They say some dreams are doorways. Some are traps. And some... are invitations.

Riven had always been different.

Since he was a child, he never dreamed like other boys. No skies, no colors, no silly castles made of candy. Riven's dreams were black. Black with flickers of silver, like stars sinking in tar. Every night, he found himself standing in a narrow hallway with walls that pulsed like they were breathing. At the end of the hall stood a single door—tall, carved with symbols that moved when he blinked.

And always, just before he woke up, a voice whispered from the other side:

"We are waiting, Riven"

He never told anyone.

Not his drunk father, not the school counselor, not even the raven that sometimes sat outside his window, watching with head tilted like it knew him.

Then came the 17th night of the 17th year of his life.

And the door opened.

Riven woke up with his sheets wet—not with sweat, but with a thick black residue that smelled like burnt rain. His hands were stained. Under his nails: fragments of ash. And carved into his bedroom wall was a single phrase:

"You came"

From that day on, mirrors stopped showing his reflection.

Instead, they showed something else.

A tall figure in a suit made of shifting shadows. No face. Just two white slits where eyes should be. Behind it, shapes writhed—limbs, claws, mouths with no lips. It stood there, motionless, as if waiting for him to speak.

The figure became known to Riven as The Enigma

Every time he blinked, it got closer.

He started hearing whispers even when awake.

"You were chosen"

"Let us in"

"Wear the skin"

His friends—what few he had—began to avoid him. Said his eyes looked wrong. Said he muttered in sleep, in a voice that wasn't his. Said they saw things move behind him in the hallway when no one else was there.

One by one, they disappeared.

Not dead. Not missing.

Just… erased.

No one remembered them but Riven.

And The Enigma smiled.

Riven began losing time. Waking up in places he didn't remember going to. Graveyards. Abandoned churches. One night, his hands were covered in soil. Another, in blood. His journal filled itself with strange symbols he didn't recall writing.

The final straw came when he woke up inside the dream.

Not in his bed.

But in the hallway.

This time, the door wasn't just open.

It was calling.

He stepped through.

Nobody remembers Riven now. His home is abandoned, his name erased from school rosters, family trees, even photographs. But every so often, when the moon is gone and the night feels too quiet, a raven lands on a windowsill and stares inside.

And in the mirror across the room?

A boy stands there.

Eyes hollow. Shirt stained. A smile creeping wider than it should.

And behind him…

The Enigma waits.