The ancient entity that had stepped through the breach wasn't alone. As the cracks in reality widened, more shapes began to emerge from the void between worlds. But these weren't the mindless horrors Kyon had expected. They moved with purpose, with intelligence, with a terrifying sense of organization.
"Report," the first entity commanded, its voice like grinding bone. Though it had no recognizable form, Kyon could sense its authority, its dominance over the others.
A smaller, more agile creature skittered forward on legs that bent in impossible directions. "Lord Morpheus, the harvest has been... delayed. The current Shepherd has failed to maintain proper discipline among the livestock."
Kyon's blood ran cold. Livestock. That's what they were to these things.
"Explain," the entity called Morpheus demanded, its presence pressing down on the OtherSide like a weight that threatened to crush them all.
The messenger creature gestured toward Mr. Patches, who had shrunk back into the shadows. "The Teddy-Bear Shepherd allowed the children to discover the truth about their consumed friends. The barriers weakened when they began to remember."
"Unacceptable." Morpheus turned toward Mr. Patches, and even from a distance, Kyon could feel the temperature drop even further. "You were given one simple task: keep them docile, keep them feeding us their fear and despair. Instead, you've created a breach."
But it was Mr. Patches' response that made Kyon's world tilt on its axis once again.
"The fault is not mine alone, Lord Morpheus," the false teddy bear said, his voice taking on a more formal, less monstrous tone. "I have been filing reports for months about the changing nature of the children. They're becoming more resistant, more aware. The old methods are failing."
"Reports?" Emily whispered, her voice barely audible. "He's been... reporting on us?"
As if in response to her words, more shapes began to emerge from the shadows—not from the breach, but from within the OtherSide itself. They had been there all along, watching, waiting. Some looked like twisted versions of other childhood companions: a giant wooden puppet with strings that moved on their own, a jack-in-the-box with a face that was constantly changing, a toy soldier with real weapons and dead eyes.
But it was the figure that stepped forward to address Morpheus that made Kyon's heart stop completely.
It was a girl, maybe fifteen years old, with long black hair and pale skin. She wore a tattered dress that might have once been white, and her eyes glowed with the same amber light as Mr. Patches. But what made Kyon's breath catch was the recognition in her face as she looked at him.
"Hello, brother," she said, her voice carrying across the void with sickening familiarity. "I've been waiting for you."
"Amy?" Kyon's voice cracked. His sister, who had disappeared five years ago during a family camping trip. The sister everyone assumed was dead. "Amy, what are you doing here?"
Her smile was the same one he remembered from childhood, but there was something wrong with it now. Something predatory. "I'm doing what I've always done, Kyon. I'm surviving. And I'm very good at it."
"Amy was one of our first success stories," Mr. Patches said, his form becoming more solid again as he addressed the assembled creatures. "She chose to join us rather than resist. She's been instrumental in the collection process."
The words hit Kyon like a physical blow. "You're working with them? You're helping them kidnap children?"
"Not kidnap," Amy corrected, her voice maddeningly calm. "Rescue. Do you know how many children are abandoned every day? How many are neglected, abused, forgotten? We bring them here where they can be useful. Where they can serve a purpose."
"By being fed on until they die!"
Amy's expression didn't change. "Everything dies, Kyon. At least here, they die with meaning. Their fear, their despair, their final moments of hope before the end—it all feeds the great work."
"What great work?" Sarah called out from her chains, her voice filled with desperate fury.
It was Morpheus who answered. "The preservation of the boundary between worlds. Every child who dies here, every drop of terror we extract, strengthens the barriers that keep the true horrors from spilling into your reality. We are not the monsters, young ones. We are the custodians of a delicate balance."
"You're lying!" Emily screamed, her small voice cracking with strain.
"Am I?" Morpheus gestured with one shapeless appendage, and the air around them began to change. Images formed in the darkness—glimpses of other worlds, other realities where things far worse than anything in the OtherSide roamed freely. "Behold the fruits of compassion, child. Worlds where the barriers have failed. Where the things that live in the spaces between dreams have broken free."
The images were too horrible to comprehend fully. Cities where the buildings themselves were alive and screaming. Oceans filled with blood and the bones of stars. Skies that wept acid rain while creatures the size of continents fought battles that destroyed entire civilizations.
"This is what we prevent," Morpheus continued. "One realm of suffering to prevent infinite realms of annihilation. The mathematics are quite simple."
