Wandering around what he could only describe as an infinite corridor the Prince could only look around in wonder.

  He wasn’t too impressed by the floor and the walls having seen better marvels of architecture in his lifetime, but what caught his attention was the doors.

  He had never seen anything like this doors, the bright yellow alone would make any noblewoman faint from the outrage while he couldn’t even identify the material of the lock and the keyhole seemed way too small.

  So by his second visit all Leonard could say was that Veronique was quite imaginative, maybe the long days alone made her make up several characters to pass time, an hero to reflect herself into and seeing it through those lens it would perfectly explain that banner.

  Thinking about it Prince Leonard felt silly about feeling alarmed about seeing such thing, he was in a dream after all anything and everything was possible.

  Yet there was something about that woman’s warning which sent shivers up his back, but he brushed it off and decided to satisfy his own curiosity by opening up the door closer to him to examine the lock mechanism.

  The door handle felt so foreign under his hand, but he could see the lock itself was out of metal, which meant it was just encased in this unknown material.

  He tried to conjure a screwdriver in his hand to take the whole thing apart but nothing happened, yet the Prince had no time to dwell on it as he felt he was being observed.

  He looked inside the room and he wasn’t that surprised to see he wasn’t looking inside a conventional room but what was more akin to a barn.

  A long forgotten barn being reclaimed by nature, but there was something off about it.

  Curious and going against his base instincts Prince Leonard walked inside and looked around the dimly light place.

  Plants and flowers were growing all over the floor and walls, so he couldn’t see them immediately till he got closer and when he did he barely flinched.

  Bones, there were remains hidden under the flowers, from the looks of it they were of a cow and their head was busted open.

  Upon a closer inspection the Prince could tell that the flowers roots were embed in the bones as if they had grown from them.

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  “Could it be?” he wondered out aloud as moved to examine the next cluster of flowers and indeed he found more bones, another cow with their head busted open and so was the others, but when got to the smaller clusters he wasn’t looking a cow bones anymore.

  Those were human remains and among them there was the body of a child.

  All of their heads were busted open.

  How could the mind of a eight year old conjure something so macabre? Maybe it was something she read in a book, or one of Lady Veronique’s servants liked to terrorize her with those kind of stories.

  Regardless it wasn’t any story he had ever read.

  The Prince wondered what kind of trauma the kid had gone through for her mind to create such head space.

  Veronique had been a mere baby when her parents were executed and wasn’t even there to see, so it couldn’t be it.

  He knew she must have been ostracized by the staff because of her background, but he doubted the Duke would have let anything happen to her other then some name calling.

  There was nothing his mind could rationalize that could explain this, but then again expecting Dreams to be rational might be madness itself

  Yet Prince Leonard could still feel as if he was being observed, he looked around but saw nothing and that’s when his eye fell on a weird object on the floor, right before the closed doors of the barn.

  He walked over to it and knelt down to examine it.

  At first he had thought it was a weird shaped lump of metal, but upon closer inspection he could see it was an intricate work, even if he couldn’t tell what it was supposed to be

  It was made of two hollow metal cylinders which merged in an handle, messing around he found out the cylinders opened up towards the handle revealing a space container, one of which was occupied.

  He fished the object out and ended up looking at smaller metal cylinder dipped in red, his eyes quickly glanced around the floor and spotted those same cylinders littering it but they weren’t whole.

  He could tell the cylinder wasn’t full metal and there was something inside, but he had no way of opening it so he put it back in the container and closed it up, switching to examining the handle.

  He could see there was a little lever so there must be some mechanism inside, maybe something is supposed to come out of the cylinders? He positioned the object so that those cylinders would be facing him and was ready to press the lever to see what would happen but just then a loud creaking made the Prince look up.

  The barn’s doors had moved, he frowned seeing two sets of long fingers sliding in from the cracks of the door and ending up gripping on the doors’s edges, but they weren’t part of an human hand even if they were shaped like a human.

  They were made out several wooden pieces, the kind of hands an intricate puppet would have but too realistic and off putting for anyone to be put on a show.

  Yet Prince Leonard couldn’t tell what it was about those hands that utterly terrified him, was it really the design alone that incited such fear? He had never been afraid of puppets

  The fingers opened up and moved in wave motion giving out small clicks as they clamped once again on the doors, a few drops of a black substance fell out of the cracks with the movement

  Oil?

  The barn’s doors cracked as the hands started pulling inward, the wood of the doors splintered making the Prince flinch and accidentally press on the small lever.

  The last thing he saw was bright flash and a loud noise as he sat upright on his bed.