The Door
Lucy stumbled back, the hourglass clutched tightly in her fist. What do you mean it was me? she asked.
I didn't even know you before this week. I've never seen you in my life. but I saw you, Robert interrupted, eyes hollow.
The night I died. It was you standing on the bridge. No she whispered. You weren't wearing your clothes. Your hair was longer. Your eyes.they glowed. Like fire under ice.
Lucy turned away. Her thoughts were a hurricane. Had she done this? Killed him in some other form some other life? But how could that be unless the whisper in her bones answered for her, you've lived before. And died. And lived again.
She fled to the chapel ruins. The air there pulsed. The earth had cracked slightly since yesterday, like something beneath the foundation was pressing up from below.
The door wasn't just metaphorical, it was real.
She found it in the oldest part of the ruins a circle of scorched stone with a seal in the center.
The symbol matched the markings she'd seen in her vision. Curved lines, crossing like veins. And in the middle: a missing piece. She held up the hourglass. It fit perfectly. the seal responded glowing faintly, the earth humming. Suddenly, she remembered.
A ceremony. Her hands covered in ash. A boy screaming.
A promise she broke. She had opened the door before. And when she looked into it, something looked back. Behind her, Robert appeared, breath ragged. His arms were shaking, patches of dark rot blooming on his skin again.
I can feel them, he rasped. The others. Coming. The others? Lucy asked, backing away from the seal.
The ones who never died right. Like me, He dropped to one knee. You didn't just open the door, Lucy You left it ajar.
They've been waiting for someone to remember. Lucy's pulse thundered in her ears. Then we have to close it. You can't, said a voice behind them.
Lucy turned. A girl stood at the edge of the ruin about Lucy's age, dressed in red, with eyes like black oil. She looked just like Lucy's reflection in the chapel mirror.
Only smiling. Because if you close it,the girl said, you die too. Lucy stared at the girl in red.
She had her face. Her mouth. Even the same faint scar beneath the left eyebrow from a childhood fall Lucy didn't remember but always wondered about, but the eyes were wrong. not just dark empty.
Like someone had scooped out her soul and filled it with shadows.who are you? whispered. The girl smiled. You. If you hadn't run. Robert groaned behind her, his breath rattling. His fingernails were almost black now.
The rot was winning. He didn't have much time left. Lucy stepped forward, fists clenched. "What do you mean I ran?
You were chosen to be the keeper of the door," the girl said. To open it, to close it. You were made between death and life. But you fled into the world of the living. Hid in an orphanage. Pretended to be small. I am small, Lucy snapped. No the girl whispered. "You are a threshold. That's why they left you. Why no family kept you. You don't belong to the world. The wind howled, and for a moment, the fog pulled back revealing shapes in the distance. Figures. Dozens. Some limping. Some crawling. Some missing parts. All of them dead. And all of them walking toward the ruins.
Close the door, Robert wheezed. "Now. But Lucy couldn't move. The girl in red stepped closer, the hem of her dress trailing smoke. If you seal it, she said, you trap them. Forever. Not just the monsters. The lost. The forgotten. The ones who were like you. Lucy looked down at Robert His skin was cracking.He was dying again.
Her fingers hovered over the hourglass in the seal. What happens to me if I shut it. You go back, said the girl in red. "To what you were. The guardian. The gate. Lucy's chest tightened. And what happens if I don't?
The girl's smile widened. "Then you become me. And then before Lucy could choose one of the dead reached the chapel threshold. It was a child. No eyes. No mouth. Just skin stretched too tight and arms held out as if in prayer. Help, it croaked. Lucy creamed
The Name that Shouldn't Be Broken
Lucy didn't mean to say it out loud.
But she did.
Belladore.
The name tasted like rot and honey.
The walls heard her. The shadows listened.
And something answered.
The air inside the orphanage changed the moment she said it.
The lights flickered not off, but inside-out, as if the world had blinked. Paint peeled from the corners of the ceiling in spirals,
The smell of damp roses filled the hall, choking and sweet.
Down the hallway, the old mirror cracked.
No sound. No impact.
Just a clean, perfect crack straight through the center, like a splitting skull
Lucy walked toward it.
And as she passed by the bedrooms, the children didn't stir.
Not even the loud ones.
Not even Jessa, who kicked in her sleep.
They all lay still..too still.
Like dolls. Like posed puppets.
She reached the mirror.
It no longer showed her reflection.
Instead, it showed a different hallway one deeper, darker, older. Lined with doors that dripped shadow and keys hanging from the ceiling like metal fruit.
And then, she saw something in the mirror.
A figure.
Tall. Veiled. Wearing a crown of thorns and ash.
Its hands were too long. Its face, blank.
But it breathed.
And every breath fogged the mirror from inside.
Then it moved.
Not toward her.
But toward one of the children's doors in the mirrored hallway.
Lucy's heart slammed against her ribs.
It was walking toward Jessa's room.
Lucy sprinted back through the real orphanage, bare feet slapping wood.
She burst into Jessa's room
and stopped cold.
The bed was full.
But it wasn't Jessa lying there.
It was a bundle of flowers. Dead ones.
Woven to look like a girl.
Lucy screamed.
From the hallway, footsteps came.
Slow. Wet. Deliberate.
She turned toward the sound and saw the mirror walking.
It wasn't glass anymore. It was a doorway. And from it, the veiled thing stepped out.
The smell of old prayers and burned hands followed it.
Lucy didn't run.
She reached into her chest nside herself and felt the crown again.
Cold. Heavy. Waiting.
You want me, she whispered. Then come through me.
The creature paused.
And then it knelt.
It did not attack.
It bowed.
And in its hollow voice, it said:
Gatekeeper..Belladore has returned.
Lucy didn't understand.
But she understood this:
She wasn't the only one who could kiss the dead awake.