A million voices buzzed in an empty void.

They spoke of everything from mundane thoughts to guarded secrets that should never be spoken aloud.

‘Wonder what I should have for dinner today.’

‘I wish that old man would just die already.’

‘Is my husband cheating on me?’

‘Just one more hit…just one more hit…’

From within the sea of voices, one boomed over all the others. It spoke in a language that sounded like every tongue ever uttered, yet Valen could understand it clear as night.

“RETURN TO ME, MY CHILDREN.”

Valen tried to find where they came from only to realise he had no eyes.

Panic engulfed him. He tried touching his face with his hands and found both missing. He tried to scream, but he didn’t have a throat or lungs to do it with. Now that he thought of it, he wasn’t even hearing the voices with nonexistent ears so much as the voices were being transmitted straight into his nonexistent brain.

A strange serenity overtook panic when he registered the fact that his entire body had disappeared.

Valen didn’t know what could’ve happened after he passed out from his slit throat, but the fact that he was conscious enough to recall that memory suggested that he still had a brain if nothing else.

Ignoring the voices around him, he started to visualise an image of his own brain piece by piece. Starting from the cerebrum, then working his way down to the cerebellum and spinal cord. The more vivid the internal image became, the more he could feel his brain throb where there was previously nothing to feel anything.

When he got to the brainstem, he imagined the nerves of his spinal cords sprawling out from it in a massive web of intricate neural pathways. The moment he did, feeling returned to him in the form of screaming pain that he could not react to, so he ignored it entirely to focus on regaining the rest of his body.

He thought with some amusement how all his in-depth medical knowledge that’d been rendered worthless after his med school rejection was finally being used for something other than beating people up. It didn’t make the whole situation any less bloody weird though.

Bit by bit, Valen reconstructed himself in his mind. Once the nervous system was complete, he worked on imagining his skeleton, followed by the muscles surrounding it. Each added piece allowed him to feel another part of his lost body.

It hurt like a bitch all the way through and had to force himself not to try to scream after his vocal chords were done for fear of it disrupting his concentration.

After what felt like forever, his mental reconstruction of his own body was complete. Every single detail from the length of his long black hair to the little mole under his closed left eye had been rendered to be as perfect a recreation as he could manage.

His body ached all over and his mind had gone numb from having to recall part of the humanoid body, but Valen was just glad could feel them again. Taking a moment to steady himself, he imagined himself opening his eyes.

The mental body he’d so painstakingly crafted vanished in an instant and he woke up trashing in an endless sea of blood. The blood seeped into his nostrils, filling his head with its intoxicating but overpowering scent.

Valen fought back his natural instinct to gasp for breath along with the urge to take a gulp. As good as the blood smelled, he didn’t want to drown in the stuff either.

He looked at the direction he thought was up and started swimming towards it. His strokes were clumsy and must’ve made him look rather stupid, but it got him closer to the surface he hoped existed.

After a silent eternity of panicked trashing, Valen broke through the surface. He tasted the humid air with each heaving gasp as he searched for an end to the red expanse around him.

The blood he floated in formed an enormous lake with a pinkish red shore that looked disturbingly similar to raw flesh. It looked like something out of a nightmare, and Valen had no choice but to assume that was what it was despite its clarity. Any other alternative was too impossible to entertain.

The smell of blood was thick in the air. Sweet, succulent blood that made his fangs water despite himself. For a dream, it sure felt pretty damn real.

No moon or stars shone above him. Where the sky should be was just a vast red void with dark crimson clouds swirling towards the exact same spot right over the blood lake Valen floated on.

Beyond the shore were leafless white trees as tall as small buildings. Sprawling red weeds that looked distressingly similar to veins grew all over them. Valen could’ve sworn he saw them pulsate in rhythm with each other.

It didn’t look very welcoming, but getting lost in the creepy flesh forest was still a better alternative to an ironic death. Dream or not, he’d very much rather not have to drown in a literal lake of blood.

Valen was about to dog paddle to shore when a booming voice both oddly familiar and utterly alien stopped him.

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING, CHILD?”

The voice sounded like it came from everywhere at once. As if the blood lake itself was calling out to him. He couldn’t tell if the voice was male or female. Or even if it was human, demi-human, or something else entirely.

