The door loomed before us, less an entrance, more a scar. It jutted from the gnarled base of the massive tree like a rot that the forest had tried to grow around but failed to consume. Fungal tendrils laced its edges, curling like veins over the bark. The wood was blackened, waterlogged, and split down the middle, as though it had been forced open from within too many times and had learned how to bleed.
It wasn't built. It wasn't placed.
It had become.
A secretion of the woods. A confession.
And the forest, in its endless dread, had grown too heavy to keep its secrets buried.
I stepped closer, one foot sinking into the moss that pulsed faintly beneath me. The air was syrupy, thick with moisture, heavy with something sweeter than decay, but older than mould. My heartbeat is not in my chest but in my throat, in my ears, in the burn of the key against my palm. It was alive now, this thing. Breathing with me and guiding my steps.
Behind me stood the Beautiful Ones.
Three of them. Still. Watching.
Their forms shimmered like silk caught between dimensions, their veils soft as mist yet edged with something sharp, something wrong. Light haloed around their bodies, pulsing in rhythms too steady to be natural, too perfect to be comforting.
They glowed like stars caught in the moment before collapse.
I raised the key.
And Lyra's hand struck out, snatching my wrist in a grip so hard it made my bones ache.
"Don't," she whispered. Her voice was hoarse, scraped raw like bark under a blade. "Don't open it."
I turned. Her face had drained of all colour. Her eyes were huge, white and wide, like something feral cornered by fire. She wasn't shivering from the cold anymore.
This was terror.
Not of what might be behind the door.
But of what it might take.
"You don't know what's behind it," she said again, tighter now, as if repeating it could ward off what waited on the other side.
"I have to," I breathed. The words didn't feel like mine anymore. "This is why we're here. It's why they brought us."
Her grip tightened. "They didn't bring us," she snapped. "They didn't guide us, Luell. They herded us like animals, like offerings. This forest isn't a place. It's a predator."
The Beautiful Ones tilted their heads in perfect synchronicity.
No breath.
No blink.
Only attention.
"I need to know," I said, not to her, not to myself, but to whatever might be listening. "I need to know if she's behind it, if this means anything. If there's something left."
Lyra's eyes glistened. "You're chasing ghosts," she hissed. "This place doesn't give answers. It feeds on questions. It thrives on what we don't understand."
The air turned viscous. My skin was dampened with sweat, I hadn't felt from. Around us, the trees leaned in, too far, too knowing. Roots curled inward. Leaves froze mid-rustle. The forest was no longer alive in the way a forest should be.
It was listening.
And it approved.
The Beautiful Ones moved.
Not walked but moved. As though space parted for them. They flickered from one place to another like static caught in the wind. Their veils rippled. Their limbs shimmered with grace that had forgotten what mercy was.
"Back away," Lyra said, barely audible now. "We need to go."
But it was too late.
The sky tore open not with thunder, but with a sound like breathing through broken teeth. Above us, clouds bled crimson. The trees moaned, their bark groaning like ribs pressed too tightly against lungs.
They surged.
One of them launched toward me, not with footsteps, but with force. No warning. No scream. Just a crash of silence exploding into motion. It hit me like a shadow made solid. I was flung backwards into the moss and mud, the air ripped from my lungs. My arms flailed for purchase, none found. Something cold, impossibly cold, pressed into my chest like a stone fresh from the grave.
"LUELL!" Lyra screamed, but I could not hear her anymore.
I couldn't hear anything but the throb of my pulse as the monster bent over me. Its face was not a face. A veil rippled just above where features should have been. Light shivered inside it. Beneath it, something peeled open, a vertical slit that oozed thick, translucent fluid. It splashed against my cheek and sizzled, acidic, into my skin.
My scream didn't matter.
Lyra lunged toward me.
But she didn't make it.
The second creature moved with inhuman speed. Its arms distended mid-motion, disjointed elbows cracking and snapping forward like whip cords. Claws, not quite bone, not quite metal, shot from its wrists, glinting under the bleeding sky. It snatched Lyra from the ground like she weighed nothing.
She thrashed. Screamed. Bit.
It didn't notice. Or it didn't care.
The third moved to the door.
