The Dreaming Gauntlet

Prologue

No one chooses the Gauntlet. They simply sleep — and find themselves somewhere else entirely, somewhere that breathes. The dungeon stretches ahead in a sequence of grotesque, impossible chambers: a Spring that reaches and bites, a Summer that scorches and blinds, an Autumn that watches and waits, a Swamp that wants to keep you, and a Winter that hunts without hurry. Each one is a trial. Each one is a mouth. The dark that presses in from behind is not a metaphor — it moves, and it is patient, and it does not stop. At the heart of it all sits the Warden. Ancient. Curious. Collecting. What it wants with the dreamers it gathers, no one who has reached it has ever returned to say. Something stirs at the edge of the dark. A shape without a name, standing at the threshold of something it has not yet become. The walls lean in, as though they recognize it. As though they have been waiting.