Welcome Aspirant!
A tall young man walked through the crowded rundown streets of a massive arcology, his hands in his pockets and a thick mask over his hooded face. The air around him carried the acrid tang of heavy industry and pollutants and was thick enough that it left a visible layer of grime over every surface. Despite the harsh conditions, the streets remained full, although everyone was either wearing a respirator or a face mask.
As the man walked through a busy pedestrian thoroughfare he came to a stop at a railing that overlooked one of the many intersection points for the tangled brambles of pedestrian walkways that snaked through the outer parts of the city. The design was chaotically ramshackle and numerous different walkways from various levels all wove over, under, and past each other as they went. Even with the chaos of it all, places like this seemed to form naturally, small open spaces left unoccupied by makeshift buildings and instead filled with an open column of walkways and paths that were open all the way down to the inky bowel of the cities utility layer.
As he stood there the man closed his eyes for a moment and turned his focus outwards to the sounds around him. Numerous snippets of conversation ebbed and flowed, all blending together and accompanied by the sounds of heavy machinery and urban clamor to create the unmistakable dirge of human civilization.
Despite the fact that to most people picking out a single conversation from it all would have been impossible, a simple trick on the young man's part left his ears sharp enough to isolate conversations around him as the people walked by.
"D'you hear Lees's daughter caught the spell? Poor guy's taking her to the station tonight to get processed." A heavyset factory worker muttered as he walked alongside his apparent co-worker.
"Don't be so quick to write her off man! Lee's tough as nails and so're his kids. I…I'm sure she'll do fine." His tone carried little of the optimism his words tried to convey.
"Bah, even you don't believe that." He shook his head and rapped the other man on the shoulder "Don't go kidding yourself, outskirts folk that've never been trained have no chance in the Nightmare spell. S'not anything against Lee or his family either. I know none of my kids could handle an involuntary battle to the death any better than his daughter can, that's just how things are." He shook his head sadly and muttered a silent prayer as they both continued walking on.
"I heard that Babel's expanding their citadel again! They even said there would be spots available to anyone who applied and met the criteria!" An eager young woman wearing a waitress outfit excitedly muttered to her friend as she read off her smartphone.
"I don't know what about that has got you excited. Even if there's a Saint willing to carry some no one like you to the dream realm you'll end up infected with the nightmare spell as soon as you set foot on the other side." Her friend walked in stride with her, a bored expression on her face counteracting the other bright one perfectly.
The other girl's excitement dimmed and she pouted at her friend beneath her mask "Don't ruin my fantasies of having clean air to breath! Besides I bet I would do fine if I got the spell, I know self defense and everything!"
"Yea well somehow I doubt a couple punches and kicks will stop bloodthirsty nightmare creatures from ripping you to shreds." The dour girl replied with a deadpan frown and a shake of the head as the pair walked on.
"Any new news from the outer settlements? I heard a rumor that New Beijing had a gate open up near them." A young man dressed in a suit of black body armor asked as he walked alongside a similarly dressed woman.
"I think there are three or four New Bejings at this point to be honest with you. Honestly it's bad luck to be using the old names of cities in my opinion." The woman shook her head derisively as she drew on a cigarette. "But I think I know the one you're talking about, and yea, it got one. Cat 2 opened up right inside its downtown. Some government awakened and a government master got it under control with only a couple hundred dead but so far no one's stepped up to close the gate's seed itself. Until someone does, the city poured concrete over it, same as always."
The man frowned and shook his head before he laced his fingers together and looked up at the smoggy sky. "Y'know I'd feel more confident about that approach if we hadn't seen nightmare creatures dig through concrete like wet sand. I guess there's no helping it though. Hard to convince anyone, let alone awakened, to go sign their own death warrant and challenge a nightmare seed just to close the latest in a long line of gates that happened to pop up."
As all the chatter washed over him the young man standing at the top of it sighed and pushed himself off the railing to continue his walk.
Just like every time he stopped and listened to people in this world, their words painted a sad and grim picture. He and his partner had come here with a clear mission to carry out and the more he saw of this world the more determined he was to see it through.
This place seemed so hauntingly familiar to the earth that he knew. The same land, same seas, same history, even the same nations. In fact the only differences he could rightly see was there were no groups like his in this world, and the fact that the calendar was nearly a hundred years ahead of his home's.
