Between Stars And Shadows ~Evil Sanses x F! Reader

CHAPTER 7~ Danger

You don't know how long you'd been sitting in that cell. Time in Nightmare's castle wasn't measured in hours or minutes—it was swallowed by silence, stretched thin until you could barely tell if you were awake or dreaming.

The stone beneath you was cold, colder than bone, and the shadows in the corners clung to you like damp cloth. You had counted the cracks on the wall more times than you could recall, each one a desperate attempt to distract yourself from the suffocating dread pressing down on you.

And then you noticed it.

The door.

At first you thought your eyes were playing tricks on you again, as they often did in the dark. But no—the heavy iron bars sat ever so slightly ajar, a sliver of the hallway's dim golden light bleeding through the gap.

Your stomach dropped.

Had... had Nightmare forgotten? Had one of the others been careless? Or was this a trick?

You hesitated, every nerve screaming that it could be a trap. But the thought of sitting here another night, waiting, powerless, while their laughter and screams echoed in the distance... it was unbearable.

Your hands trembled as you pressed your fingertips to the cold iron. It moved. Just slightly. The hinges groaned like something ancient and displeased, the sound far too loud in the silence.

You froze.

No footsteps. No voices. Just the emptiness of the hall outside.

Slowly, carefully, you slipped through, pulling the door just enough to make it look closed again and sneaking as quickly as you could down the small stone corridor until you reached an exit . Your heart hammered against your ribs so hard it hurt, like it wanted to betray you, to call attention to your escape.

The hallway stretched before you as you crept out from the dark, dingy, side corridor. Impossibly tall, impossibly wide. Black marble floors gleamed faintly in the light of massive golden candelabras mounted to the walls. The walls themselves were adorned with tattered banners of deep violet, the edges frayed, symbols of broken determination stitched into them in gold thread.

You had never seen ceilings so high. They vanished into shadows above, so far up that you almost felt dizzy looking. This was no dungeon corridor. This was the castle proper—vast, cavernous, designed to make you feel small, fragile, unworthy.

And it was working.

Your breath fogged faintly in the air, though no breeze moved. The silence was oppressive, yet brittle—as though one wrong sound would shatter it and bring everything crashing down on top of you.

You kept close to the wall, bare feet making the faintest whisper against the marble. Every step felt like a gamble. Every creak of bone or shift of muscle in your body felt amplified.

And then—

Voices.

They rolled down the corridor like thunder. Rough, sharp, too loud for the space. They were getting closer.

You froze, pressing yourself against the cold wall, eyes darting. There was nowhere to go. No alcoves. No furniture. Only the endless exposed corridor and its golden candelabras burning like watchful eyes.

The voices grew clearer, echoing with laughter and venom.

"... told you not to torch the whole street, Horror—now look what happened!"

A rasping chuckle. "Not my fault if the place burned easy. Weak AU, weak buildings. They fell fast."

"Yeah, well, we didn't get to take everything we could, thanks to your—"