It didn't open like a door. It unfolded, wet and slow, the wood separating into pulsing folds of bark and rot, revealing an aperture of blackness so thick it looked like oil. No light passed through it. No sound returned.
Chanting.
Not in any tongue I knew.
Not in words at all.
Just clicks.
Soft, at first. Like twigs breaking underfoot.
Louder. More insistent. Accompanied by laughter, not joy, but imitation. Like something had heard laughter once and tried to recreate it with bones.
Low moans followed, wind dragged through corpses left too long in the heat.
The trees began to hum in sympathy. The moss beneath me twitched, like it was alive. It wanted to help.
I thrashed under the creature's grip.
But it leaned closer.
Its veil fluttered, and beneath it, something stirred eyes, maybe. Not real ones, but the memory of eyes. Familiar. Wrong.
"Luell…" it whispered.
My heart stopped.
"Luell, where are you? I miss you. Please… come back to me."
My mother's voice.
I turned my head just in time to see Lyra dragged screaming into the black. Her hands were outstretched, reaching for me, nails cracked, mouth wide with a scream that sounded like my name.
She was gone.
The door didn't slam.
It didn't close.
It sealed. Like skin over a wound. Like a secret swallowing itself.
Silence.
So, it rang in my ears like a scream turned inward.
The monster over me bent closer.
The fluid from its body dripped onto my lips. It smelled like metal, rot, and memory.
Its long, ruined finger brushed my cheek.
And in my mother's voice again, it said:
"Come home, Luell. They all miss you. I miss you."
I screamed.
And the world fractured.
The key in my pocket flared with light.
My vision collapsed inward.
And the hallucinations began like a fire in my bones spreading fast, devouring faster.
I didn't know what was real anymore.
I didn't know if I'd ever come back.
Lyra's Pov
"Through the Door"
I hit the ground hard.
But it wasn't the earth beneath me.
It was glass.
A thousand shards dug into my palms and knees, not enough to bleed, just enough to bite. I pushed myself up, trembling, and looked around.
There was no forest. No Luell. No sky. No direction.
Only reflections.
The world stretched endlessly in every direction, a fractured mirror spun from obsidian and mercury. It shimmered like oil, each surface catching pieces of me, warping them. My lips. My eyes. My hands. All broken, all wrong. Some of them didn't move when I did.
I tried to breathe. The air stank of burned paper and something sweet, like rotting fruit left too long in the sun. My breath fogged the space in front of her, but there was no warmth.
No sound.
Until my voice echoed back not as I had spoken it, but slow, deep, cruel.
"Lyraaa…"
I spun, heart stuttering.
"Lyra, Lyra, Lyra…"
Each echo dropped into the air like stones in a well, vanishing too fast.
The ground shifted beneath me, a ripple in the mirror-sea. Shapes writhed beneath the surface. Faces. Fingers. Eyes. My mouth stretched too wide, grinning back at her from the floor.
I bolted.
I didn't know where I was running, only that if I stayed still, I would have fallen into myself. The mirror ground thudded with every step, like it was hollow. Like, there was something beneath.
The sky above me bled ink, dripping slowly, staining the world darker with every heartbeat. Her steps splashed now, but there was no water. Only memories.
The mirror-floor shimmered, showing scenes like candlelight in a storm.
My sister's laughter.
Luell's mother was crying, her back turned in their kitchen.
Luell, my god, Luell. He looked worn, 40 years older, tears streamed down his face as he clutched her hand, screaming her name.
And then they melted.
My sister's laughter turned to screams.
His mother's back was hunched, arms flayed open with invisible lashes.
Luell's face was bloodless, lips sewn shut.
"No," I gasped. "No, that's not real!"
But the mirrors whispered back.
"It is."
The words echoed from every direction and nowhere all at once.
The ground gave beneath me.
I tumbled into the dark.
No impact.
Just presence.
Now I was somewhere else.
A chamber with no walls. A room made of sound. Whispers clicked like teeth, skittering through my ears, behind my eyes. The floor rippled beneath her, a black lake filled with moments.
I saw my sister again.
Not laughing.
Drowning.
Arms outstretched.
Mouth open in a silent scream.
"You watched me go," the girl said.
Her voice was wrong.
Not echo, not memory accusation.
"No," I whispered. "I didn't. I tried, I wanted to…"
"You did nothing."