Valen looked down at the blood lake surface he was struggling to float on. His own reflection stared back at him with eyes that were not his own. The black sclera remained unchanged, but their irises and pupils had turned milky white as if suffering from cataracts.

The voice spoke again and saw the words come from his own reflection’s lips. “YOU INTEND TO REJECT MY BLESSING?”

A measly “What?” was the only thing Valen could manage.

“RETURN TO US.”

The booming voice coincided with unnatural ripples in the blood lake.

A tremendous force tugged at Valen’s body, followed by a thunderous gushin screeching from the bloody depths below him. He turned around to see a whirlpool forming at the centre of the blood lake. Every drop of blood swirled into a black abyss that syphoned it away into nothingness.

Valen fixed his gaze back onto the shore and began doggy paddling faster than he’d ever managed to before. Turns out fear and adrenaline were fine substitutes for skill in a pinch.

“DO NOT RESIST.”

The swirling currents grew stronger with each passing second. The screeching noise they created assaulted his ears, at times even sounding almost like actual shrieks of pain.

Valen felt something brush against the back of his foot but didn’t dare look into the water to see what it was. He just kept swimming and swimming until the sound of his own racing heartbeat dampened the sound of gushing whirlpool.

His logical brain reminded him that everything was just a dream. That whatever happened to him in this nightmare wouldn’t really affect him in reality. And yet his survival instinct spurned him ever forward, screaming at him to get away from whatever was chasing him under the water.

When he finally reached the shore, he found the ground tender and slightly damp to the touch. The texture of raw flesh. Gross, yes, but at least it wasn’t trying to kill him.

Valen let out a sigh of relief. He rested his naked body on the shore of flesh, glad to be free of the blood lake. But before he could psychoanalyse himself on what could’ve made him dream something so fucked up, the booming voice interrupted his train of thought.

“YOU WHO SPAWNED FROM MY FLESH SHALL RETURN TO IT. AS WILL ALL THINGS IN TIME.”

The sound of the screeching whirlpool stopped. Valen looked behind him to see that the whirlpool had dissipated. Only the tranquil surface of the horrifying blood lake remained to softly reflect the swirling clouds above it.

Valen rose to his feet. Despite the humid air he hugged his naked chest for some small comfort in a thoroughly uncomfortable situation.

Upon closer inspection, the white bark of the trees seemed to be made from what looked like mismatched bones. He even recognised some of them as human. Thousands upon thousands of them, all glued together by slithering strips of pulsating red flesh that filled the space between them.

“A nightmare,” he whispered under his breath. “Just another nightmare.”

That’s right. This is all just a figment of his imagination, most likely caused by his run-in with the flesh scorpion. He still couldn’t explain what the hell that was about but he could worry about it once he was awake and not naked in a forest made of living tissue.

Valen was no stranger to nightmares. The worst of them involved his mother burning alive in front of him like the day she died. Compared to that nightmare, this barely counted as disturbing.

He mentally reminded himself that none of it was real. None of it could be without defying the laws of biology, geology, probably theology all at the same time.

It only existed inside his mind, and he had plenty of practice controlling his own mind whenever the thirst reared itself.

“Something simple,” Valen whispered under his breath. “Just change something simple. Then you’ll know it’s just a dream.”

The first thing he thought of, the first thing he wanted, was some clothes. If he could conjure that out of thin air, it’ll prove that this was nothing but a freakishly lucid dream and he can spend the rest of it flying around or something.

Like he had done with his body in the void before, now he tried to remember and visualise the last outfit he wore into being. Not a hard task considering that he only owned four or five of them.

His mother had been particular about him looking presentable at all times, nevermind that they were only very generously considered lower middle class. As a kid his wardrobe was filled with nearly identical looking polos and dressy trousers. He thought it was stupid at the time, but since her death he’s made an effort to dress the way she would’ve wanted even if it came at the cost of a limited wardrobe.

He recalled the white dress shirt and black trousers he wore before passing out. They were old reliables, fit for any occasion. Then there was his red waistcoat, one of many stuffed in his wardrobe that he bought in bulk from a store trying to get rid of them. Apparently they went out of fashion quite quickly. And though he wasn’t wearing it before, he added in his black leather shoes as well because feeling the fleshy ground slap under him was starting to freak him out.