But even as the entity spoke, Kyon noticed something that gave him a tiny spark of hope. The images were flickering, becoming unstable. The breach in the walls was still widening, but not in the way he had expected. Instead of more horrors pouring through, it seemed to be pulling at the very fabric of the OtherSide itself.
"The system is failing," he said, his voice barely above a whisper. "That's why you're here. It's not just about one rebellious batch of children—the whole thing is breaking down."
The silence that followed was deafening. Then Amy laughed, a sound that was both familiar and utterly alien.
"Very good, little brother. Always were the clever one in the family." She began to pace beneath the hanging children, her movements too fluid, too graceful for someone who had been human. "The truth is, we've been harvesting children for centuries. But lately, something has been... different. The barriers require more and more fear to maintain. The old methods aren't producing enough."
"Which is why," Mr. Patches interjected, his form shifting to something more businesslike, "we've been experimenting with new techniques. Prolonged exposure, increased psychological pressure, more sophisticated torture methods."
"Torture?" Emily's voice was barely a whisper.
"The slow kind," Amy said with a smile that made Kyon's skin crawl. "The kind that keeps you conscious and aware while it strips away everything that makes you human. We've learned that the quality of fear is more important than the quantity."
The toy soldier with dead eyes stepped forward. "The Communion of Despair has been most productive. We've found that children who witness the corruption of their friends produce exponentially more usable terror."
"Enough," Morpheus commanded, his presence pressing down on all of them. "You talk too much. The work continues regardless of their understanding."
But as the entity spoke, Kyon noticed something else. The other children weren't just hanging there passively anymore. They were communicating with each other through subtle gestures, meaningful looks, carefully positioned fingers. They had been building something—a network, a system of their own.
It was Sarah who made the first move. With a practiced motion, she slipped one hand from her bonds—bonds that Kyon now realized she had been slowly working loose for months. In her free hand was something that looked like a crude key, fashioned from metal scraps and bone.
"Now!" she shouted, and the OtherSide erupted into chaos.
The children who had been preparing for this moment began to free themselves from their chains, their movements too coordinated to be random. They had been planning this for a long time, building weapons from the remains of destroyed imaginary friends, creating a resistance network right under the noses of their captors.
"Impossible," Amy snarled, her human facade cracking to reveal something far more monstrous underneath. "The chains are immune to—"
"To escape attempts by individual children, yes," Sarah called out as she cut through another child's bonds. "But you never accounted for us working together. For us studying your weaknesses while you were studying ours."
The freed children began to move with purpose, some heading for the breach in the walls, others moving toward darker corners of the OtherSide. They knew where they were going. They had been planning this for a long time.
"Kyon!" Sarah called out as she freed him from his chains. "We've been waiting for you. We need you to make a choice."
"What choice?" he asked, rubbing his bruised ankles as he tried to process the chaos around him.
"You can try to escape back to your world," she said, her eyes blazing with desperate hope. "But if you do, you'll never be able to stop them from taking more children. Or..."
"Or what?"
"Or you can come with us. Learn the truth about this place. Learn how to fight back. Learn how to end this forever."
Amy's shriek of rage echoed through the void as she began to transform, her human shape melting away to reveal something that was part spider, part shadow, part pure malevolence. "You will not escape! You belong to us! All of you!"
But even as she spoke, Kyon could see that the situation was more complex than even he had realized. The OtherSide wasn't just a prison or a feeding ground—it was a vast ecosystem, a society with its own rules, its own hierarchy, its own politics. And the children weren't just victims.
Some of them were players in the game.
"Choose now," Sarah said, pressing a crude weapon into his hands—a blade made from what looked like the broken remains of a toy train. "We don't have much time."
Behind them, more shapes were emerging from the shadows. Not just monsters, but other children. Some looked like they had been here for years, their eyes hollow and their movements mechanical. Others seemed more recent, their faces still bearing traces of the humanity they had lost.
And at the center of it all, presiding over the chaos like a spider in her web, Amy smiled with teeth that were far too sharp for any human mouth.
"The hunt begins," she whispered, her voice carrying across the void. "Brother against sister, friend against friend. This is what we've been waiting for."
As the first wave of corrupted children charged toward them, Kyon realized that everything he thought he knew about the OtherSide was just the surface. The real horror was just beginning.
And somewhere in the darkness, he could hear the sound of more chains rattling, more children arriving, completely unaware that they were about to become part of a war that had been raging for centuries.
The OtherSide wasn't just a prison or a feeding ground.
It was a battlefield.
And the children were both the weapons and the casualties