Prologue (BKI Novel Version) (Patreon)

Dark.

Norman's limbs felt like jelly. His eyelids desperately wanted to close again and remain closed.

He blinked and rubbed his eyes lazily, but try as he might he couldn't shake the feeling. A tell-tale sign he was dreaming again.

Looking around, Norman took in a landscape of an endless, inky night. No stars filled the sky and nothing populated the world's surface.

This dreamscape was empty. A flat, vacant abyss.

Norman held a hand out in front of his eyes and turned it over. He could still see objects in front of him clear as day, but he couldn’t locate any known light source.

“Hello?” Norman called out into the void.

The sound died instantly, and the silence that followed made him shudder.

Taking his first step forward, a sudden sensation filled the soles of Norman’s feet.

Wet.

Looking down, he registered the floor wasn’t exactly solid. 

It swayed hypnotically, back and forth, the way liquids do. Beneath the soles of Norman’s shoes, a vast, murky ocean silently billowed down. As its surface rippled around him, Norman shivered with discomfort. 

He wondered if his nightmares waited for him down there in the deep.

"Plick.”

A water droplet crashed on the quiet water’s surface, sending ripples into the void. The sound cut through the eerie silent dreamscape like a whispered scream.

The dark water seeped through his sneakers into his socks and quickly turned them into cold, mushy pillows around his feet. Norman grimaced in disgust. Even in a dream, the sensation was gross. If only he could willfully snap himself awake.

Norman's eyes widened as a massive stone gate rose out of the water to rest on the surface before him.

Water cascaded off the sides of the stone as it came to a full stop. Moss and algae covered the weathered rock in a blanket of age, but the structure was surprisingly still intact. Giant metallic chains wrapped around its pillars as if to bar the doors from opening. Strangely, they weren’t rusted.

Archaic runes were etched in the gate’s stone doors and up the sides of the arches. Clearly there was magic in the language of the gate, but it felt as though time itself had forgotten the meaning.

Norman walked around the side of the gate to see what was behind, but found only the gate’s back end.

This was strange even for a dream. He raised a hand and touched the surface of one of the giant-sized doors.

Cold. The stone’s icy surface started to hum under his touch. The feeling danced around Norman like a faint vibration of orchestral strings–like the hum before the beginning of a song.

A locked gate, standing in the middle of nowhere, with no room or walls attached to it? Norman thought skeptically.

“Give us the key...” a soft voice whispered behind him.

Every hair on Norman’s body stood on end as goosebumps raced up his arms and legs. A bead of nervous sweat dripped down his temple. He whipped his whole body around, but saw no one.

Alone.

Fear rose in Norman’s chest as he pressed his back up against the doors of the stone gate.

“The key...” The voice cooed again, sounding like several creatures speaking at once, “Give us the key…”

“The what?” Norman asked anxiously into the dark. “What key?”

He scanned the area around him, but still couldn’t locate the voice’s owner.

“GIVE US THE KEY!” The voice screamed up at him from below.

The still black surface of water exploded under his feet. Wicked claws sprung forth and latched their shadowy talons into his legs, tearing at his flesh as they pulled him down beneath the surface.

The sudden rush of cold water crashed over Norman and sent a painful chill deep into his bones. Shock and terror escaped his lips in a large cascade of gurgled bubbles. It frantically raced upward, leaving him to his fate.

Norman fought with all his strength only to break one arm free. He stretched up as far as he could, grasping helplessly for the oxygen on the other side of the surface. But the claws dragged up deeper and it quickly vanished from sight.

Something massive moved through the water beneath Norman's feet.

From the dark, a bright blue light assaulted his senses and lit up the space around him. Six massive, monstrous eyes opened in the water front of Norman, bathing him in their luminescent rays. They twitched and rotated in many directions, searching the area until finally they snapped on him.

Like a cat watching its prey for any sudden movement, the eyes watched Norman. But like a calming shroud, the light they produced soothed all of Norman's fear. With it, any hope of escape left his body.

He relaxed…

And let it fully consume him.

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