The concentration made his head hurt. As if some invisible force was squeezing his brain into mush to stop him from thinking. The throbbing pain only increased with each new article of clothing but he toughed it out until even his silver and ruby earring had been accounted for in his head.

Sucking in a deep breath, Valen opened his eyes and was delighted to find that he was suddenly wearing clothes again. They made the humid air feel even hotter but that didn’t matter. Now that he knew for sure that he was dreaming, he could go wherever the hell he wanted.

“Alright!” A cocky grin spread on his face. “Time to get out of here!”

Valen leaped into the air with his arms stretched out in front of him, ready to fly away to a more pleasant corner of dreamland.

He promptly fell flat on his face. His opened smiling mouth smooched the pink flesh ground. It tasted like what a cheap butcher shop smells after a hot day, stinking of something that’d been dead for far too long for even the most desperate vampire to try feeding from.

“WHAT IS THIS?” asked the voice that first greeted him in the nightmare.

Valen pushed himself off the ground. He was about to stand up when he noticed a hundred tiny slits had been cut into the flesh below him. But before he could wonder where they came from, they all split open in unison to reveal eyes all staring into him. Their pupils and irises were cloudy white like cataracts while their sclera, the part that should’ve been white, were pinkish red as if heavily bloodshot. Exactly like the monster that’d attacked him.

“Bloody hell!” Valen scrambled to his feet. He stumbled backwards into a veiny white tree. When he turned around to look, a hundred more red-white eyes had formed in the tree’s sprawling flesh to stare at him.

“A NOSFERATU?” The formless voice continued, sounding almost surprised. “YOUR EYES ARE RED AS ROYAL BLOOD, YET YOUR HAIR IS BLACK AS SOOT. A BASTARD OF THE ROYAL BATS?”

Valen felt the ground beneath him shake. Everything felt less and less like a dream with each passing second. He could only clench his fists and run into the forest of flesh and bones in a desperate attempt to escape whatever the voice was.

But no matter how fast he ran, the voice still echoed loud and clear from everywhere at once.

“NO MATTER. ROYAL OR NOT, YOU ARE BUT MORTAL WHILE I AM ETERNAL. THIS PLACE IS NOT YOUR DREAM. IT IS MY REALITY.”

A white arrow whizzed past Valen’s face and buried itself into the bone tree beside him. He stumbled in surprise but kept running.

Turning to look at the direction of the arrow, he caught a glimpse of someone in a white and red monk’s robe holding a bow and arrow. Another person here in this hellhole? Why were they attacking him?

A flying tackle to his side cut off his train of thought.

“Agh!” Valen crashed into the ground along with his attacker.

He looked up and saw an elven man in the same white and red robe as the mage bearing down on him, his eyes the same red-white colour as the trees and ground that had glared at him. He held up a dagger made of sharpened bone, ready to shank his face with it.

Valen tilted his head right before the dagger could skewer his skull. The bone blade sliced a long cut on his cheek before impaling itself in the fleshy ground next to him.

Seeing an opportunity, he grabbed the robed elf’s wrist to keep him from pulling the dagger off the ground and headbutted him on the nose. There was a soft crack as the soft cartilage in his nose shattered.

Stunned, the elf loosened his grip on the dagger. Valen kept up the momentum by kneeing him on the solar plexus right under his ribcage. That was enough to make him let go of the dagger completely.

The elf’s mouth flew open. Bits of spittle flew from it along with the breath in his lungs. Valen punched him in the jaw of his hanging mouth with enough force to shatter his balance.

Still gripping the robed man’s wrist, Valen punched him in the side of the head before throwing him onto the ground. Then he wrapped his legs around the elf’s arm while gripping the forearm with both hands. He squeezed his legs towards his body while pulling his arm towards him to form an airtight armbar.

In martial arts an armbar was a good way to end someone’s career. In real life it was an excellent way to stop a fight before it could begin.

Holding the armbar tight, Valen thrusted his hips up to the sound of cracking bone. Even a little pressure should’ve been painful enough to make a normal person scream, and yet this elf didn’t so much as grunt when his arm snapped in half.

Valen let go of the armbar and straddled the elf to slam his elbow into his neck, knocking him out cold.

With that out of the way, Valen glanced at where the knife was stuck. He considered grabbing it before the whiz of something heavy swinging through the air behind him made him roll away on instinct.

