Face of the nightmares!!…

*I saw you in my nightmares again; it felt so real!!...*

**Proserpina's POV**
Temple lost in time, Bucuresti

Cold...I was so cold.
I again slipped into my nightmares. I don't know where I was, but when I opened my eyes, I found myself in the midst of a,
A deep dark forest!
It looked disturbing, with the sharp twigs littering the forest floor bit into the skin on the bottom of my feet as I ran further into the unknown. Branches hit me as though resisting and slowing me down...But somehow I know that I couldn't stop...I must not stop. My thin white dress snagged on a bush. I jumped over and ripped up to my thigh. Another few strides brought me closer to the end of the forest as I could see the night's moon shining through the patches of trees ahead.
"Stop!" A voice echoed in my mind.
I stopped, letting my head hang down, trying to catch my breath before pushing up to my knees and looking around. I gasped at the sight before me, thinking if I had been sleepwalking. The view in front of me made me ask a question to myself,
Where exactly in hell was I?
It was a temple...A broken one.
"Wow," I uttered, pushing my loose hair back from my face. Then I stared up in awe, wondering what could have happened here to force such a beautiful place into ruins. It looked like it had fallen from the heavens and landed here before humankind existed. It was incredible, but there was still something so haunting about it. It was that eerie silence as if this entire place had been paused, for not a single thing moved but me. It felt as if nothing living was welcome here, and all I could think of was countless bad things that could have happened there.
The secrets it held.
It felt as if the entire temple was an entity of its own, with all those broken statues warning you against entering its domain.
Either way, I entered its threshold as the sight of the place was too alluring to ignore. The vines have overgrown on the walls as if they were the ones that have kept their walls intact.
Finally, I made it to the entrance and stepped into the courtyard. Despite its harrowing appearance, I found myself drawn to it. And couldn't help but find myself taking my first steps inside. The cold penetrated my bare feet like I was stepping on icy shards. But despite this, I continued as if some unseen force wanted me to do so.
It was filled with hundreds of colossal columns, but unfortunately, none was intact. The floors were made up of jagged stone as if inside a cave, whereas the walls were razor-edged stones. It was filled with the remains of the statues with an arm or a leg missing. I could see that only half of the temple remained on the ground, and the other half was below the ground, into the cavernous abyss of darkness. I crossed the courtyard and shuddered as a weird feeling crept over me. It was a dimly lit space with only a few torches that were lit. It seemed that the person occupying this cave had better eyesight than humans. It felt as if I was stepping into history and being led by someone in the past trying to pull my presence back here.
I continued to walk around in what seemed like a maze with no purpose until I came to what looked like a vertical tunnel running deeper underground.
It was a massive staircase with a broken set of stairs that looked overgrown by the weeds, creating a curtain of twisted roots and deadly thorns. The staircase was made of wood, with many steps either rotten or missing altogether. I stepped on the first stair, and my foot went through it. It crumbled under my weight. I carefully pulled my foot out of the hole, trying to place my foot on the other one that looked strong enough to hold my weight. Once back on my feet, I continued up the stairs with more determination and care. It was a long way down to the bottom, and falling through one of the treads would no doubt mean falling through them all. The staircase started to narrow as I went down further. The sounds these stairs made; I felt like I was walking over thin ice on a frozen lake. A layer of rotten fungus and all types of creepy crawlies were scabbling on the moist walls. The football-sized bats with their wings stretched out were hanging upside down on the walls. No matter how creepy and rotten this place looked, but I was sure about one thing, it would have been beautiful and spectacular before being destroyed and left to rot.
I moved through the spiral stairs, which took me to the other half of the underground temple. A nerve-wracking fear gripped me as I landed my feet on the floor.
"Oh shit!" It was the only thing I could think of.
It was a graveyard!!
The entire graveyard had been turned into a bloodbath, with one man in the centre.
The man who haunts my nightmares!
