Nightmares

Those who had conquered a Nightmare of a particular Rank could not enter any Seed of the same Rank again. For example, a Sovereign wouldn't be able to challenge a Third Nightmare.^[2]

Note: The Nightmares after First Nightmare are open to any number of challengers as long as the trial is not conquered. (Refer to Third Nightmare (Event) and FAQs)

Once infected by the Nightmare Spell, that person will experience constant fatigue and sleepiness and eventually will fall into an unnatural slumber, with no sign of waking up. When the infected die in their sleep, their dead bodies will turn into monsters called Nightmare Creatures.^[3]

The First Nightmare is the first trial prepared by the Nightmare Spell to test the chosen Aspirant. First Nightmares are unique because each of them is tailored individually. That's why only a single Creature can appear.^[4] This single creature is usually a Beast or Monster. Rarely, does a Demon mixed in, and never anything stronger than a devil appear in it.^[5] Note: Exceptions were in the case of Sunny he encountered a Tyrant and Nephis encountered a Terror in their First Nightmares.

The Spell did not randomly choose the role an Aspirant would play during their First Nightmare. It was apparent from the fact that the bodies they inhabited in it, while different, were very close to their real ones. However, the actual principle of how the Spell chose these roles and the events of the Nightmares were largely unclear.^[6]

The first thing one must do once inside the Nightmare is to check the Attributes and Aspect.^[7]

The First Nightmare is similar to the other Nightmares. It is also born from a Seed. The only difference is that the seed does not grow in the Dream Realm. Instead, it develops within a human's soul. Every Aspirant who fails their First Nightmare becomes a miniature Gate, allowing a single Nightmare Creature to enter the waking world. That is why their corpses turn into monsters. They are classified as Gate of the First category.^[8]

Starting from the Second Nightmare, things become much more dangerous. These Nightmares are not tied to an infected person. Instead, they are born in the Dream Realm. While the Seed of Nightmare is growing, any number of Awakened can attempt to conquer it. Conquering the second nightmare will give the successful challenger another Aspect Ability. These awakened are titled Masters from then on until they conquer their Third Nightmare. No Awakened of the Ascended rank is allowed to challenge these Nightmares.^[1][4]

Second Nightmare Seed: Category Two Seed (Refer to Seed Category)

Just like the Second Nightmare, any number of awakened can challenge it. Similarly, no awakened at the level of Saint can challenge it, however, Awakened rank carriers can also challenge it. The Spell rewards these challengers considerably, even turning these awakened straight into Saints. Normally, awakened would fill up their soul core more before they challenge a nightmare. Due to this, Saints who skipped becoming a Master are usually physically weaker compared to other Saints. So far, humanity has managed to conquer the Third Nightmare.^[1]

Third Nightmare Seed: Category Three Seed (Refer to Seed Category)

The Nightmare Spell allowed humans to challenge the Fourth Nightmare, attain Supremacy, and manifest a Domain.^[9]

Conquering the Fifth Nightmare meant achieving godhood, though only as a lesser deity.^[10]

The Fifth Nightmare was fundamentally different from all the rest, challenging it was a far greater gamble than conquering the previous four Nightmares and that the chances of success were slim. According to Asterion, Anvil and Ki Song chose not to abandon the waking world or leave humanity without the guardianship of Supremes, while he himself saw no reason to risk his life in the Fifth Nightmare when there was, in his view, a safer and better way to become a deity. Asterion also revealed that knowledge about the Fifth Nightmare had been lost due to the broken chain of inheritance after the elders of Nephis' clan passed away and because Anvil and Ki Song regarded her as a threat. Finally, he warned that even if one succeeded in conquering the Fifth Nightmare, they would not remain the same afterward.^[11]

There is no direct information about Fifth Nightmare because no Awakened from the current cycle of the Nightmare Spell had ever returned from it. According to Asterion, knowledge about it came from fragmented chronicles left in the ruins of past civilizations that had been infected by the Spell in previous cycles (pertaining to the other divine realms infected by Nightmare Spell but none succeeded), particularly those whose remains lay in Godgrave. The Fifth Nightmare corresponds to the fifth step on the Path of Ascension, among all steps it is the most profound, the step of attaining godhood, where the abyss between Supreme and Sacred is greater than the gap between all lower Ranks combined and is defined by a change in the inherent quality of one's being rather than gaining raw power or attaining a deeper mastery of Aspect. It is a matter of shedding the remains of one's mortal self and being reborn as something greater.^[12]

Unlike the other Nightmares, the Fifth Nightmare shares more in common with the First Nightmare, as it involves two trials instead of one: a personal trial tailored specifically to the challenger and a collective trial like those faced before, both described as unimaginably brutal, with failure in either resulting in death. Success leads the Spell to facilitate Apotheosis in record-breaking time, but the transformation carries severe risk, as the changes to consciousness and sense of self cannot be controlled, and the Spell does not care whether the challenger remains themselves afterward. This uncontrollable loss of self was stated to be the true cause of the destruction of the Sun Realm civilization, whose Spirits—former Awakened who had attained godhood—ultimately devoured and destroyed their own world after losing themselves to that transformation.^[12]

