Cote: Sae, Chie and Mika x Male!OC

Chapter VIII - Leadership

POV Akira

Meanwhile in the nightmares...

I woke up in the middle of darkness, which I found confusing at first, until I slowly got up and realized I was in a forest different from reality; The branches were all distorted, there were no stars or moon above the sky, just pitch black and obscure. Without understanding anything, I started to walk and wander about the forest, as I walked for minutes or seconds, I realized that I was walking in the same place.

Before I thought it was just paranoia, until I broke a branch and threw it on the ground and returned and continued my walk. It didn't take me 10 seconds and as soon as I continued walking in a straight line, I returned to the same place where I had left the broken branch.

'What the hell is happening? Where I am?'

"..!" I quickly turned around as I felt a dangerous presence approaching me. Staring dead center, I see a creature shaped like a... deer? crocodile and... bones? He approached me while breaking the trees with his huge claws, however, as soon as he got a few meters close to me, he just stood there staring at me. A little embarrassed, I ask. "Who the hell are you?"

"Kuku...." He lets out a laugh in response, he opens his mouth, making his jaw open completely, where I see an eye inside his mouth. "Oh, so it's you? Do you like what you see?"

"I'll ask you again: Who the hell are you?" I frowned.

"Brave, child, even in a situation like these, you still mock me?" He tilts his head to the side and closes his mouth, where I see two eyes opening on the sides of his snout. "I think I already made this very clear in our last presentation... I am the reflection of your sins. I exist and at the same time I do not exist, your coexisting plan is just a fruit from which I cannot bite, my authority is limits such existence."

So is he that shadow pretending to be me? So that wasn't a hallucination?

"I still don't understand, what does this 'Plane of Existence' have to do with me?"

His eyes blink twice before he answers my question.

"I'm not a hallucination, if that's what you're thinking, little mortal. I'm a representation of what the person once was or continues to be; A dark and dark side, a sin, atrocity, broken sanity, psychopathy... I am everything a person represents. Including what you once were, little ******."

I clenched my fists. "Please don't call me by that name."

He laughs. "What if I don't? Do you want me to feel sorry for you?"

"Take pity on me? That sounds controversial coming from you. Wasn't that good enough for your taste?" I stabbed him with daggers in my words. Causing him to growl, eyes appeared through the bark of the trees and into his wings made of human flesh and bones. "Offended?" I smiled.

"You're lucky, *****. Because I don't feel like killing you for now."

"What? You don't want to kill me or...you're not allowed to do that?"

"..."

"I will take your silence as an answer." I shrugged. "So why am I even here?"

His smile widens. "You are here to be evaluated."

"Evaluated? Like, a test?"

"A little of that. However, you will have to face your own demons. I will be the first, others will test you, when the time comes." He approaches me and tilts his head close to mine, making his huge eye stare in my direction. "If you pass, even you get rid of this nightmare. However, that wouldn't be the only way."