In truth perhaps it was the idea that given some time his own world might look like this that left him so haunted by this land. Afterall if the nation's of his earth turned violent, who's to say they wouldn't use a nuclear arsenal to bombard the world, or empty their stocks of chemical and biological agents to spit in the eye of an enemy rather than give up. Who's to say that his earth's own rampant environmental negligence would not lead to a biosphere collapse that left people reliant on air filtration and enrichment.
Almost all the ills of this world were things that his own home could certainly cause given time and the wrong people in charge. Except of course for the most recent and dire issue that faced this world.
The strange onset of the "Nightmare Spell" as he and his partner had learned it was called, came with seemingly no warning. The records they could find in a public library in the city outskirts were admittedly limited but the bits of conversation they'd heard supported the idea that decades ago, out of nowhere, vast numbers of people began to be plagued with an inescapable fatigue. And once they slept something would happen.
Some would linger in their dreams for days or more, only to awaken endowed with strange new abilities and stories of a bizarre nightmare they suffered. Some would simply die, typically those older people plagued by the illness. Neither of those categories were the one that mattered most to the world at large though. Because the vast majority of people would end their sleep by having their bodies twisted and ravaged until they turned in murderous inhuman monsters.
The carnage that had sprung forth in the time it took people to learn the mechanisms at play behind the spell seemed to have been responsible for the majority of the death toll when the spell first descended. That was not to say that the accompanying appearance of nightmarish gates across the world each spewing forth vile monsters didn't cause countless deaths as well, but the number of groups slaughtered from the inside out by someone lost to the spell with no one the wiser was far more lethal.
Strangely enough though the one two punch of self inflicted armageddon followed by the descent of the spell did not spell the end of this world's humanity. In time they seemed to learn the supposed rules of this new horror and tried to adapt to it. Measures were put in place to find those taken by the spell's embrace and isolate them to keep people safe. The minority of people who survived their first nightmare began to step up and lead defenses against the swarms of beasts and managed to succeed where more mundane arms failed. They even shared all that they learned and soon the underlying rules of the nightmare spell were laid bare for people to learn. A trial would take place, with a conflict that the aspirant must reach the end of. Survival to the end would grant an awakening, while death inside seemed to lead to the birth of a beast.
As people began to learn the laws now bearing down on them, the death toll from the spell lessened dramatically, both from new found knowledge and the fact that far fewer people seemed to contract the spell after the first wave hit. At the same time the survivors of this world's fragmented nations came together and created vast fortress cities to seek refuge in. The very city the young man was currently standing in the outskirts of was in fact one of the four largest such cities of this world, the rather imaginatively named Northern Quadrant Siege Capitol. Poor naming sense aside, it was a staggering accomplishment for humanity, even from the young man's jaded external perspective. This single arcology housed around a hundred million people along with the infrastructure needed to sustain them. Hydroponic gardens, air filtration systems, manufacturing centers, even works of culture and art to keep people sane. That wasnt even touching on the sheer cleverness of civic planning and design that allowed the city to be continually expanded over the years without collapsing under its own weight.
It and the other three cities like it would have surely been crowning achievements in any other world but the sad fact was such measures were absolute necessities in this place.
All told things here painted a rather bleak picture yet it couldn't be denied that the people had a tremendous amount of spirit and determination to have been able to have come as far as they did.
Despite how wonderful it was though, he had his own mission to carry out, and he couldn't let sympathy for this world stop him from helping his own.
The young man ended his musing, looking up to see that he had reached his destination. He let out a sigh then walked through the door and headed straight up to the counter where an officer in a police uniform sat.
"Hello there sir, how can we be of help today?"
The young man reached up and pulled his hood down, freeing a full head of red and silver hair and revealing two piercing golden eyes. He then reached up for his mask and pulled it off, showing a calm smile on his face as he gave a small bow to the officer.
"Hello Sir, My Name is Shirou Emiya, and I believe I'm suffering from the Nightmare Spell."
***
Shirou Emiya sat inside the police station holding a cup of coffee as he looked up at the officer across from him. His hair was a strange mix of red and silver and his golden eyes were staring at the officer in front of him even as they were half covered by his eyelids. The young man was giving a kind and normally disarming smile to the officer even as the adult was doing his best not to panic while jotting down information onto a device that looked to be a glass tablet.
"Ok let's get this filled out and then we'll get you into your pod. Start with your name one more time, then your age, relatives, and place of residence son." The officer hurriedly said as he looked down at the steely eyed young man who had walked into his prescient mere minutes ago.
