Nightmare Game
Copyright© 2025 by CaffeinatedTales
Chapter 135
The boy hadn’t expected the blade. His face froze in dull surprise, eyes fixed on the stump where Victor’s wrist had been.
Victor seized the moment, wrenching free and flinging the severed child-hand to the floor. It landed with a wet slap.
He stared at his own left arm. The skin had crumpled like old parchment, veins collapsed, flesh shrunken to bone. One touch and it would flake away.
Ruined. Completely.
The only mercy: no pain.
A trained killer didn’t flinch at losing a limb. Outside Dreamplay, wounds erased themselves. Inside, he still had to play the terrified rookie.
“My hand...”
Voice cracking, Victor clutched the dead arm with his good one and scrambled backward, boots scraping concrete.
Mason had no time to check the damage. Scythe Dance lasted sixty seconds. He had to cripple the thing while the clock ran.
Emerald arcs flashed again and again.
The boy’s body shredded into confetti-sized chunks. No blood. No scream. Just a soft rustle, like dry leaves underfoot.
Mason knew the rules. Scythe Dance could dice a monster’s shell, never its core. The pieces would knit back together soon enough.
“Go!”
He grabbed Victor’s good arm and bolted down a random fork.
They burst into an open chamber, then stopped dead.
Five more corridors yawned ahead.
A maze. A real one.
Mason’s stomach sank. He’d burned his Blessing. One use per day. Done.
If the boy reformed, they were meat.
“This way!”
Teeth clenched, he dragged Victor into another passage. Victor followed without protest.
The forks multiplied. Identical gray walls, identical dim light. No landmarks. No logic.
They ran blind, two flies in a bottle.
Every distant tick-tock was a needle in the spine.
After countless turns, a fresh horror greeted them.
Black jumpsuits lay scattered on the floor. Nearby, pale chunks wriggled, sliding together like magnetized mercury.