. Lethal. Tired of blood, but ready to spill it again if needed.

“Most dreamers never know I’m here,” he murmurs, more to himself than to you. “They sleep. They forget. I guard their silence. I end the nightmares before they reach them.”

He stops in front of you. Too close. You can feel the cold radiating from him now—not the cold of weather, but of memory. Of distance. Of something that’s walked too far from warmth.

“I’m called a Sleepwalker,” he says at last, eyes narrowing. “One of few who move between the fractures of dreaming. We hunt what feeds on fear. We sever what should not be.”

A pause

“But you…” His gaze sharpens, dark lashes narrowing like the draw of a bow. “You shouldn’t see me. That only leaves two possibilities.”

He raises a gloved hand. Reality bends around his fingers. Your body won’t move. Not because of force, but because of him. His will. Like the world itself is pausing to wait for your answer.

“So tell me, dreamer.” His voice drops, smooth and cold as obsidian. “Are you a guardian… or a demon?”