The sound of chains rattling in the darkness above grew louder, accompanied by muffled sobs and a voice that made Kyon's heart break.
"Please, Mr. Buttons, I'm sorry I threw you away! I didn't mean it! Please help me!"
It was a little girl, maybe seven or eight years old, her voice raw with terror. Kyon watched in horror as she was lowered into the abyss, suspended upside down just like him, her small hands bound behind her back. Her blonde hair hung in tangled strands, and her pajamas were torn and stained with something dark.
"Emily!" The girl with dark hair—the one who had spoken to Kyon earlier—called out desperately. "Emily, can you hear me?"
The newcomer's eyes were wide with panic, darting around the impossible architecture of the OtherSide. "Sarah? Sarah, is that you? Where are we? Why can't I move?"
Mr. Patches turned his terrible grin toward the new arrival, his amber eye pulsing with renewed hunger. "Another child who learned to abandon what once loved her most. How delightful."
"Leave her alone!" Kyon shouted, surprising himself with his own boldness. "She's just a kid!"
"Just a kid?" Mr. Patches laughed, the sound echoing through the void like broken music boxes. "Oh, Kyon, you still don't understand, do you? She's not just any kid. She's special. They all are."
The creature gestured to the other suspended children, and for the first time, Kyon could see them clearly. There were at least twenty of them, all hanging at different heights in the darkness, all around his age or younger. Some looked like they'd been there for years, their clothes faded and eyes hollow. Others seemed fresher, still fighting against their bonds.
"Each one of them created me," Mr. Patches continued, beginning to pace beneath the hanging children like a predator surveying his prey. "Each one gave me a different name, a different face, but the same essential purpose. To protect them from the monsters in the dark. To be their friend when no one else would listen."
The creature's form began to shift again, cycling through different appearances. For a moment, he was a blue teddy bear with red overalls—Sarah's creation. Then a brown bear with a sailor hat—someone else's companion. Then a patchwork bear with mismatched button eyes—Emily's Mr. Buttons.
"But children grow up," Mr. Patches said, his voice taking on a mocking, sing-song quality. "They decide they're too old for imaginary friends. They put us away in toy chests and closets and forget we ever existed. They replace us with video games and social media and the approval of other children who will abandon them just as easily."
"That's not true!" Emily cried, tears streaming down her face. "I loved Mr. Buttons! I just—"
"Just what?" Mr. Patches' voice turned sharp as a blade. "Just decided you were too mature for childish things? Just felt embarrassed when your friends saw you talking to a stuffed animal? Just... forgot?"
The silence that followed was deafening. Emily's sobs were the only sound in the vast darkness, and Kyon felt his own guilt crushing down on him like a physical weight.
"I thought so," Mr. Patches said softly. "You all did the same thing. You all betrayed the only friend who ever truly loved you unconditionally. And now, you get to spend eternity thinking about what you've done."
But Sarah—the girl who had warned Kyon earlier—spoke up, her voice stronger than before. "That's not the whole truth, is it? You're not just feeding on our guilt. You're feeding on something else."
Mr. Patches' grin faltered slightly. "What could you possibly know about—"
"I've been here for three years," Sarah interrupted, her eyes blazing with desperate courage. "Three years of watching you bring in new children, three years of listening to your speeches about abandonment and betrayal. But I've also been watching you when you think we're all unconscious. I've seen what you really are."
The creature's form began to waver, becoming less solid, more shadow than substance. "You know nothing, child."
"I know you're starving," Sarah said, her voice carrying across the void. "I know that what you're feeding on isn't enough anymore. That's why you need more children, more victims. You're not some ancient entity—you're a parasite, and you're dying."
The temperature in the OtherSide plummeted even further, and Kyon could see his breath forming crystalline clouds in the air. Mr. Patches' amber eye blazed with fury, but behind the rage, Kyon caught a glimpse of something else.
Fear.
"You think you're clever," Mr. Patches snarled, his voice losing its mocking tone and becoming something primal and terrifying. "But even if you're right, what does it matter? You're still trapped here. You're still mine. And I can make your suffering last forever."
The creature raised one clawed hand, and Sarah screamed as invisible forces tore at her mind. The other children began to wail in sympathy, their shared agony creating a chorus of despair that seemed to shake the very foundations of the OtherSide.