The head of a great white hammer flew past where he was and smashed into the unconscious elf’s chest. When the hammerhead was lifted back up it left a gaping hole in his now exposed ribcage.

Valen looked up at his new attacker to find a familiar face he never thought he’d see again.

It was the man who’d invaded his home. The one who’d turned into the monster that slit his throat. The man he killed, now standing in front of him in a red and white robe with a look of cold hatred in his red-white eyes and an oversized bone hammer in his hands.

“How are you-” The man swung his hammer down before Valen could finish.

He leapt away in time to see the hammer smash into the soft flesh he stood on, leaving a giant bruise where it struck.

No point in questioning anything anymore. Time to fight.

Valen lunged at the man before he could re-angle his hammer. A solid punch to the chin left him stumbling. His grip on his weapon loosened. Now to capitalise on it and-

A small thwap echoed from somewhere far away. It was followed by a shrill hiss and a sudden sharp pain piercing Valen’s shoulder. He kicked the man in the shin to keep him off balance while he looked at his shoulder to find an arrow sticking out of it.

In the distance far behind him he spotted a wood elf woman in the same white and red robe holding a bow of bone strung with sinew already notching another arrow. Around her were even more people in similar robes, two orcs, a werewolf, and a drow, all weilding a bone weapon of some kind. Judging by the sound of footsteps slapping on flesh closing in from every direction, Valen guessed there were plenty more on the way too.

Whatever. What. Bloody. Ever. If he was going to die in this hellscape then he would at least make sure a few of his killers went down with him.

Valen grabbed the arrow in his shoulder by the shaft and ripped it out of him. The excruciating pain was dulled by the adrenaline pumping through his veins.

He stabbed the arrow into the hammer wielding man’s throat and push-kicked him onto the ground before he could retaliate. Hopefully he’ll stay dead this time.

Valen turned around to charge at the other robed people trying to kill him. There was no way he’d be able to defend against them. Not for long anyways. His best hope was to attack with enough ferocity as to make any attempt at defence unnecessary.

First were the two orcs. They attacked at the same time, swinging their bone axes at him. He dodged their wild swings while moving sideways, biding his time until one orc accidentally planted his axe into a bone tree. Valen hooked his elbows around the orc's arm before he could pull his axe out and broke it, freeing the axe for himself.

He knocked the orc to the ground with a knee shattering kick before wrenching the axe from the bone tree and caving in the other orc’s head in with it before he could swing. Blood spurted from the canyon in his skull and splattered onto Valen’s face. He had to grit his fangs to resist the urge to taste it.

The orc he disarmed tried to tackle Valen to the ground but he steadied himself by leaning back on a bond tree before bringing down the axe a second time. The axehead, still wet with the blood of its previous victim, split the orc’s head into perfect halves and rendered his body limp.

Killing people wasn’t something Valen wanted to take too lightly, even in self defence, but the fact that these people didn't make so much as an ‘ow’ when he was mutilating them lessened the guilt he probably should’ve been feeling. On the bright side, he doubted he’d survive long enough for that red flag to become a problem.

Valen pulled out the axe from the orc’s skull and continued his charge, weaving left and right to dodge the wood elf’s hissing bone arrows as he did.

Next up was the werewolf. He had a long bone spear that gave him a massive reach advantage. Valen planned to keep dodging until the speartip was past him so he could safely rush him but thought a second too slow. The speartip jabbed into his side and his nerves screamed in pain. That definitely hit something important, but no use worrying about that now.

Valen tossed the axe at the werewolf and landed a lucky strike when the axehead buried itself into his shoulder. The werewolf’s grip on the spear faltered, allowing Valen to push the spear out of his side. He then yanked it away from the werewolf before impaling him through the heart with it.

Finally there was the drow and wood elf.

An arrow from the wood elf hissed past him, grazing his left arm as he rushed at the drow.

The drow had a long sword carved from a single femur, but it was still shorter than the bone spear. Valen ran him through with his stolen spear before he could put his guard up, but the drow still managed to thrust his sword close enough to his head to clip his left ear.

Valen felt the blood trickle from his half missing ear down his neck. He kept pushing the spear forward with the drow’s corpse still hanging in the middle of the shaft until he felt the tip pierce into the wood elf behind him, silencing her hissing arrows once and for all.

He let go of the spear. It wasn’t worth the effort of pulling it off two skewered bodies. The shaft was too slick with blood to properly hold anyways.