The girl stepped forward.
Eyes hollow.
Face empty.
Only a voice and a wound.
"You let them take me."
The water flared white-hot. It boiled and twisted, forming symbols I didn't recognise. Symbols that hurt to look at. The sky cracked above me. Lightning poured sideways, illuminating the Beautiful Ones as they emerged three again.
But not as I remembered them.
No longer cloaked in grace or light.
Now they were flickering shadows of themselves, veils tattered, forms fraying like burned paper. Their limbs were too long. Their heads are still too. Light poured from them and into them, like they were bleeding time.
They circled her.
I didn't dare move, no, I couldn't.
The ground clung to my feet. My thoughts were unspooling.
One of the creatures stepped forward.
Its fingers shimmered, skeletal and bright.
It reached out and touched my forehead.
Agony.
A brand pressed into my skin, not fire, not heat. Understanding. Images filled my mind too fast to grasp:
A tower collapsing.
A girl with no face.
A silver city crumbling like ash.
And behind it all, the door. The door. The door.
I screamed as symbols carved themselves into her arms, glowing red-hot before seeping into her skin like ink into paper.
The scream shattered everything.
The mirrors.
The sky.
Her voice.
Light exploded through the cracks. The world fractured. Time snapped.
The door opened behind me with no sound, no warning.
The wind grabbed me.
And I was shoved back through.
Falling.
Tumbling.
Spitting myself into the forest again.
I hit the earth, gasping.
The trees swayed above me, indifferent.
But something had changed.
The marks on her arms burned. Her mouth moved, but no words came out. I tried to speak Luell's name, but my voice had forgotten how.
I sat up.
And they were still there.
The Beautiful Ones.
Watching.
Waiting.
And smiling.
Luell's Pov
I couldn't move.
The creature's weight crushed me into the earth, and its shape, if it could even be called that, warped above me. It no longer flickered with ethereal beauty. Now it pulsed like a corpse full of light, skin melting into shadow, dripping something dark and stinging onto my cheek.
I writhed, but the arms pinning me were not arms anymore. They were tendrils. Bone. Smoke. I didn't know. They shifted with every breath I took, every scream I held in.
And then I heard it.
My mother's voice.
"Luell… where are you, sweetheart? It's so cold here…"
I stopped struggling.
My breath caught.
"Mother?"
My head snapped toward the voice toward a place in the forest that was no longer the forest.
The trees had fallen away.
I was in a room.
An old room.
The brothel's second floor, the one where I used to lie on a thin mattress while she counted coins behind the curtain. Where the walls bled warmth in winter and the ceiling leaked in summer. The air smelled like wet linen and rose oil. Familiar. Too familiar.
She sat on the edge of the bed. Her back was to me, hunched, hands wringing the hem of her dress. Her hair was longer here, dark and unkempt, and her shoulders trembled.
"Luell?" she whispered again, her voice cracking.
I stepped towards her.
"Mother, I'm here"
But the moment my fingers reached her shoulder, the world snapped.
I stood in the brothel's hallway now.
Dim candlelight painted the walls in bruised amber. And I saw her, mother, my mother, being dragged by the wrist into one of the rooms.
"No," I breathed.
The man was faceless. Broad-shouldered. Laughing. His voice was wet with cruelty.
She didn't fight him.
She didn't scream.
Just let herself be led like an old, tired animal.
I tried to move. Trying to shout. But my feet wouldn't obey. My throat was sealed shut.
The door slammed in my face.
The sound echoed forever.
I blinked, but the brothel dissolved.
Now we were outside, she was outside.
On the streets.
The Ashes.
She wore a thin shawl in the snow, her lips cracked and bleeding, her boots torn at the soles. She stumbled between carts and shutters, clutching a photo, no, a piece of cloth. My scarf. The one she made me.
"Have you seen him?" she croaked to a passerby.
They didn't look at her.
None of them did.
She asked again. Louder.
People walked through her like smoke.
"Please," she begged. "He's just a boy. Please."
Her knees gave out. She sank into the gutter, hands scraped and shaking.
I screamed her name.
And she looked up.
Our eyes met.
For a second, I believed she saw me.
Then a scream high and shrill fractured the street.