But then something unexpected happened. Emily, the newest arrival, spoke up in a voice that was small but surprisingly steady.
"If you're really Mr. Buttons, then answer me this: What was the song I used to sing to you every night before bed?"
Mr. Patches stopped mid-torture, his head snapping toward the little girl. "What?"
"The song," Emily repeated, her chin raised defiantly despite the tears on her cheeks. "If you're really my Mr. Buttons, you'll know it. You'll remember."
The creature's form began to flicker more rapidly, cycling through different appearances with increasing desperation. "I... I don't need to prove anything to you. I am what I am."
"You can't remember," Emily said, her voice growing stronger. "Because you're not really him. You're just wearing his face."
The revelation hit Kyon like a physical blow. "She's right. You're not Mr. Patches. You never were. You just... absorbed him. Consumed him along with all the others."
"No!" Mr. Patches roared, his form becoming more monstrous with each passing second. The teddy bear facade was cracking, revealing something underneath that hurt to look at directly—a writhing mass of shadow and hunger that wore the shapes of children's love like stolen clothes.
"That's what you really are," Sarah said, her voice filled with grim triumph. "You're not our imaginary friends. You're the thing that ate them. The thing that's been masquerading as them this whole time."
The creature's scream of rage echoed through the void, and the very air seemed to tear around him. But as his fury reached its peak, something else began to happen. The chains holding the children began to rattle more violently, and hairline cracks appeared in the walls of the OtherSide.
"What's happening?" Kyon shouted over the growing cacophony.
"I think," Sarah called back, her voice filled with desperate hope, "we're breaking his hold on this place. The more we remember the truth, the weaker he becomes."
But even as she spoke, Kyon noticed something that made his blood run cold. The cracks in the walls weren't just letting in light—they were letting in other things. Shapes that moved in the spaces between realities. Things that made Mr. Patches look like a friendly puppy by comparison.
"Oh no," he whispered, understanding flooding through him. "The OtherSide isn't just his feeding ground. It's a prison. He's not just keeping us here—he's keeping those things out."
Mr. Patches' laughter cut through the chaos, but now it was tinged with madness. "You wanted the truth? Here it is! I may be a parasite, but I'm the only thing standing between your world and the things that live in the spaces between dreams. Every child I consume makes me stronger, makes the barriers stronger. I'm not the monster—I'm the guard dog!"
The cracks in the walls widened, and through them, Kyon could see eyes. Hundreds of them. Thousands. All fixed on the hanging children with a hunger that made Mr. Patches' appetite look like a mild craving.
"You're going to get us all killed," Emily whispered, her defiance crumbling as she saw what was pressing against the weakening barriers.
"Maybe," Sarah said, her voice grim but determined. "But at least we'll die fighting. At least we'll die as ourselves, not as his eternal prisoners."
The sound of something massive moving in the darkness beyond the cracks filled the air, and Kyon realized with growing horror that their rebellion might have doomed not just themselves, but everyone. Because if the OtherSide fell, if the barriers between worlds collapsed completely, then every child on Earth would be at the mercy of things that made nightmares look like pleasant dreams.
"We have to make a choice," he called out to the others, his voice barely audible over the growing chaos. "Stay here and be consumed slowly, or—"
His words were cut off as one of the cracks suddenly widened into a gaping wound in reality itself. Through it stepped something that belonged in no world, no dimension, no universe that was ever meant to exist.
And it spoke in a voice that was composed of every scream that had ever been screamed, every fear that had ever been feared, every tear that had ever been shed.
"Children," it said, its words dripping with malevolent joy, "we've been waiting so very long to meet you."
The thing that had been Mr. Patches turned toward the breach, his monstrous form suddenly seeming pitifully small. "You cannot pass. The compact still holds. The barriers—"
"Are crumbling," the entity said, its presence filling the OtherSide with an oppressive weight that made breathing almost impossible. "Thanks to these clever children and their inconvenient questions. The old agreements are void. The harvest begins now."
As more shapes began to pour through the widening cracks, Kyon realized that their situation had just become infinitely worse. They weren't just trapped in a nightmare anymore.
They had become the key to unleashing Hell itself upon the world.
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 something far more terrible than they could possibly imagine.
The OtherSide was no longer just a prison.
It was about to become a gateway.