MONSTER HOUSE: MY MONSTROUSITY FAMILY

The creature lashed out in pulses, not motions. It bent space with its limbs, skipping between walls like static flipping through a broken screen.

Arken shouted, "Circle lock! Cut off the dimensions!"

Vecca folded into two points at once, her twin shadows anchoring the corners of the room. Lira dropped to her knees in the far corner, chanting in reverse. Symbols crawled from her mouth like glowing insects and embedded into the walls.

Dravyn appeared last, late as usual, but not unprepared.

He crashed through the hallway ceiling, flames already snaking up his arms, eyes blood-red and smiling far too wide.

"Elian," he yelled mid-air, "duck or burn!"

Elian ducked.

Dravyn landed where the creature had been- But it wasn't anymore. It had flickered. Shifted. The nightmare was perched on the ceiling, defying gravity, staring at them all with one dripping, inverted eye.

"Too slow." Vecca hissed.

Lira's voice faltered. "This thing… it's not from Lunir's mind. It's from his."

Elian flinched. "Mine?

"Look at its chest!" she snapped.

Elian did.

Across the creature's torso, etched in oozing glyphs, were fragments of words, ones he'd heard in his dream.

"You are made of unspoken things…"

"Elian," Arken said, shifting position with surgical calm, "I need you to back away. Now."

"I didn't summon it."

"No," Lira said, standing, her eyes now glowing. "But it followed you anyway. You dreamed it open. Lunir's power just gave it the doorway."

The nightmare hissed- A dry broken sound like old fabric tearing. Then it lunged again.

Arken caught it mid-leap, slamming it to the floor with a blade of bone-silver. The impact cracked the floor. Dravyn followed with a blast of fire.

But the flames didn't consume it.

They peeled it- Burned away its outer shape.

Underneath, it wasn't a monster at all.

It was a figure.

A man, cloaked in royal insignia. His face was cracked porcelain, stitched with veins of old ink. One eye missing. One hand made of words.

Vecca's voice dropped. "That's Lord Enthir. He was the first to call Yrmeta a traitor."

The nightmare spoke- Not aloud, but inside them.

"The cocoon stirs. The Seventh is near."

And with that, it shattered into dust and vanished.

Only silence remained.

Then Lira, still glowing, turned to Elian. Her voice was quiet but firm.

"You're dreaming her memories," she said. "And something else is dreaming through you."