Rise of the Nightmares

Chapter 13

One second she had felt pure joy due to having her first kiss. The next second she felt a burning pain in her arm, right where the strange bite mark had been getting worse as time passed. After that, all that came was blackness and the fading noises of her friends frantically calling out her name.

She had expected to wake up some time later and hear what happened while she was passed out. But instead, upon passing out, she suddenly found herself waking up.

Which of course contradicted the spurn of rapid events that happened.

Startled by how she was somehow awake, and the pain on her arm gone, she scrambled to get back up. After she managed to get back on her feet, she took a quick glimpse at her wrist to inspect her bite mark.

The strange dark grey color covering her arm from her hand to her elbow was still there, but the pain was strangely gone. And upon further inspection of her arm, she noticed that she could see through her body, as if she was a ghost.

She turned her head back and forth, and that's when she realized that she wasn't in Peach's castle, and she was alone. Her friends were nowhere in sight.

"Mario!? Sonic!? Knuckles?! Where is everyone?!" she called out.

No response. Kate began to feel a swarm of panic and confusion within her mind. She looked at her surroundings as she hopelessly waited to see if any of her friends would call her name back.

As she got silence for a response, Kate noticed that her surroundings were colorless. Everything was in shades of grey, which was odd considering that the walls and furniture looked like what could be found in a normal house, or maybe even the interior of a mansion.

The air was cold as well, but strangely, Kate didn't find herself shivering, which could've been the fact that where she was now was merely as an apparition and she wasn't physically there.

Suddenly, she could hear the sound of someone shouting angrily. The sound of their tone made her shake, but strangely, she couldn't control her body, and she found herself slowly walking towards a nearby door that was open just a slight crack.

She wanted to turn back, but every nerve in her system was telling her to move forward and inspect the source of the furious voice. Slowly and anxiously, she reached out with her right arm, still glaring at the portion that was grey as she did, and pushed open the door.

The room was strangely large, and judging by an enormous chair propped in the very center of the room, that indicated that this must've been some sort of throne room. The luxurious style of the room further proved this point, but much like the room where Kate woke up, everything was colorless and grey.

But that's when Kate noticed that there were a couple pieces of furniture that DID have normal color hues, and because she noticed this, this made her walk up. She didn't need to get close to see that it was a white board of some sort, but instead of scribbles all over it, papers were taped to it, mapping out like some sort of plans. the most notable paper was in the center, for it was a world map of some sort. And upon gazing upon it, Kate realized which world map it was for, since she remembered look at maps of her home planet as a kid.

It wasn't mapping out Earth, so it meant it was showing the layout of Mario and Sonic's world.

Large X markings where on some specific spots, with notes written to the side in red ink, and seeing that there was one that had the location of the Mushroom Kingdom, its X circled by numerous red circles furiously drawn, made Kate shake a bit.

Surrounding the map were more photos, and upon seeing that her face was on all of them, Kate shook even more, forming a terrified look as she saw the photos of herself.