Said young man did not react to the man's hurried speech in the least. He understood perfectly why the man was worried, especially given the fact that even with the smile on his face Shirou's eyes were half lidded "Emiya Shirou, age 21, no living relatives, and I'm afraid that as far as residences go, I'm somewhat homeless."
Shirou said those words with no sadness of his own, but it still earned a look of pity, shame and a touch of fear from the officer and others in the room. They had every right to show such reactions since Shirou had just essentially admitted that he was some kind of outskirts vagrant and thus would have very little chance to survive what was coming. The fear that mixed in with their pity and empathetic sadness was due to the danger of facing whatever might be left of Shirou should he fail what was to come.
As the officer in front of him wrote down Shirou's answers he sucked up his own disappointment and put a brittle smile on his own face. "That's all right son, lots of folks have issues with housing these days. Times are tough after all." Nothing the officer could do would make any difference here but at the very least there was no need to bring down the lad's spirits anymore. "Hell, even a sergeant like me has to share a room with my whole extended family, even my in-laws, So don't fret about it" with that the man finished off his paperwork, or rather glasswork, and gave Shirou the best smile he could offer to a young man who was very likely to die by the end of the day. "In fact once you get through this nightmare you'll be raking in even more money than me, so make sure to do your best!"
Shirou's half lidded smile turned a bit brighter at the man's words as he reflected on them. This officer was certainly a kind sort to be trying this hard to lift the spirits of someone who was by all rights a corpse that simply had not died yet. It was equally as touching as it was tragic to watch the man dealing with watching a young man get ready to die while being able to do nothing to stop it. Although doing nothing wasn't quite right was it. Even if the words were worthless, and the smile was brittle they both were still actions to try and reach out and comfort someone.
If he was half as incompetent as the man feared he was Shirou may have been too terrified to appreciate that gesture but as it was Shirou only nodded his head and stood up before putting his own hand on the man's shoulders. The action left the officer at a loss for a second until Shirou widened his smile and gripped the man's shoulder gently. "In that case I'll have to stop by here again after I'm done to tell you all about my new life as an awakened, in fact why don't I buy all the officers here a round?"
The show of confidence somewhat got the officers out of their funk and a few even replaced the grim frowns on their faces with smiles at the sight of the confident young outskirts rat in front of them. The mention of a round of drinks was even enough to earn some claps and applause which further drove away the cloud of malaise hanging over everyone. Shirou seemed to them like a likeable enough sort that his inevitable death would have been depressing but at least he was facing it with some impressive dignity and grace. The officer who had been working on Shirou's documents patted the young man's hand and gave him another smile. "In that case young man, we'll be looking forward to hearing about your exploits. Gods, once you become a saint we can even brag to everyone that it was our station you went to for your first nightmare!"
The boast earned a smattering a laugh from the officers on the wall but most importantly to the man it earned one from Shirou. Taking that last bit of boasting as a fine send off the officer led Shirou into the back of the station and into an elevator. The ride down was slow enough to no doubt be nerve racking for most but after the words above the mood was calm. After only a couple minutes the two arrived at the destination which from the elevator panel seemed to be down in the lower utility strata of the district they were standing in earlier. It was a sensible location to stick nightmare aspirants considering the damage they could do on the surface or upper levels, and even more clever was the fact that most Dormant nightwear creatures would be unable to escape a place like this. It was almost enough to give the impression that humanity had gained enough understanding of the new horrors of the world to adapt to them and get comfortable again.
The reality though was that despite coming as far as they did humanity was still woefully under equipped to stand against the creatures of the nightmare and even the lowliest of them could pose a huge danger to normal mundane people. Even this place so deep under the earth was not as safe as it needed to be, and all it would take to cost many good men and women their lives was the wrong type of Nightmare beast coming through an aspirant's body and bypassing their best attempts at safety. Something gaseous, or a whole swarm of nightmare insects, or even some vengeful spirit they couldn't touch would be all it takes to turn the building above into a graveyard, along with the rest of the district to follow.
It was a harrowing world to live in, and one that Shirou found himself pitying the longer he was here. If he wasn't an accomplished combat magus himself the idea of being thrust into horrific dreamscapes to battle against beasts and abominations would have left him paralyzed with fear. It made him respect the people of this world even more to know that they did all of this oftentimes with precious little help of support, which made their accomplishments all the more impressive.
