Chapter 114 Nightmares

Chapter 114 Nightmares
The world inside Kiera’s mind did not look like a memory.

It looked like a place that had learned how to wait.

Ronan felt it the moment the crossing finished—not through sight first, but through pressure. A density that bent thought itself. Air that was too thick. Silence that pressed against his ears until his jaw tightened instinctively, as if his body expected impact.

He stood on a floor of white metal that stretched into nothing.

Above them, no ceiling. Just a vault of darkness streaked with dim lights that flickered at irregular intervals—clinical, cold, wrong. The hum was everywhere. Inescapable. A sound that never resolved, never faded. The kind of sound meant to erase time.

Kiera stood beside him.

Not the trembling version from the waking world.

This Kiera was sharper. More solid. Her posture was tense but upright, her fists clenched at her sides, her green eyes reflecting the white glow like shards of glass.

But fear still threaded through her.

Ronan felt it in the bond—tight, coiled, held back by sheer will.

“This place doesn’t exist anymore,” he said softly, forcing steadiness into his voice. “We burned it. Hale burned with it.”

She shook her head once.

Her lips didn’t move, but her thought sliced through the air between them, raw and absolute.

This isn’t the lab. This is what the lab left behind.

The corridor ahead of them shifted.

Walls rose where there had been none. Doors slid into existence with mechanical precision—rows of them, evenly spaced. Identical. Featureless. Each stamped with a number.

Subject 3.

Subject 3.

Subject 3.

Ronan’s chest went tight.

“They labeled you like property,” he growled. “They don’t get to own you here.”

Kiera’s breathing hitched.

The doors began to open.

Not all at once. One by one. Slow. Deliberate.

From the first came nothing but light—and the sound of breathing that wasn’t theirs.

From the second came chains dragging against metal.

From the third—

A child’s cry.

Kiera staggered.

Ronan’s hand shot out, gripping her forearm—not pulling, not restraining. Just anchoring.

“I’m here,” he said. “Stay with me.”

Her mind flared back at him, jagged with panic.

They used this place to pull me apart. If it traps you—if it does to you what it did to me—

“It won’t,” he cut in immediately. “Because I’m not alone here.”

She turned toward him sharply.

He met her gaze without flinching.

“I chose to come,” he said quietly. “That matters.”

The floor vibrated.

From the far end of the corridor, something moved.

Not walked.

Shifted.

A shape peeled itself out of the darkness—tall, thin, stretched wrong, its outline flickering like a broken projection. Its face resolved last.

It wore Hale’s features.

Not perfectly. Too smooth. Too empty.

When it spoke, the voice came from everywhere.

“You should not have brought him,” it said.

Kiera’s knees nearly buckled.

Ronan stepped forward half a pace, placing himself slightly ahead of her, claws ghosting at the edges of reality even though his body didn’t shift here.

“You don’t get to speak to her,” he said.

The thing smiled.

“It isn’t speaking to her,” it replied. “It is speaking to what remains.”

The lights overhead flared.

The corridor blurred.

Suddenly Ronan wasn’t standing in a lab.

He was standing in a memory that wasn’t his.

Cold straps cut across his wrists.

A weight pressed against his throat.

He smelled antiseptic—and fear that wasn’t his own but sat inside his chest anyway, thick and choking.

He felt her panic.

Felt it ram into his spine, into his ribs, into places instinct had never protected because no claws had mattered there.

His vision tunneled.

“Kiera—” he gasped.

The straps tightened.

A voice whispered near his ear. Not Hale’s voice. Younger. Colder.

“Isolation increases obedience.”

Ronan snarled, fighting against restraints that responded not to muscle but to fear.

Then—

Warmth.

A hand in his.

Not physically.

Mentally.

Kiera’s presence slammed into his like a heartbeat forced back into rhythm.

Look at me. Not them. Look at me.

The restraints cracked.

Light splintered.

The nightmare recoiled.

They stood together again in the corridor, both of them breathing hard—hers silent, his ragged.

Kiera’s eyes were wide, luminous.

That’s what it does. It uses what I remember to break what I love.

Ronan lifted their joined hands—not tightening, not letting go.

“Then it picked the wrong person,” he said hoarsely. “Because I survived becoming a monster. I can survive remembering one.”

The thing wearing Hale’s face shrieked.

The doors began to slam shut—hard, violent, one after another.

The floor fractured beneath their feet.

This place was collapsing.

Or preparing to consume them entirely.

Kiera squeezed his hand once—a decision, not fear.

Whatever happens next… don’t let go.

Ronan’s grip tightened.

“Never,” he vowed. The corridor split apart—

And the darkness rushed toward them, hungry and screaming.