Somniaquus

The Somniaquus is a large, skeletal predator, its form never fully whole. Its front half—skull, forelimbs, and ribcage—appears solid, while the rest of its body dissolves into shifting black vapor, trailing like a serpent through the void. Its hooves make no sound, yet the rhythm of their steps lingers in the mind long after waking.   Its bones are unnaturally long and thin, built for impossible movement. It does not gallop—it glides, twists, and bends in ways no earthly beast should. The spectral tail undulates and coils midair, vanishing and reforming as it moves. Some accounts describe brief glimpses of organs or sinew flickering within its hollow ribs, pulsing with stolen energy before fading back into shadow.   The Somniaquus clicks. A dry, hollow rhythm, like teeth tapping in the dark. Sometimes it starts slow—measured, deliberate. Other times, it builds to a frantic staccato, a sound that doesn't just fill the air but presses into the skull, burrowing deep, until it follows the listener into waking.

The Somniaquus does not reproduce in any natural sense. No one has found a den, a nesting ground, or a youngling. It does not mate, nor does it birth. It simply is.   Yet Iskander Rezeph, in the final months of his documented studies, described something else.   His journal begins with single encounters—one entity, always on the edges of his dreams, its form incomplete, its presence unmistakable. But over time, his entries shift. He dreams of many. Not full-sized creatures, but smaller things—glimpses of half-formed ribs, disembodied hooves, faint clicking from every direction at once.   "It was in my dreams again. But not as one. I saw its ribs behind me, its hooves in the distance, its skull beneath me, breathing through the floor. I ran and found nothing. I turned and found many."   As his dreams fractured, so did the creature. It split, unfolded, shed smaller versions of itself—each indistinct, flickering, unfinished. Were they echoes? Projections? Or something more?   The last complete entry in his journal, scrawled in shaking script, speaks of waking up, eyes open, unable to move, feeling something pull away from his mind.   "There were so many."   He disappeared soon after.   Some who have read his journal report seeing movement in their dreams shortly after. Others claim they wake with the impression of more than one set of eyes watching them.

“They start small,” Iskander wrote. His journal describes the Somniaquus appearing fragmented, multiplying in half-formed ways. Some believe these “smaller ones” are not newborns, but echoes—extensions of the larger beast, discarded like shed skin but still able to hunt. Theory: No one has seen a “young” Somniaquus, only pieces that become whole.

The Somniaquus does not consume flesh, nor does it drink blood. It feeds on something deeper, something that lingers beneath thought—fear, desire, longing, regret. These are not emotions it creates, but ones it cultivates, stirs, and strips away piece by piece.   Iskander Rezeph, in his final months of study, wrote of waking weaker, unfocused, as if thoughts had been scraped away in the night. He described his dreams not as nightmares, but as something worse—empty, stripped of color, sound, and sensation.   "At first, it only took what I feared. I woke lighter. Then it took what I desired. I woke hollow. Then it took what I longed for, and I no longer remembered why I feared it at all."   His last surviving entry suggests that once the Somniaquus begins to feed, it does not stop. It may stretch the process over weeks, months, years—until nothing is left but a mind emptied of all it once clung to.   But Selua Vey’s legend suggests something else.   She did not resist its feeding—she offered. She is said to have guided it, feeding it only what she chose to surrender. Where Iskander wrote of loss, Selua’s followers speak of control.   Some believe this is the key—not stopping the Somniaquus, but choosing what to let it take. Others argue that no one can bargain with hunger forever.

"Every seven years," one passage reads, "the clicking comes again." Some dreamers report being visited repeatedly over long spans of time, as though marked. Others swear that the Somniaquus does not claim its prey immediately—it lingers, feeding slowly, stretching the process over years. "It never finishes its meal in one night."

Iskander Rezeph, in the early stages of his journal, described it as a background presence:
"I dreamed of the house again, but the door at the end of the hall was open this time." "I turned, and the floorboards clicked, but I had not moved." "It does not need to be seen to be there." In Iskander’s final pages, he stops describing seeing the creature entirely. Instead, he speaks of thoughts no longer feeling like his own: "I thought to wake, but I was already awake." "I left the room, but I am still inside it." "I am remembering things that never happened."   But Selua Vey’s story is different.   Where Iskander’s entries show slow erosion, Selua’s myth speaks of shaping the encounter. Some say she embraced its presence, letting it settle within her dreamscapes without fear, without resistance.   If true, this suggests that the Somniaquus is not mindless. It does not lash out, does not feed on impulse. It waits for invitation, conscious or not.   Which raises the final question:   Did Selua tame it, or did she simply learn to let it in?

The Somniaquus moves through dreams as a predator through tall grass, unseen until it chooses to be. It does not simply observe—it shapes and distorts the dreamscape, bending the subconscious to suit its hunt. A dreamer rarely notices its presence at first. A misplaced shadow, a flicker of movement at the periphery. Then, the landscape shifts—doors vanish, halls stretch, voices fall silent.   It is drawn to raw, unfiltered emotion. Fear and desire are its sustenance, but it does not create them outright. It waits. It stirs. It lets the dreamer spiral into their own dread or longing, feeding on the energy as it builds. The moment of realization—that something is wrong, that something is here—is when it strikes.   The clicking starts then, just behind them, just out of reach.   Those who wake from its grasp do not recall its shape, only the sensation of something pressing into their thoughts. A presence that does not leave when their eyes open. Some report waking in strange positions, facing corners they do not remember turning toward. Others say they still hear the clicking, deep in the back of their skull, long after waking.