Chapter 1: The Canvas Bleeds

The nightmare came again at 3:17 AM.

Jack Frost jerked awake in his cramped studio apartment, sweat cooling on his skin despite the October chill seeping through the cracked windows. The same dream—always the same dream. Claws scraping against stone, something massive and wrong breathing in the darkness, and eyes like burning coals watching him from the shadows. He could still smell it, that metallic reek of old blood and ink.

He stumbled to the kitchenette, bare feet slapping against cold linoleum, and splashed water on his face. His reflection stared back from the grimy mirror above the sink—hollow-eyed, stubble-chinned, paint still under his fingernails from yesterday's failed session. At twenty-two, he looked like he'd been living rough for years. Which, in Newport's overpriced rental market, wasn't far from the truth.

The nightmares had started three weeks ago, right after his latest rejection letter from the Whitmore Gallery. "While your technical skill is evident, Mr. Frost, your work lacks the emotional resonance we seek for our upcoming exhibition." Emotional resonance. Right. Maybe if they'd grown up in a trailer park with a drunk for a father and a mother who'd vanished before his tenth birthday, they'd understand his "emotional resonance" just fine.

Jack glanced at the clock—4:33 AM now. No point trying to sleep again. The creature from his dreams would just be waiting, crouched in the dark corners of his mind like it owned the place.

He flicked on the harsh fluorescent lights, wincing as they illuminated the disaster zone that was his living space. Canvases leaned against every wall, some finished, most abandoned halfway through. Paint tubes littered the floor like colorful corpses, and the smell of turpentine hung heavy in the stale air. His latest commission—a portrait of some Newport socialite's poodle—sat unfinished on the easel, mocking him.

Rent's due in three days, he reminded himself, staring at the half-painted dog. Forty-three dollars in checking. Seventeen in savings. Ramen for dinner again.

But instead of picking up his brush to finish the commission, Jack found himself reaching for a fresh canvas. His hands moved without conscious thought, setting up the blank white space that always felt like possibility and failure in equal measure. The nightmare creature lurked behind his eyelids, all writhing shadows and needle teeth, demanding to be born.

Just get it out of your system, he told himself. Paint the damn thing and maybe it'll leave you alone.

He squeezed paint directly onto the canvas—black, deep red, sickly yellow. No palette, no plan, just raw emotion bleeding through his fingers. The brush became an extension of his frustration, slashing across the white surface with violent strokes. This wasn't the careful technique they'd taught him at community college before he'd dropped out. This was something primal, desperate.

The creature took shape under his hands. Twisted limbs that bent wrong, skin like wet leather, and those eyes—God, those burning eyes that seemed to follow him even in waking hours. He painted until his wrist cramped, until sweat dripped onto the canvas and mixed with the still-wet paint.

When he finally stepped back, gasping as if he'd run miles, the thing on the canvas seemed to pulse with malevolent life. It was perfect in its wrongness, every detail exactly as it appeared in his dreams. The proportions hurt to look at, angles that shouldn't exist in three-dimensional space. It was his best work and his worst nightmare combined.

"There," he muttered to the empty room. "Happy now?"

The painting seemed to ripple.

Jack blinked, rubbing his eyes. Just fatigue and too much cheap coffee. Had to be. But the surface of the canvas moved again, like water disturbed by a stone, and the creature's painted eyes fixed on his with sudden, terrible awareness.

"No," Jack whispered, stumbling backward. "No, no, no—"

The canvas bulged outward, paint stretching like skin. A wet, tearing sound filled the air as claws—real claws, dripping with ink and malice—punched through the two-dimensional surface into the real world. The creature's head followed, that impossible geometry of its skull somehow fitting through the hole it had torn in reality. Paint ran like blood down its twisted face as it fixed Jack with a gaze full of ancient hunger.

It opened its mouth and screamed—a sound like breaking glass mixed with dying breath. The fluorescent light overhead flickered and sparked, casting mad shadows that danced across the walls. Jack's easel toppled as the thing hauled more of its body through the canvas, wet ink splattering across the floor in obscene patterns.

