"We need to fight this nightmare!" Councilwoman Eve declared, her voice sharp like a snapping twig. "I can teach everyone how to understand their bad dreams. If we get what our nightmares mean, we can stop them!"
Councilman Garcia rubbed his chin, his eyes clouded with worry. "Dream symbols might help, Eve, but I don't think it's enough to beat this Nightmare Hunter. We need more." He leaned forward. "Let's bring in others. Smart people. Doctors who study minds, folks who look at strange powers, even priests and holy men. Maybe there are things we don't grasp yet."
"A prayer vigil!" Councilman O'Connell boomed, his voice echoing in the quiet room. "We need God's help! A city wide prayer, asking for protection!"
Eve scoffed softly. "Prayer? Really, O'Connell?"
"Don't you dare mock faith, Eve!" O'Connell's face flushed. "When shadows creep, and reason fails, sometimes only faith remains."
Garcia nodded slowly. "He has a point. We can't ignore what people believe. Let's do it all. Workshops, experts, and a vigil. We're throwing everything at this thing."
The council felt lost, like blind people trying to catch smoke. This enemy lived in dreams, a place they couldn't touch. Time was running out.
Tero, a dark whisper born from fear, felt their frantic scrambling. He tasted their small hope, a tiny spark he knew how to crush. Their plans their meetings, their doctors, their online chats were like little scratches on a giant beast. He lived in the deep parts of their minds, a place they couldn't even see, let alone control.
He melted away, not beaten, but pulling back on purpose. "Fools," he hissed, the sound a dry rustle in the dark of the dreaming world. "They think they can chase me. They think these little games, these whispered words, these frantic prayers will find me." A dark chuckle, like pebbles rolling in a dry riverbed, rippled through the shadowed air around him. "No. I shall become a ghost. A whisper. They will search, and find nothing. Their hope, that fragile flame, will burn itself out in the empty air. They will think me gone. And then when their guard falls, when their minds soften with false peace then I shall return. Stronger. Sharper. And their slumber will be deeper than ever." He became a ghost in the dream world. The city, tricked into thinking he was gone, slowly relaxed. The meetings stopped, the special groups broke up, and the online talks went quiet. They believed the danger had passed.
They were so wrong.
Tero watched, a silent shadow, learning the city's hidden hurts. He saw their proud smiles, their strong talk, and knew these very things would break them.
He began to whisper in their sleep. Not loud shouts, but soft, slithering doubts.
"Your dreams of being great?" he chuckled to himself, a sound like dry leaves skittering. "I'll make them nightmares of falling down. Your love? A sting of betrayal."
He didn't need to kill. He could snap their spirits from the inside, like old, brittle bones. Their waking lives would become as awful as their sleep.
Slowly, Zeni City began to crack. Faces that once smiled now held suspicion. Laughter faded, replaced by a cold unease, a feeling of eyes always watching. Joy seeped away like water through cracked earth, leaving only a constant, nagging fear.
Tero, unseen, untouched, was everywhere. He was the cold breath on their necks, the prickle of dread on their skin. He was poisoning their minds, turning their bright city into a slow, waking horror where hope twisted and died. He knew fear wasn't just a sudden jump. It was the slow, icy creep that ate at their souls, the quiet whispers that made them doubt everything they knew. This was the fear he was growing now, a fear that would swallow them whole.
Their plans were useless, not because they were foolish, but because they fought a ghost who knew their minds better than they knew themselves.
Now, Tero moved to his next dark game: turning the city against itself. He knew a house split in two would fall. He began to plant tiny doubts in their sleeping minds, making old dislikes grow, turning simple talks into sharp acts of unkindness.
Anya, who used to shine with hope, now saw her friends, the Dream Walkers, turn against her in her sleep. They stole her ideas, whispered her secrets, and claimed her hard work as their own. Tero made her fears bigger, poking at her worry of being unseen, of being forgotten. She woke up with a cold knot of doubt in her stomach, her trust in her friends slowly breaking like old glass.
"They're talking behind my back,
I just know it," Anya muttered to herself, staring at her own reflection, as if a stranger looked back. Her fingers trembled as she gripped the edge of her desk. "All those late nights, all that searching and for what? For them to snatch it away?"
Detective Maxwell, the man who always doubted, now saw his own team, his own boss, laughing at his worries, mocking his ideas about the Nightmare Hunter. Tero dug into his pride, his hunger to be seen as smart, twisting his doubts into a bitter anger. He woke up sure that everyone around him was useless, that no one truly grasped the dark danger hanging over the city.
"Idiots! Every last one of them!" Maxwell slammed his fist on his coffee table, making the mug jump. "They just want to bury their heads in the sand. They think it's all just bad dreams, silly stories. But I see it, I feel it. This city is rotting from the inside, and they're too blind to notice!" His voice was a low growl, thick with frustration. "They'll realize it when it's too late. When the walls come crumbling down."
Councilwoman Esther, the sharp politician, saw her city turn on her in her dreams. They screamed, pointing fingers, saying she was useless, that she'd failed to keep them safe. Tero blew air on her fear of losing power, of being blamed for the city's slow fade into sadness. She woke up seeing shadows everywhere, trusting no one, every face a possible enemy.
"They blame me?" Esther fumed, pacing her silent living room. Her heart hammered against her ribs. "After all I've done? They're turning like rabid dogs!" She clutched her head. "No, no, it's not them. It's… someone else. Someone planting these ugly thoughts. But who? Who can I trust now?" Her eyes darted around the room, as if invisible eyes watched her from the dim corners.
Tero worked without rest, a dark whisper in the night, planting seeds of hate in every crack of the city. He pulled at their dreams, making small fights grow into big battles, turning neighbors against neighbors, friends against friends, even tearing families apart from the inside.
He didn't need to show himself. He just set the stage for the mess, pulling the strings of their sleeping minds. He watched with a cold joy as they tore each other to pieces, a puppet master unseen in the dark.
The city, once a tapestry of shared dreams, was now fraying at every seam. Whispers turned to shouts, trust became suspicion, and fear bloomed in every heart. But as Zeni City began to truly crumble, a chilling question hung in the air: What if the Hunter wasn't just breaking them apart, but building something new from their shattered pieces? And what unspeakable horror would rise from the ashes of their unity?