Dreams in the Dark
As the moon rises over Greystone Hollow, a pale beam of silver light spills through the warped panes of the room’s window. It creeps silently across floorboards, across packs and weapons, across sleeping faces… and lingers.
One by one, your dreams shift.
Del – High Elf Wizard
Del’s dream begins in a familiar study, books piled high, candles flickering with green-blue flame. But something is wrong—she can’t read the pages. The letters twist and rearrange no matter the language. As she turns to leave, the door vanishes. The walls breathe. Ink pours from the ceiling like rain.
At the center of the room, a tall figure unfolds from the shadows. His spiked golden crown breaks the ceiling open to the moon above, which watches like a lidless eye. His mask smiles, but the lips move beneath it.
“Child of logic. You believe truth is something you can *grasp*.”
He holds out a scroll, sealed with Del’s own sigil. The wax melts into black ichor and drips across the floor.
“But some knowledge does not wait to be found. It *hunts.*”
He leans closer, whispering into Del’s ear as a silver spider scuttles into Del’s robe:
“You opened the book. Now let it *read you.*”
Silas – Tiefling Warlock
Silas wakes in his old apartment—but it’s bigger. It shouldn’t be. The ceiling arches impossibly high, clutter towering in every direction. Relics from every deal, every stolen or salvaged scrap of history whisper in chorus. His feet stick to the floor. Dust turns to ash.
Then a slow creak behind him. The Hollow King stands in the doorway, his golden crown scraping the frame, blood dripping from a spike that impales a broken marionette.
“You’ve made many pacts, little collector. But you’ve forgotten one.”
A mirror across the room shows Silas, gaunt and hollow-eyed, surrounded by things that scream his name.
“You think you’ve built a sanctuary. But it’s a *mausoleum.*”
The Hollow King tosses a small, bloodstained ledger onto the floor. Every name inside is crossed out—except *Silas*.
“A hoard always has a *dragon.* But even dragons burn.”
Thomas – Rock Gnome Artificer
Thomas dreams of gears that scream and copper that rots in his hands. His workshop is flooded knee-deep with oil, and tools dissolve at his touch. His prosthetics twist against him, moving without command. The world breaks at the seams—his diagrams mock him, laughing in voices he doesn’t know.
The Hollow King emerges from behind a collapsing machine, the golden crown thudding against pipework overhead. Each spike is tipped with a ticking timepiece, all slightly out of sync.
“You build to understand. You tinker to *control.*”
He lifts a model of Thomas’s body—clockwork joints, tiny runes, a heart that ticks with anxiety.
“But not every thing broken *wants* to be fixed.”
He crushes the model. The oil rises to Thomas’s chest.
“Will you drown in your precision... or rise in *ruin?*”
Blaze – Half-Elf Cleric
Blaze kneels in a chapel split down the middle—half holy, half overgrown. his mother’s side, his father’s side. Candles burn with white fire on one side, and rot with dripping wax-flesh on the other. His holy symbol flickers between sunburst and spider’s fang.
From the pulpit, the Hollow King rises. His golden crown pierces the heavens, where stars weep gold. One spike has a halo hanging from it, tarnished and cracked.
“You want to heal. To *redeem.* But tell me…”
He steps down the aisle, dragging his fingers along both walls—one burns, one blooms with thorns.
“What if there’s no middle? What if you must *choose?*”
He offers a golden thread, woven between two severed fingers.
“Mercy and wrath both draw blood.”
Behind Blaze , the congregation rises—empty-eyed, mouths sewn shut.
Elliot – Tabaxi Ranger
Elliot runs through a forest that shifts beneath his feet. Trees turn to stone, to bone, to glass. The wyvern egg is cradled in his arms, but it grows heavier. He trips. It falls. Cracks. Something inside claws outward—not a hatchling, but a writhing tangle of vines and teeth.
The Hollow King emerges from the underbrush, golden crown crowned with feathers that twitch like insects. A silver collar dangles from one spike, still warm.
“You mourn the innocent. You crave connection.”
He holds the broken shell in his hands—it pulses like a heart.
“But life is not gentle. And neither are you.”
He presses the shell against Elliot’s chest. It fuses. Roots dig into his skin.
“Your grief will *grow,* ranger. Will you prune it… or *feed* it?”
Around him, the forest begins to whisper in a language only he can hear.
The world twists.
Each of you, in your separate nightmare, suddenly feels a pulling—like a string wrapped around your spine and yanked. The screaming relics, the collapsing forge, the desecrated altar, the broken egg—they’re gone. The darkness folds in, then blooms outward into one space.
You find yourselves together now. All of you, standing barefoot in a shallow pool of still, black water. The moon above is enormous, broken into fragments, but still watching. The reflection in the water shows not you, but a twisted version of each of you—ashen, hollow-eyed, marked with golden brands.
Floating at the center of the pool is the Hollow King.
His tall golden crown scrapes the stars. His robes trail in the water like rot. He does not move, but he is everywhere.
“You are cracks in my world. I see through you now.”
He lifts his hand.
Between his fingers hangs a single golden thread, taut and shimmering. It pulses in time with your heartbeats.
“You walked through the wrong door.”
“You’ve tasted ruin. Now… you carry it.”
“Let us see what grows in your shadows.”
He lets go.
The thread snaps—a sound like the breaking of the world—and the black water rises up in a wave that swallows your vision—
You wake.
Each of you jolts upright in the inn. The moonlight is gone. The room is silent. But in your blankets, your hair, or tucked in your collar, each of you finds a single thread of gold, still faintly warm.