Disclaimer: The following document fragment is presented from an in-character perspective, it should not be taken as the truth of the setting.
Context: Nightmares plague both normal people and mages, but the ones experienced by the magically inclined are often quite a lot more potent. Some nightmares can entrap a mage, posing as a self-made heaven, but in reality representing a personal hell. Such is often the fate of those who seek to perform the impossible through the dreaming.
I guess it started when my husband died. An accident. It felt very sudden. I think that maybe if I could have spoken to him one more time, things would have been different. Left me with a home without anyone to come back to. It felt wrong. Unreal even. Several times I questioned if it wasn’t some nightmare I created for myself. But no. It was the reality I had to live with.
So I turned to the dream. I went as deep as I could. Searched wherever I could for him.
You see, I read a book where a phenomenon called the Hallow Sea was described. A place just under the surface of the Deep Dream where you can find reflections of the dead, slowly slipping out of our Collective Unconsciousness.
A place where you can travel to pay your final regards to loved ones you lost.
But I had a different plan. I convinced myself that I loved him so much that I could keep that reflection alive. I could restore him to as much life as I could. Knowing it would never be him, I thought that at least it could be the second-best thing.
I found him there, eventually.
In a sunken reflection of our home. Where the tree branches swayed in the gentle movements of the water, and the sun and moon peeked down through the waves, forming streaks of light.
My heart felt like it was going to burst when we talked for the first time since his death. I never told him what happened, where we are. He never acted as if anything was wrong. This was fine. This was what I wanted.
But it couldn’t last.
I started… doubting. Doubting that it was him, that I found the right place, the right reflections. When we were together, I began to scrutinize every word he said, every action he took.
Was it what he would do…
Or was it what I’d want him to do?
Eventually, that question haunted me every night when we were together in that place under the waves. Then every moment. Then it was always there. And things began falling apart — a feeling of unreality that wouldn’t go away, no matter if I was awake or asleep. I would see him in places where he should not be, where he could not be. Because he was dead.
There was a moment in my life where I almost forgot about that.
He was dead, and there was nothing that could bring him back. No act of magic can undo death. Not even the gods.
That was when I realized what I had to do.
The last time I visited that place under the waters, where the small, odd fish swim between the branches of trees, I remember from childhood.
The place where I straddled my husband… no, a doppelganger of my husband. And I strangled it. I wrapped my fingers around its neck, and I held them as tight as I could. I gripped so hard my fingers sunk into the clay of his flesh, maiming the neck.
But no matter how hard I tried… it just kept staring at me.
So… I ran away…
You know, sometimes when things go wrong, I still get drawn to that place. And that thing is always there to meet me. Its head hangs loosely against its chest. Its eyes are empty.
It became my hell.
And that thing is my demon.
Esoteric Musings... 