The Fifth Nightmare is an insidious trial filled with countless fatal traps. The first trap was the process of the unmaking, which was the Spell's way of giving its carriers a path toward Apotheosis, or reaching the state of mind needed to become a god. Since Apotheosis normally required hundreds or even thousands of years of gradual growth and learning, the Fifth Nightmare folded time in on itself, making time have little meaning. The first part of the trial had to be faced alone and was meant to unmake them as humans and rebuild them in the image of deities. This was done by forcing each challenger to face their own Domain.^[13]

The unmaking itself contained several deadly dangers. The most obvious was the possibility of having one's consciousness destroyed by eternity—losing oneself entirely and dissolving in the endless torrent of lives and experiences forced upon them. Surviving required an incredibly strong will, an impossibly firm sense of self, and an absolute resolve to stay true to their goals. Even those who survived would not remain the same, because they would hardly remember who they had been or who they had wanted to become. Their previous identity as a mortal human would become pale and faint in the face of eternity, dwarfed by the accumulated experience and vast consciousness associated with a deity.^[13]

Another hidden danger of the unmaking was Corruption because of remembering countless Nightmare Creatures. A too vast Domain could become one's undoing in the Fifth Nightmare by completely destroying the self, while a too weak Domain was also a danger. The change had a purpose, and escaping the unmaking too easily would make conquering the Nightmare all but impossible.^[13]

The second part of the Fifth Nightmare was the conflict they had to resolve but was not certain what it was. Another trap was the threat of being swallowed by the world. Those whose consciousness had become vast enough to approach deityhood but who had not yet undergone Apotheosis faced the danger of becoming enthralled by the world and fusing with it, thereby losing their personhood and becoming elemental forces instead of Spirits.^[13]

The process of the unmaking is presented as the first trap of the Fifth Nightmare and as the Spell's method of allowing its carriers to progress toward Apotheosis. Its purpose was to transform humans by forcing them to confront their own Domains, experiencing an enormous accumulation of lives, emotions, memories, desires, fears, and experiences in what amounted to an eternity compressed into a single moment. The process could destroy one's consciousness, dissolve one's sense of self, expose one to Corruption, or leave one's former identity pale and faint compared with the vast consciousness of a deity.^[13]

The Sixth Nightmare, referred to as the final Nightmare, and conquering it one would become Divine.^[14]

The Second Nightmare is a lot like the First, but at the same time very different. The Spell will send the Awakened cohort into an illusion of the past, one centered around a central conflict. To conquer the Nightmare, they will have to resolve that conflict one way or another. There is no right or wrong way to do so.^[16]

• Second Nightmare will be larger, longer, and harder than the first one. The Nightmare Creatures populating it will be of higher Ranks and Classes, usually either Awakened or Fallen. Unlucky ones might meet a Corrupted.^[16]
  

• There is no one way to conquer the Nightmare, which means that some solutions can contradict each other, and people participating in the trial are not forced to aim for the same result. It rarely happens but not all challengers have to be on the same side.^[16]

The Third Nightmare differs from the First and Second Nightmares. The challenger would be entering the trial with their physical bodies because there is no distinction between the waking world and the Dream Realm once one becomes an Ascended.^[17]

Nightmares were almost certainly simply recreations of the past of the Dream Realm. Logically, the appearance of Awakened from the Waking World should have completely changed the course of events that had happened in the past but had not.^[18]

There are two explanations that were listed based on the events inside the Nightmare:^[18]

• This was a simple case of knowledge of the future informing one's actions in the past. Since they know what happens in the future before going into the Nightmare, the cycle had been complete without any ominous reasons and just due to a logical connection.
• Fate had a pull on all things, had influence over all of existence, and pushed everything in a certain direction or conclusion. So the details of what happened could potentially change, but the end would inevitably, and inescapably, be the same.

The Awakened knowledge and experience from their Nightmares were more important than their power and abilities. Legacy clans, particularly those ruled by Sovereigns, were particular about which Seeds their scions challenged. Valor and Song must have accumulated extensive knowledge, but it was not accessible to everyone. After all, knowledge was the origin of power.^[19]

When a Nightmare ended, the illusory world created by Spell collapsed, expelling the surviving challengers. They were to find themselves in the empty void between dream and reality, where the Spell would appraise their performance and allow them to rise to a new rank.^[20]

• The nature of the Nightmare that one can challenge determines the knowledge and secret one can glean. The lessons humans can learn from the decrepit ruins in the Dream Realm are not as profound as the stories people bring back from their Nightmares, so powerful Legacy Clans select the Nightmares for their members to challenge carefully.^[21]
• The more unique the Nightmare one challenge certainly pose more risk but also promise a greater boon.^[21]
• Jet emphasized the importance of years of preparation, resources, and a cohesive cohort for survival in the Third Nightmare. Jumping into a random Seed can lead to death.^[22]
• Nephis is the first human in history to conquer the Second Nightmare as a Sleeper, thus jumping Ranks, and returned to the waking world unscathed.^[23]
• Sunny and Nephis could succeed in the Fifth Nightmare because, unlike Asterion, they possessed strong anchors to their sense of self that could withstand the profound transformation of consciousness required for Apotheosis: Sunny was a master of maintaining his self intact due to his formless nature as a shadow and his relentless training through Shadow Dance, which had taught him to never forget himself even under eroding influences like the mists of the Hollow Mountains, while Nephis was bound to billions of humans through the Longing Domain and, beyond that, was sustained by her own ardent desire and uncompromising resolve to conquer and destroy the Nightmare Spell in a way she deemed worthy, reinforced by the [Longing] Ability that rendered her soul incorruptible.^[24]