pirate king (pirate!au) ➵ ateez ✔️

dreams

You're lost in dreams once more.

It's dark all about you, you're swamped in pitch blackness, flailing helplessly. Uncontrollable panic surges in you like a wave and threatens to engulf you completely, but you force it down, looking around desperately, searching for a way out.

You can't see anything.

Falling for an eternity in slow motion, you rotate about slowly as coolness sweeps over your body, leeching the warmth from your skin down to your bones. You're descending, falling, sinking, into what, you don't know, but then all of a sudden, without rhyme or reason, the fear deep in you clears, dissipating like smoke.

In the space of a single breath, you're suddenly bathed in a dim, strange, red glow. You look up, bubbles escaping your mouth, and your eyes widen at the sight before you.

It's the eye from your dreams.

It hasn't changed one bit since the last time you saw it, still an unnatural, metallic shade of crimson surrounding a black circle in the very centre. The unearthly luminescence from it illuminates its form just enough for you to catch a glimpse of long, twisting tentacles, unravelling and curling around a shadowy form that blends with the darkness behind it.

It's humongous, monstrous, in every sense of the word.

Shock bounds up in you, but for some reason, the fear you expect never comes. Instead, by instinct, you reach out for it with your lips parted in awe, taking in the magnificence of such a strange, yet beautiful monster.

The light coming from the crimson eye shifts and bends, strange, chilling sounds in your ears as a low, keening cry reaches you. The call is eerie and haunting, high enough to send blood-curling shivers down your spine and yet at the same time low for you to feel the vibrations in your chest.

"He's cominggggg..."

The words simply drift into your mind as a low, pained wail swirls around you, a ghostly groan that makes every hair stand at the end. The crimson eye continues staring unblinkingly at you, beseeching you to understand. There's a hint of raw desperation in the creature's call, but it's so real you can feel your own heart sinking in your chest.

"He's coming for me..."

Your breath catches in your throat, an invisible noose tightening around your neck that chokes you of all the air in your lungs. Fear, cold as ice, slithers down your back and spreads to the very tips of your fingers and toes, numbing your body.

"And he'll come for you nextttt..."

The cry rises in volume, getting louder and louder until it's reverberating in the water all around you, ringing in your ears. Your mind doesn't know what's going on in the least, but some sort of foreboding awakens in you, deep and primal in your body, clawing its way into your lungs and tearing painfully at your heart.

You're terrified to the very core.

"Runnnn..." The voice whispers one last time, begging you, before darkness swirls around it and engulfs it, yanking it back into the depths where light from above can never reach, lost from you forever.

You start awake, heart racing in your chest as you heave for breath. Your fingers are numb and frozen with fear, and when you glance down at them, you realise they're trembling uncontrollably from terror.

What was that?

A splotch of merlot suddenly blossoms on the rough cloth of your blanket like the fallen petal of a blooming rose and you stare at it for a moment, stunned. Another dot of crimson, another blotch of scarlet and you raise a hesitant, quivering hand to your nose.