Mina stared at him, aghast. "Go into the nightmare? Davies, are you crazy? You can't just will yourself to dream!"
"Maybe not consciously," Davies said, a strange glint in his eyes. "But there are ways techniques people used to believe could open the doors to the dreaming world." He held up one of the ancient texts. "If Tero is hunting in dreams, that's where we have to fight him."
"Fight him? In a dream?" Mina shook her head in disbelief. "Davies, this is insane! You could get lost in there, trapped!"
"It's a risk I have to take, Mina," Davies said, his voice firm. "He's not going to stop. More people will die. I have to try." He looked at her, his eyes pleading. "You have to trust me on this."
Mina looked at the determined set of his jaw, the desperate glint in his eyes. She knew arguing was pointless. "Okay, Davies," she said slowly, her voice filled with worry. "But be careful. Please. What am I supposed to do while you're dreaming?"
"Keep digging," Davies said. "Look for anything that connects the victims to these old beliefs, anything about dream travel or nightmare creatures. Maybe there's a way to fight him, a weakness."
He closed his eyes for a moment, taking a deep breath. "Wish me luck, Mina. I have a feeling I'm about to enter a world I never knew existed."
As Davies prepared to delve into the realm of sleep, Mina watched him with a growing sense of dread.
Just as Davies was about to try and fall asleep, "Wait, Davies!" Mina called out, her voice sharp.
Davies stopped, turning to her with a questioning look. "What is wrong?"
"Before you carry on," Mina said, her tone serious, "I want to ask you something."
"Go on," Davies replied, a hint of impatience in his voice.
"Have you ever heard about lucid dreaming?" Mina asked, her eyes fixed on his.
Davies frowned. "Lucid dreaming? Isn't that just not real?"
"Then find out about it, Davies," Mina insisted, her voice firm. "Maybe it will help you."
Intrigued by Mina's insistence, Davies sought the help of Dr. Evelyn Walsh, a sleep specialist and dream researcher. At first, Dr. Walsh didn't believe him, thinking his ideas were just the result of too much imagination.
But Davies was so serious, so sure that something strange was happening, that he started to convince her. She agreed to help, but she was still a bit unsure.
Dr. Walsh explained what lucid dreaming was: the ability to know you're dreaming and to control what you do in the dream. She taught Davies ways to make himself have lucid dreams, methods to focus his mind, to separate his awake thoughts from the sleepy world of dreams.
It was hard and took a long time. Davies had trouble falling into a dream where he knew he was dreaming. His mind was too busy, always thinking and analyzing. He spent many hours in Dr. Walsh's lab, connected to machines, trying to quiet his thoughts, to let go of the real world. He practiced imagining himself falling asleep, entering the dream world.
Finally, after weeks of trying, he did it. He found himself in a dream, a strange, twisted version of his own office.
The walls looked like they were melting, the furniture was floating in the air, and everything felt uneasy. He knew he was dreaming, but it felt incredibly real.
"Davies!" Mina's voice echoed in his mind, though she wasn't physically there. "Remember what Dr. Walsh said! You're dreaming! You can control this!"
Davies looked around his melting office, a sense of panic rising in his chest. "Control this?" he muttered to himself. "How?"
Suddenly, a flicker of an image flashed before his eyes Dr. Walsh explaining how to focus on his surroundings, how to assert his will over the dream. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and tried to focus.
"This is my dream," he whispered. "I can change it."
Slowly, tentatively, the melting walls began to solidify. The floating furniture settled back onto the floor. The sense of unease lessened, replaced by a fragile sense of control.
"It's working," he thought, a surge of hope coursing through him. "I'm actually doing it."
But just as he began to feel a sense of mastery over his dream world, a dark shadow flickered in the corner of his vision. A cold dread washed over him. He knew, with a certainty that chilled him to the bone, that he wasn't alone in this dream.
Was Tero already here?
He started walking through his dream office, which kept changing and melting, looking for Tero. He saw strange, scary figures.
Then, he saw flashes of the dead people's nightmares: a woman falling forever, a burning building, spiders everywhere. And then, in the shadows, he saw him. Tero. His shape kept changing, like a blurry image.
He felt a coldness coming from Tero, a feeling of pure evil. Tero knew Davies was there.
Tero didn't say anything. He just moved his hand, telling Davies to come deeper into the dream. Davies felt like he was being pulled, like a magnet drawing him into the dark. He knew it was a trap, but he had to go. He had to face Tero, even if it meant facing his own worst fears. He took a deep breath and walked into the shadows. The hunt had begun.
The shadows wrapped around Davies, and the dream world twisted and turned like it was alive. Tero's shape became clearer, and Davies saw that he wasn't completely strange. There was something about him that felt familiar, a dark reflection of something inside Davies himself.
Tero's voice echoed in Davies's mind, not with words, but with pure thought. "Now you understand. You see the truth. The nightmares... they are not just dreams. They are doors. They are like sicknesses spreading."
Davies felt a cold agreement with Tero's words. He saw the faces of the people who died, their fear, how helpless they were. He saw the chaos their nightmares caused, the fear they spread. He saw the world almost going crazy, taken over by nightmares that were becoming real.
"They must be stopped," Davies thought, the words forming in his mind before he even spoke them. He felt a strange clarity, a strong certainty he had never felt before. The difficult choices he faced when he was awake seemed to disappear, replaced by one clear goal.
Tero seemed to offer something, reaching out a shadowy hand that glowed with dark energy. "Join me. Embrace the darkness. Become what you were meant to be."
Davies hesitated. He saw the dark emptiness in front of him, the scary path he was about to take. But he also saw the world, filled with nightmares, drowning in fear. He saw the faces of innocent people, the ones who could become victims, the countless lives that could be saved.
He reached out and took Tero's hand. The dream world shimmered, and Davies felt something changing inside him. His mind felt bigger, his senses sharper. He could feel the quiet thoughts of the sleeping people, the small waves of fear moving through the city. He could see the nightmares starting to form, the doors opening.
"What are you doing?" a voice echoed in the dream, a voice that sounded like Mina's, filled with alarm. "Davies, no! Don't do it!"
But Davies didn't answer.
The merging of their hands sent a jolt of icy power through Davies, blurring the edges of his own identity. Mina's desperate cry faded as the dreamscape warped, pulling Davies deeper into its terrifying embrace. A horrifying understanding dawned in his mind: to fight a nightmare, he might have to become one himself. The city below remained blissfully unaware of the monstrous transformation taking place in the silent world of sleep. Had Davies made the ultimate sacrifice, or a fatal mistake? The answer lay shrouded in the deepening shadows of the dream.