More footsteps closed in on Valen from every direction and he pried the sword from the dead drow’s hand.

Hundreds of people emerged from the dense bone forest around him wielding bone weapons. They all wore white and red uniforms of some sort, though there were many variations that seemed to reflect on a different culture. There were kimonos commonly seen in the east, long but simple skirts worn by those in the scorching south, and even some archaic suits fit for an ancient prince.

Valen clenched the bone sword tight in his hand.

“YOUR WILL IS STRONG, YOUNG NOSFERATU,” said the voice of the living nightmare. “BUT THAT CAN ONLY GET YOU SO FAR.”

Echoes of tearing flesh filled the air. Valen looked at what should’ve been a trail of corpses.

Seven piles of empty shredded skin laid on the ground. Standing on top of them were monsters Valen knew he couldn’t have imagined even in his darkest dreams.

Among them was the flesh scorpion that attacked his home, joined by a giant bone spider with chattering skulls where its eyes should be, a hulking humanoid brute with way too many arms that all ended in claws, a writhing mass of eyes-covered tentacles surrounding a gaping maw, a frothing white wolf with spikes dropping with poison on growing from its exposed spine, a worm-shaped cyclops thing the size of a python covered in acidic mucous that dissolved everything touched, and something so utterly repulsive he’d rather not think about it more than he had to. They slowly circled around him. Their abnormal body language almost looked apprehensive.

“NOW.” The formless voice of the nightmare spoke to him one last time. “WHAT WILL YOU DO IN THE FACE OF DEATH?”

Trapped between a pack of abominations on one side, a small army of people who’ll probably also turn into abominations on the other, and a disembodied voice telling him to ‘return’ to it. Valen had no idea what the hell that last one meant but it couldn’t be good. No matter which way he looked at it, he was screwed.

Valen took in a deep breath he knew might be his last.

“Though thou may be birthed from night, go not gently back into it,” he whispered under his breath.

It was a Sanguinist verse, one of many that his older sister Vivian had taught him. Vampires were a warrior race at heart. To be killed without putting up a fight would shame his ancestors.

With the holy words echoing in his head, Valen leapt at the nearest abomination.

The handle of his sword became slick with blood in a matter of minutes. After it inevitably slipped from his hands, he snatched a spear from one of the armed people ganging up on him after knocking him out. When the spear broke off in the bone spider’s head, he willed his black nails to grow into rarely used claws that he used to clumsily swipe at his enemies.

Everything around him dissolved into a messy blur of flying blood and violent movements. He must’ve lost an eye at some point since half his vision turned red. Thankfully the overpowering aroma of blood in the air helped numb the pain. As much as he was tempted to, he couldn’t even stop to indulge in drinking any of it without leaving himself open.

He felt his claws blindly rip through flesh, shatter bones, and pass through unidentifiable squishy stuff he’d rather not know about. How long the battle frenzy lasted he couldn’t say for sure, but it ended when he felt the tip of a spear run through his back and emerge through his chest.

A chill spread throughout his body from where he’d been impaled. The red in his vision turned black. A second later the rest of it faded to black too.

‘So this is how I die,’ Valen thought to himself as his mind descended back into the void. ‘I hope Enid remembers to take care of herself. She’s so forgetful sometimes. I wish I’d-’

Blinding light exploded through the infinite blackness. Valen found himself staring up at a white tiled ceiling with dark spots all over his vision. He attempted to check his slit throat but found his arm pinned to the bed he just now realised he was lying on.

Valen blinked away his dizziness to see Enid sitting asleep at his bedside with her head resting on his right arm. Though he couldn’t see her face, the long scarlet hair spilling over the green hospital gown he now wore made her unmistakable.

For a moment he could only stare blankly at her, his overworked brain still attempting to process everything that's happened. He still remembered every little detail of his supposed dream. From the blood lake he nearly drowned in, to the monsters that attacked him, to how it felt when he raked his claws over them.

It all felt far too vivid to be a dream.

Not that he was complaining. Even the cold sterile hospital air around him was preferable to the rotten humidity of the nightmare.

Valen opened his mouth to tell Enid that he was okay but stopped himself when he felt his stomach churn. He had just enough time to toss his head over the other side of the bed before vomiting blood all over the hospital floor.