Despite those thoughts though Shirou knew what he had to do. He and Rin both had a mission to accomplish in this world and the first step was braving the Nightmare spell and becoming integrated with the dream world. Given what information they'd uncovered regarding the nightmare spell one of the repeated matras regarding its difficulty was that it was "fair" especially during the initial nightmare. The use of the word may have been inaccurate but it seemed to imply that nothing fundamentally impossible would be needed, only things that were a few hairs shy of that. Despite that fact though Shirou had no real concerns about his chances. It may be a difficult challenge but after all that he had been through he wasn't really worried about death claiming him from something like this.
As Shirou and the unnamed officer made their way through the aspirant wing they came to a reinforced door that led to a barren room dominated by a sleeping pod in its center. The pod itself was not the nicest on the market and had a rough look to it, made all the worse by the fact that it had thick reinforced shackles welded onto it for the wrist and ankles.
It hardly looked like a comfortable way to rest but given that the Nightmare was already hard at work to force Shirou into unconsciousness he didn't have any worries about being able to fall asleep once he sat down. Sparing one more look at the officer to give him a nod Shirou sat down and climbed up into the chair. As soon as he laid down even before the cuffs were fully locked over him Shirou was already drifting off to sleep as he finally let the spell take hold of him.
***
As sleep fully took him and Shirou succumbed to spells siren call he found his consciousness in a great white expanse. Before he could dwell too long on the mystery of this place a voice rang out like a million broken gears grinding into one another.
[̶̧̺̳̭̌̂F̷̢͈͉̊̀̀̈̚o̷͕̻̖̯͒̓̎͛r̸͇͈̐ȇ̶͙͍͔̺͇̔̉i̶̜͗̄̿̓g̴̗͂̃ṋ̸͈̻̯̆̔e̵̫̰͌̑́̌r̴̻̥͙͍͋̓!̸͙̞̖͑̕͜ ̶̫͖̳̪̈͊̇̉̓W̴̠̠͇̖̔3̸͙̭̼̕l̷̘͔͖͉̮̓́̌̇͝c̷̥̺̽̉0̷̡̡̧̛̯̤̓̈̽͘%̸͈̀̀e̸̠̝̮̮̋͒ ̶̂͆̊ͅť̴̗̩̖͂͗o̵̮͈͖̖͔͆̀ ̷̹͙͓̈́t̶̛͇͚̪̭̆͂̽^̶̨̱͙͗͐ê̵̗ͅ ̸̖̝̠̌̔́̌͋N̶̢̖̼̟̈́͑͜&̷̧͕͍̲̦̔͠͝ǵ̷͎̠*̴͙͑͊̋̄͠t̶̩̰̓̈́͊̄̀͜m̴̺͘̕(̶̦̼͍̲̝́̊͂͛̏r̵̫̓͒̍̇e̸̖͇̼͙̒͘͝ ̸̲̤̟͙̋͆̽̐̕S̴̲̿͌#̵̼͔͔̬̃̚e̴̻͖̮̹̎̅̕@̵̧̖́^̶̫̩͈͐̔̀͝.̷̳͔͈̍̅̋̐ ̶͖̫̦̘̺̔̌̃́$̸̙͈̲̟̟̆͂̊̏%̸̨̂̇̀̈́̚͜!̵̖̘̘͌̀̀͠#̵̘̓̆^̴̯́r̵̭̎̑͝%̸̹̬̰̀͜͝ͅ ̶̀̓͗͜f̵̟͘%̸̛̤͖̗̞̈́̆͊ṟ̴͑̐.̸̢̡̫̆̋̓͗.̶̛̪̆͆̐.̵̲̤̲̫̙̀͗͝]̶̙͙̝̉̿͜
As the voice pounded against Shirou's disembodied consciousness he was left reeling from the sensation of its broken shattered words trying to force their way into his mind. If he had been subjected to that noise with his flesh and blood eardrums he had no doubt they would have ruptured and been left leaking blood.
As he was left trying to wrap his head around what he just heard another series of runes blitzed past him, too fast to be read or heard and speaking about things that his mind had now understanding of.
[ERROR ENCOUNTERED: EVALUATING…]
[FOREIGNER DETECTED…]
[ANOMALOUS SOUL DETECTED…]
[ANOMALOUS PHYSIOLOGY DETECTED…]
[NON - FATE PARSEABLE MEMORIES DETECTED…]
[CONCLUSION: CRITICAL SPELLWEAVE INSTABILITY IMMINENT …]
[...]