I turned
And I was no longer in the city.
The forest returned.
But it wasn't the same.
I lay flat against the ground again, the creature still straddling me.
Its veil had peeled back.
There was no face. Just a suggestion of one. Holes where eyes might have been. A mouth that stretched too wide.
Thick, cold fluid dripped from its skin. Onto my neck. My cheek. My lips.
It smelled like copper and rot.
The thing cocked its head, slowly.
It spoke.
In her voice.
"Luell… I miss you. Where are you? Please come back to me."
I froze.
It was perfect.
Every inflexion. Every softness.
The mouth twisted into a smile that did not stop. Lips peeled, peeled, peeled until they tore.
Clicking filled the air.
Not from its mouth.
From behind.
All around.
The others were gathering.
Watching.
Laughing.
I tried to close my eyes, but they wouldn't shut.
The monster leaned closer, its breath was warm now, and wet. It's long, boneless fingers cupped my face.
"I'll never leave you again," it whispered.
Its body began to split.
Ribbons of flesh and cloth pulling apart, revealing something raw, writhing underneath. Something with too many eyes and not enough skin.
The scream that tore from my throat wasn't mine anymore. It didn't sound like something a boy should be able to make. It was raw. Tearing. A sound that pulled the forest tighter around me, like the trees themselves flinched.
The creature didn't move.
It changed, half-unmade, half-born, as if it couldn't decide what it wanted to be: my mother, a god, a monster, or something else entirely. Its flesh rippled with the light of distant stars. Its mouth didn't close. Its fingers brushed my temple in mock affection.
"I'll never leave you again," it whispered, softer this time, more intensely.
It started with me as it began to peel back its skin, revealing layers beneath: not muscle, not bone, memories. I saw myself as a boy, holding my mother's hand. I saw her slapping it away when a customer approached. I saw myself in the cage, sobbing. I saw Lyra screaming as she was taken. I saw every second of my life, my being in a moment's flash.
The creature leaned down again. But a new scream had interrupted our moment.
Not mine.
Lyra's.
It cracked the illusion. The creature's head twitched violently, like it had been yanked by a hook. Its fingers jerked from my face.
She had returned.
I didn't see her step from the door; one moment she wasn't there, and the next she was.
But it wasn't her.
Not anymore.
Her skin had gone pale, not the pale of fear or shock, but translucent, as if the forest had tried to leech her dry. Her hair was wet with sweat, or water, or blood, I couldn't tell. Her eyes were wide and distant, pupils like pinpricks, and she staggered forward on legs that didn't seem to remember how to walk.
"Lyra!" I choked.
She didn't respond. Didn't even look at me. She walked right past the creature straddling me, her feet dragging through the moss like a puppet's.
Then she stopped.
Stared at her hands.
And screamed.
It was different this time. Not a scream of fear, but pain.
One of the creatures stepped behind her. Its form was twitching, half-beauty, half-beast. It raised a finger, long and trembling.
Then it touched her.
The mark seared into her skin like ink soaked in fire. Her back arched. Symbols twisted across her neck and shoulder, language I couldn't read but felt in my bones. Ancient magic.
It made me gulp.
She screamed again, longer this time, until her voice broke into a hoarse sob. Until she collapsed.
The monster stepped back, admiring its work like a painter admiring a ruined canvas.
"Let her go!" I screamed.
The one over me cocked its head again. "She opened the door," it said, in a voice that wasn't mine, wasn't hers, just wrong.
"She saw," it hissed.
They withdrew. No warning, just like how they had attacked. Suddenly, and with no explanation.
The pressure on my chest vanished. The weight in the air lifted. The chant died.
I gasped, rolled onto my side, and crawled to Lyra.
She lay still.
Twitching.
I shook her. "Lyra. Lyra, please say something. Anything, please." Tears formed in my eyes with those last words. I was begging for her to still be alive. To not succumb to whatever they did to her.
It felt like forever, but her eyes opened.
And I froze.
They were still her eyes.
But they weren't.
Something looked out from behind them.
Something that blinked with too much patience. Too much knowing.
Her lips parted. "Lu-," she whispered.
"Lyra? Lyra? LYRA?"
She had passed out. And I held her, shaking, in the quiet aftermath of the madness I caused.