The devil inside Elias—the Mare —grows greedy. It stops wanting simple nightmares; it wants The Primal Fear . Elias begins hunting people who aren't asleep. He forces them into waking comas to harvest their terror.

The possession is a symbiotic grace. The man provides the physical tether to the world of the living, and the Devil provides the ink for his masterpieces. He is the architect of the scream that dies in the throat. He is the reason you wake up gasping, clutching at a memory that dissolves like smoke. To look upon the Nightmaretaker is to realize that the Devil didn’t come to take his life, but to use it as a brush to paint the world in shades of midnight.