Chapter Three :The Door That Shouldn't Be
The fog did not lift, even as the sun climbed.Lucien walked in silence. The path beneath his feet grew less like soil and more like something ancient—stone, perhaps, or bone, covered in the skin of the world.
He wasn't sure how long he had been walking. Time bent inside the mist. Minutes stretched, thoughts folded, and distance lost meaning. Only the sound of his boots grounding each step reminded him he hadn't disappeared entirely.
Then he saw it.A door, freestanding in the middle of nothing.
It rose from the earth like a gravestone, wooden, weathered, with no walls around it. A single doorframe, covered in dark vines that pulsed faintly, like veins.
There was no handle. No keyhole. Just a presence.
Lucien approached, and with each step, something pulled at him—not from the outside, but from within. As if the part of him that had accepted the system recognized what this door truly was.
He stopped inches away.
A new window appeared, brief and silent:
❖ Subsystem TriggeredTask: EnterResult: UnknownNote: Entry is not recommended.
He ignored it.
The surface of the door was cold to the touch, yet it trembled beneath his palm. Not like wood—but like skin.
He pushed.
It opened without resistance, revealing nothing. No room. No light. Just a void, blacker than night, deeper than silence.
For a moment, he hesitated.Not from fear—he had no fear—but from something older. A quiet, instinctual resistance, like the body remembering a trauma the mind has forgotten.
Still, he stepped through.
Darkness swallowed him instantly. No sense of falling. No weight. Only absence.
Then sound returned. Not his footsteps, not breathing, but whispers.Not from the outside. From inside his skull, as if thoughts not his own were being whispered directly into his bones.
"You are here."
"You should not be here."
"You were always going to be here."
Lucien opened his eyes.
He stood in a room.Small. Stone walls, no doors, no windows. Symbols covered every surface—etched into stone, smeared in ink, burned into air. At the center of the room stood a figure.
Tall.Shrouded in cloth that moved without wind.Face wrapped, hands gloved, but something deeper pulsed beneath the fabric. Like light trying to escape a body not made to contain it.
The figure spoke, its voice like a thousand murmurs at once.
"You accepted the cost."
Lucien nodded."I did."
"Then your descent begins."
From the floor, the symbols flared red. Heat rose like breath. The space twisted.
And Lucien understood—this was not a test.This was a welcome.