Paralytic Dream

This spell is a part of the Frightful Touch spell chain and is found in the Frightful Touch rune stone.

There is a place between sleep and waking that most people pass through too quickly to notice. The timoramancer, working through Dread, knows how to stop someone there.

Paralytic Dream seizes the target at that threshold - the body receiving the signal that sleep has come, locking down, going still, while the mind remains horrifyingly present and aware. The target can see the battlefield. They can hear everything happening around them. They simply cannot move, cannot speak, cannot act, their body convinced it is still dreaming while their mind screams that it is not. Paralysis holds them completely for up to 1d6 rounds as Dread stretches each second into something that feels far longer than it is.

And Dread, being Dread, does not leave the paralyzed mind alone. Each round the target must make a Hard Mental Balance check - failing means Dread shows them something. Not what is actually there. Something else. The presence that sleep paralysis sufferers have always described, standing at the edge of vision, pressing close, utterly certain and utterly wrong. Seeing it breaks the paralysis immediately, but not cleanly. The target wakes into panic, still unable to fully distinguish dream from reality, and flees the battlefield entirely, running from something that may or may not have been there at all. When the spell ends the paralysis ends. The uncertainty about what was real does not, at least not immediately, leaving the target to need to make Normal Mental Balance checks each round for the duration of the battle. Failing this roll leaves them stunned for that round as they hold their breath, waiting and watching for that wrongness that they feel to materialize. Success means they continue on.