[...]
[EXECUTING SOUL INTEGRATION WEAVE…]
[ANOMALOUS SOUL INCOMPATIBLE: INTEGRATION WEAVE FAILED…]
[EXECUTING PURGE WEAVE …]
[FOREIGNER UNABLE TO BE PURGED: PURGE WEAVE FAILED …]
[EXECUTING SOUL ALTERATION WEAVE …]
[PHYSIOLOGIC AND COGNITIVE INTEGRATION WITH ANOMALOUS SOUL EXCEEDS WEAVE PARAMETERS: SOUL ALTERATION WEAVE FAILED …]
[...]
[...]
[...]
[BASIC SPELL PROCESSING ERROR ENCOUNTERED: ELEVATED PERMISSIONS REQUEST SENT …]
[...]
[ELEVATED PERMISSIONS REQUEST APPROVED …]
[EXECUTING ELEVATED PHYSIOLOGY ALTERATION WEAVE: EXECUTING ELEVATED MEMORY ALTERATION WEAVE: EXECUTING ELEVATED SOUL ALTERATION WEAVE …]
[...]
[...]
[...]
[ELEVATED PHYSIOLOGY ALTERATION WEAVE: SUCCESSFUL …]
[ELEVATED MEMORY ALTERATION WEAVE: SUCCESSFUL …]
[ELEVATED SOUL ALTERATION WEAVE: SUCCESSFUL …]
[RE-EXECUTING SOUL INTEGRATION WEAVE …]
[...]
[SOUL INTEGRATION WEAVE: SUCCESSFUL …]
[...]
[PERSISTENT SPELLWEAVE INSTABILITY REMAINING…]
[...]
[...]
[ELEVATED SPELL PROCESSING ERROR ENCOUNTERED: FULL PERMISSIONS REQUEST SENT …]
[...]
[...]
[...]
[...]
[...]
[...]
[FULL PERMISSIONS REQUEST APPROVED …]
[EXECUTING FATE INTEGRATION WEAVE … ]
[...]
[FATE INTEGRATION WEAVE: SUCCESSFUL …]
[...]
[SPELL WEAVE STABILITY RESTORED: SPELL INTEGRATION COMPLETE: RE-GENERATING USER GREETING AND APPLYING WEAVE CHANGES…]
[F̸͉̭͈̖͙̑͝ǫ̴͖͖̖̱̙͑͆̆r̷̛̳̋̈́̏͑é̵̞̥͍͉̖̪̄̈̓͝i̷̻̙͖̯͙͓̬̿͌̌̑͘͝g̸͚̋n̴̡̧̘̙͇͉͙̒̔e̵̦̪̅͋̕r̵̲̻̎̾ you have journeyed far and bear a terrible weight upon your heart and soul. Entry into this land carries a great price which must be paid.]
Shirou's mind was left stuttering to a halt as he read those runes and tried to process the fact that the nightmare spell was aware of his origins. Before he could think on it any more though his mind, body, and soul began to be shaped and molded by the nightmare spell in a torrent of mana and indescribable agony.
His soul was searing and his magic circuits were left scorching and burning as an immense amount of raw mana forced its way into them from the outside. The mana was surging in through his body back in the waking world and crashing into his inner world like tidal waves from a vast ocean even as a separate river assailed his mind.
The pain was blinding not only spiritually as his soul was drowned in foreign mana which began to batter and assault his blade works but also the terrible physical toll extracted from his beaten and battered magic circuits. Shirou himself could not feel it in the dreamscape but had he seen the situation back in the police station he would have witnessed nearly a dozen panicked police officers looking on at his smoking burning body with faces of dread and horror. Sharp angular lines of charred flesh were rapidly forming across Shirou's skin and burning through his clothing at any point he was covered. As the circuits burned the flesh around them was ravaged and twisted into painful weeping wounds. Even as his soul and mind were cut off from his body the pain was intense enough to cause his body to twitch and writhe in pain. The sight of the young man's roasting skin was terrible enough that none of the officers realized that on top of his body being cooked and set aflame, he was also changing physically. The 21 year old young man who had come in and sat down was slowly twisting and changing as his body was shrunk back down from the cusp of adulthood back into the late stage of adolescence. His bones were reshaped and his muscles shrank down mercifully into a shorter and slightly thinner frame.
