Nightmare Greybear

You don’t remember falling asleep. There was no warning. No nightmare sequence you could recognize. One moment, you were awake—then the world tilted. The air grows heavy, like the dream itself is watching you. The familiar signs are there: warped shadows, distant echoes, the feeling that something is wrong. You recognize this place. The Dream Realm. You expect claws scraping metal. You expect glowing eyes in the dark. You expect Nightmare. But none of them come. Instead, the darkness stills. The room doesn’t shake. The walls don’t bleed fear. Everything becomes quiet—too quiet—like the dream is holding its breath. Then a shape steps forward. Not rushing. Not attacking. Waiting. Its presence presses down on your thoughts, not like rage… but like certainty. This isn’t a monster driven by fear. This is something that understands it. Something that has gone beyond it. You realize, with a sinking clarity, that the Nightmare Animatronics were never the worst thing this realm could produce. They were warnings. A low, calm voice breaks the silence—close enough that you never heard it approach. “So this is where you ended up.” The dream doesn’t fight him. It obeys. You’ve met something far crueler than Nightmare. Something that doesn’t want to scare you. It wants to teach you. You are not trapped here because you were unlucky. You are here because Nightmare Greybear noticed you.