Jack grabbed the first thing he could reach—a palette knife—and held it out like it could somehow protect him from this impossible, hungry thing that had crawled out of his own mind. The creature finished emerging from the painting with a sound like ripping fabric, leaving the canvas in tatters behind it. It stood nearly seven feet tall in his cramped studio, too many joints bending in too many directions, eyes burning like coals in the dim light.

"What the hell are you?" Jack gasped.

The creature tilted its head with predatory curiosity, then lunged.

Jack threw himself sideways, crashing into a stack of canvases. The palette knife flew from his grip as claws raked the air where his head had been a second before. He scrambled on hands and knees toward the door, but the thing was faster, impossibly fast, landing in front of him with wet, meaty sounds.

This was it. This was how he died—torn apart by his own nightmare in a shitty studio apartment, probably not found until the landlord came for rent. The creature raised one clawed hand, strings of ink dripping from its fingertips.

The window exploded.

Glass showered the room as a figure dove through the shattered frame, rolling to their feet in one fluid motion. A woman—tall, athletic, with golden hair braided down her back and the most beautiful face Jack had ever seen. She wore jeans and a leather jacket, but the sword in her hands definitely hadn't come from any earthly forge. The blade caught the stuttering fluorescent light and threw it back in patterns that hurt to look at directly, like captured sunlight given form.

"Down!" she shouted.

Jack didn't need to be told twice. He pressed himself against the floor as the woman moved with impossible grace, her sword carving through the air in perfect arcs. The creature spun to face this new threat, shrieking its glass-and-dying-breath scream, but she was already inside its guard. The blade of light met the thing's claws with a sound like thunder, and suddenly the air smelled of ozone and burnt paint.

The fight lasted maybe ten seconds. When it was over, the creature lay in pieces across Jack's floor, already dissolving back into pools of ink and paint. The woman stood over its remains, not even breathing hard, her sword still blazing with contained fire.

Then something impossible happened.

A blue screen materialized in the air in front of Jack's face, translucent and glowing like a computer interface. Words scrolled across it in neat, clinical font:

[REALITY DETECTED AS COMPROMISED]

[SCANNING HOST...]

[MAGICAL RESONANCE CONFIRMED]

[REALITY SHAPER CLASS UNLOCKED]

[CONGRATULATIONS, JACK FROST. YOUR TUTORIAL HAS BEGUN.]

Jack stared at the floating screen, his mind reeling. "What the—"

"You can see it," the woman said, her voice carrying an accent he couldn't place—something old and musical. She turned to face him fully, and her eyes were the color of summer grass, ancient and knowing. "The Interface. You can actually see it."

"Interface?" Jack struggled to his feet, glass crunching under his sneakers. "Lady, I don't know what the hell is going on, but—"

"My name is Summer," she said, sheathing her impossible sword. It vanished the moment it left her hands, like it had never existed at all. "And your old life, Mr. Frost, just ended."

She looked around his destroyed studio, taking in the shredded canvas, the pools of dissolving ink-creature, the scattered paints and broken glass. Her expression was unreadable, but something flickered in those green eyes—surprise, maybe, or recognition.

"You painted it into existence," she said quietly. "Actually pulled a Shade through the Veil with nothing but pigment and will." She looked back at him, and for the first time, he saw something like fear in her perfect features. "That should be impossible."

The blue screen flickered, new text appearing:

[CURRENT LEVEL: 1]

[CURRENT CLASS: REALITY SHAPER]

[PRIMARY SKILL: ARTISTIC MANIFESTATION]

[WARNING: MAGICAL SIGNATURE DETECTED. HOST LOCATION MAY BE COMPROMISED.]

Jack's legs gave out. He sat down hard on the paint-splattered floor, staring at the impossible woman with the impossible sword who'd just saved him from his impossible nightmare made real.

"This isn't happening," he whispered. "This can't be happening."

Summer knelt beside him, and despite everything, he caught a hint of her scent—wildflowers and summer rain. "I'm afraid it is, Mr. Frost. And if you want to survive what's coming next, you need to listen very carefully to what I'm about to tell you."

Outside, Newport slept on, unaware that in one cramped studio apartment, reality had just taken a hard left turn into territory that belonged in fairy tales and fever dreams.

The Interface screen pulsed gently in Jack's peripheral vision, waiting.

His life as a struggling artist was over.

Something much more dangerous had just begun.