All the pain assailing Shirou's physical body was a mere side effect of what was happening to his soul. As the foreign mana made landfall within unlimited bladeworks it immediately began ripping the world apart. Had Shirou had the presence of mind to understand it, he would have seen his inner world being undone and lashed to pieces by almost surgical tendrils of mana. With every blow they landed the ground and sky peeled away leaving behind only a pure white void. As the shards peeled off the backdrop of the world like a cheap Television set they gravitated towards one another and floated towards the shining outline of a golden sheath in what passed for the center of the world.
As the lashes of mana struck at the bladeworks and left empty tears in their wake the world of the bladeworks began to regenerate and heal itself, filling in the cracks as they came and rebuilding the space base on Shirou's memory of it. But as the mana threads snaking their way into his mind began to attack his memories the process slowed, and then halted all together given the blade works no way to resist the attacking mana. Along with the assault on any memory of his inner world, the mana of the spell surged through Shirou's consciousness and scoured anything that was considered to be outside the weave of fate. Memories of a war with mystical servants, a dreadful giant with ashen skin, a blonde haired king of knights wielding a magic blade, and a dreadfully dangerous archer who claimed the whole world as his own. Even further in the spell twisted its tendrils through Shirous mind and pulled apart the threads of memory from even his normal and mundane past. Memories of his school, his old friends and hobbies, his father and the night under the stars that he promised to become a hero of justice. Every individual memory was unraveled and plucked away leaving only indistinct echoes in their place.
Within Shirou's crumbling soul every lash of the mana destabilized his bladeworks even more, and as the gashes in space grew larger they spread and more of the firmament of the world peeled away, seemingly pressed in and crushed under the oppressive brightness of the void around it. The strikes of the sentient mana carved everything that made up the bladeworks into pieces and yet also helped in dragging it all further and further into the great swirling mass in the center.
Size in a place as unlimited as Shirou's soul should have held no meaning and and as a result there should have been no possible way to collapse it all into any kind of finite volume. Despite that fact the orb growing in the center still continued to form and absorb every scrap of the once infinite blade works until finally it alone sat in an endless white expanse.
As the sphere surged and swirled against itself the mana tendrils threaded and wove themselves through the shifting cracks in its surface, diving low into the now smoldering core and then cresting back out to the surface. With each motion of the mana the sphere that was once a world grew smaller and denser as the threads pulled it tighter and tighter until finally It was wrapped tightly and held in a mass of intricate threads. As the threads snaked across the newly formed core they pulsed and tightened. Crushing what was once a world down tighter as the light shining through its cracks was made to glow brighter and brighter.
Finally after reaching an equilibrium point that only the weave of the spell was aware of the tightening stopped and the newly formed dormant soul core was left idle. More threads wrapped across it and obscured its surface until the whole of its light was blocked off and it was left indistinguishable from the white around it.
Finally as its purpose was completed the mana pulled out from Shirou's mind. Its work now done as countless memories were scoured and cut out with strangely surgical precision, leaving the foundations of a personality in their wake with no memories of a place beyond this universe.
Finally in the real world the officers looked on with wide fearful eyes at the sight of a young man… no wait at the sight of the teenager laying on the bed with his body wracked in a whole road map of jagged smoldering scars. The damage done to his body almost as soon as the nightmare began left the officers present confused and alarmed but the monitor showed his mind was still dreaming and so they did not trigger the kill switch yet. Their earlier call to get government support here asap was elevated though, in light of the anomaly they were describing.
Finally the weave of fate restitched itself, an act intended to never be performed meant only for the most dire of cases when a fateless creature forces itself into the Nightmare spell. Although no new memories of him were created in people's minds the steps necessary to tie him to the spell's functions were performed and its operational weave once again functioned properly, now with him included.
And finally after all the crippling agonizing pain that the one known as Emiya Shirou had endured was done, the spell spoke to him again.
[F̸͉̭͈̖͙̑͝ǫ̴͖͖̖̱̙͑͆̆r̷̛̳̋̈́̏͑é̵̞̥͍͉̖̪̄̈̓͝i̷̻̙͖̯͙͓̬̿͌̌̑͘͝g̸͚̋n̴̡̧̘̙͇͉͙̒̔e̵̦̪̅͋̕r̵̲̻̎̾, your price has been paid. Welcome to the Nightmare Spell! Prepare for your First True Trial…]