Keeping low, I sneaked up behind a broken stone. However, my foot slipped, and the rock crumbled, rolling on the side. I quickly dropped to my belly so he couldn't see me. After a few seconds, I heard nothing more, so I lifted my head for a sneaky peek. I could feel the evilness residing in his heart.
He was standing with his back to me in the middle of the dark space. He was topless, with only a pair of loose black pants, looking utterly exquisite and beyond sexy. He rolled his shoulders, and every muscle of his body tensed. Oh, and did I mention the muscles...Gods, he was overloaded with them.
A massive shadow resembling a diffusing black-grey mist, with no distinct limbs and two red dots for eyes, lingered behind him. It made him look like some demonic God surrounded by his kill. The sight of his bare, muscular body that tapered down to his slim waist was now bloody because there was blood everywhere. On the walls, the floor and a mirrored glass. The pieces of bodies with ripped-off limbs, jagged bloody flesh and broken bones were seen everywhere.
He turned around, and with that, I saw him for the first time!
He was none other than...Vlad!
He looked so dominating, powerful and forbiddingly handsome it was hard to think of little else. Every inch of him screamed of some dark force, and his all-black pants added a dangerous element to his look. It was like looking directly into the eyes of a stunning predator that utterly captivated you with its destructive beauty. His dark stare and grin were pure, undiluted, bad to the bone and spoke only of all the despicable things he wanted to do to me.
His large, defined chest had too many abs to count. He looked well-groomed, with hair slicked back with fingers and a clean shave to reveal his stern chiselled features and smooth pale skin. He had sharp, handsome features, a high nose and a square jaw with staggering beautiful eyes in the shade of exotic blue. He was the king of all my nightmares. He was brutal and cruel, all wrapped and entwined into one single entity. He scrunched his nose, trying to sniff something.
Did he sensed me!?
"Fuck!" I muttered. Then the shit hit me, 'Is it just a nightmare...or I'm actually here...behind the enemy lines?' That was when my heart almost dropped into my intestines when I could see him growling at me as he took over his vampire form. The blood coating his jaws and the whole lower part of his face. His eyes were two blazing dots, burning brighter the second they saw me. Black veins branched around his face, eyes and up his neck like an infection had taken hold. His fangs grew as if he would soon attack like a hungry animal going in for the kill. He was beyond terrifying, and I was far from naive if I had thought otherwise.
He was Vlad, for fuck's sake. Of course, there would be blood.
My heart was almost on the verge of a bloody attack as I stumbled, looking for a way out. But it seemed I was locked in that place with nowhere to go. I just closed my eyes to embrace my end. But when nothing came, I took the much-needed breath that burned my lungs like dragon fire. I realized he didn't sense or see me. This time the nightmare was in my control, unlike when he was the master of my nightmares.
I turned around to look at Vlad, who had been transformed and mutated into the stuff of nightmares. Gone was his beauty, now being replaced by death. The death that would brace me no matter how much I wanted to live.
"Fuck!" I cursed when the next thing that happened locked my jaws in shock. His shadow Dracula snaked around him like a lingering spirit of greyish mist and then merged into his body as if they were the same entity, to begin with. And then the transformation in front of me was an incredible sight to behold.
Vlad's body started changing as he let out an almighty cry into the night, making his body quiver.
A massive pair of glistening grey wings expanded out in full view. They looked as deadly as grotesque, with a wingspan of about ten feet, emerged. The dark black veins branched out throughout his body. They were pulsating as if some strange venomous fluid was coursing through them, reflecting the intensity of the power he held.
And. It. Was. Terrifying!
And with that, His face turned slate grey with the slant pitch black eye, giving him a terrifying appearance of a predatory snow lizard. Then, his cry turned into a roar, and his head looked up into the sky. The clear night had changed drastically, as it was now darkened with thunderous clouds making me jump at each crack of lightning that lit up the forest. My mouth dropped open at the sight of him controlling the sky. I was in stunned awe. Then, like lightning, he launched straight into the sky in one massive gush as if evaporated into ash. He looked like soot floating away into the stormy night.

*I fear nightmares along with what lurks inside!!...*