The wind died down all at once, but my pages stayed scattered across the floor, like pieces of a dream I could no longer put back together. I didn't move. I couldn't. My eyes stayed fixed on the key resting on the edge of my desk. It didn't shine, yet I could swear something inside it pulsed with an invisible light.
I stepped closer, throat tight, and reached out.
Before my fingers could touch it, an image flashed through my mind—a massive black door, carved with the same symbols etched into the key. It rose out of a deep, endless darkness, and behind it I heard… whispers. Hundreds of them. Maybe thousands. All murmuring at once.
I jerked my hand back, breath catching.
"What the…?"
I stumbled away, nearly falling, when a faint creak broke the silence.
The key had moved.
Not fallen—moved.
As if it were alive.
A noise at the window made me spin around. A flicker. A shadow.
I thought I saw someone, but when I stepped forward, there was nothing—just the street swallowed in darkness.
I yanked the curtains shut and fell onto my bed, trembling.
The key stayed on the desk, motionless.
But I knew it was waiting for me.
---
Later that night, a dream—or maybe not—dragged me back to that same black door. The whispers grew louder, swelling into a dull, echoing roar. The key glowed in my hand.
"Open…"
I jumped.
This time the voice wasn't distant.
It was right behind me.
I turned… and saw warm brown eyes.
Dad.
He looked at me with the same gentle smile he'd wear whenever he was proud of me. But here, in this dream, he seemed older somehow. And darker.
"The time is coming," he said. "You can't run from it, sweetheart."
I didn't know whether to feel relieved or terrified. I tried to speak, but my lips wouldn't move. The door rumbled, as if it could sense my hesitation.
Suddenly, I woke up.
The key was in my right hand.
---
Out on the street, Gabe still watched my window. This time he wasn't alone—the man from the alley, the older one, stood next to him.
"You're pushing too fast," the man murmured. "They took everything from her for so long… I doubt she can handle all of it."
Gabe lifted his eyes toward my illuminated window.
"Maybe. But I can feel it—she already has the strength."
"Let's hope you're right," the man replied, worry clouding his voice.
---
The night brought a fever with it—a burning one. Mom came home late and noticed my scorching hands when she checked on me. I was delirious—or maybe dreaming again—because for a moment I thought I saw Dad behind her, smiling.
And his smile blended with a sentence I'll never forget.
---
By morning, the fever was eating me alive, hot and relentless, as if my body were fighting something I couldn't name. They rushed me to the hospital, and from my bed, the white walls seemed to bend, to breathe. I couldn't tell whether it was the illness… or something else.
Through half-closed eyelids, I saw my father.
Standing beside my mother, wearing that same tender smile.
But I knew he wasn't alive anymore.
And yet he stood there, as if he had never left.
Then he vanished—
replaced by something far worse:
the man I had seen lying in the forest that night, dead—or close enough. His pale face, his empty eyes, the nightmare replaying itself, the thin scar on his cheek making him unmistakable.
I clenched the sheets, but no one around me reacted. They didn't see him.
No one did.
And then…
a little girl appeared in the hallway.
Wearing a muddy old-fashioned dress.
Crying silently, clutching a broken doll.
Her soundless sobs echoed directly inside my skull.
Her lips moved, but no sound came out.
No one saw her.
No one heard her.
Except me.
I tried to scream—
but my throat stayed dry, frozen.
Everything blurred.
---
When I finally opened my eyes again, vision hazy, I thought I saw yesterday's stranger—the one who had felt so wrong—standing over me. His face was closer than ever, his shadow spilling across my bed.
His lips moved in strange words, in a language I understood without hearing.
My heart pounded so violently it hurt.
Who was he?
Why was he here, leaning over me like a guardian… or a predator?
He suddenly straightened, as if alerted by something behind him, and turned to leave. But as he crossed the doorway, he bumped into someone.
"Sorry, I—" he began.
The other person cut him off, voice tight with shock—and suspicion.
"You… what are you doing here?"
Silence crashed over the room, thick and suffocating.
---