"Some doors were never meant to be opened.
But the ones sealed in silence… they do not stay closed."
The wind shifted, and the world seemed to exhale.
Nael stood at the edge of a jagged canyon carved into the dead earth like a forgotten scar. Ash fell in slow, silent spirals around him, dancing between the blackened teeth of long-collapsed statues. Once, gods had stood here — tall, proud, cruel in their glory.
Now they were rubble.
The Second Door was near.
He didn't know how he knew.
He simply felt it — a tightness in the air, like breath held too long.
A tension in the land, as if the stone itself remembered what lay buried below.
Nael tightened the straps of his satchel and stepped forward.
His boots sank into the soft ash that layered the ground like snowfall in a cursed winter. Every step left a print that refused to hold its shape — as though even the earth rejected memory here.
He passed an arch where crows perched, eyes white and unblinking. They didn't scatter as he walked beneath them.
They simply watched.
Like Witnesses.
He wondered if they remembered the shape of gods too.
A low vibration passed beneath his feet.
Not a tremor.
A heartbeat.
It came again.
Steady.
Ancient.
Coming from deep beneath the canyon floor.
Nael reached the cliff's edge and looked down.
There it was.
A circular platform, half-buried in dust and bone.
Surrounding it were pillars carved with glyphs too faded to read — except for one symbol that still burned faintly with gold.
The rune for "threshold."
Nael descended carefully, gripping the broken stone as he climbed.
Each ledge, each hold, seemed deliberately placed, as though someone long ago had walked this same path — and left it intact for him.
At the base, the air was colder. Still.
No wind reached here.
He stood before the platform and approached the center.
There, a stone obelisk jutted from the earth like a dagger stabbed into the planet's flesh.
And carved into its face—
A door.
No frame.
No hinges.
Just the impression of a door, glowing faintly as if it waited for a name to be spoken.
Nael stepped forward.
The mask on his face buzzed. The runes etched into its bone lit with soft fire.
He pressed his palm to the door.
It was warm.
And beneath the warmth… was a pulse.
Alive.
The obelisk pulsed back.
And suddenly—
The air fractured.
A soundless shudder tore through the canyon.
And the stone before him split open.
A voice echoed from within. Familiar. Ancient.
"Do you remember what you sealed?"
Nael's heart pounded.
He didn't.
Not yet.
But he would.
Because behind the Second Door… was not a god.
It was himself.
The moment the stone split, light poured through it—
not golden, not divine—
but something older, something buried.
It wasn't a light that revealed.
It was a light that unveiled.
Nael stumbled backward instinctively, shielding his eyes. But it wasn't his sight the Door reached for.
It wanted his memory.
And it took it.
In a blink, the canyon was gone.
No wind.
No sky.
No ash.
Only blackness—soft and endless, like the space between two heartbeats.
Then—
A voice. His own.
"Don't open it. You don't know what's in there."
He turned.
And saw himself.
Not as he was.
But as he had been.
The man who stood before him wore the same mask, uncracked. His shoulders were unbent by grief, his robes unstained by time.
His eyes were hard. Certain. Cold.
This was Nael Before.
Before the First War.
Before the silence.
Before Seriah was lost to fire.
"You made a promise," the past self said. "You said you would never return."
"And I lied," Nael whispered.
The mask cracked across the image's face.
The illusion shattered.
And the void pulsed.
Now he stood in a temple not built by hands.
Runes spun above him like constellations—stars made of memory and sorrow.
Floating around him were doors—hundreds, maybe thousands.
Each one carved with a different version of himself.
One bore his face, twisted with rage.
Another showed him kneeling before a throne of ash.
One held him laughing, covered in golden blood.
Each door a life unchosen.
Each path a memory locked away.
Then came the whisper—not from the void, but from within him.
"Open the one you fear the most."
His eyes scanned the spiraling doors.
And there—at the edge—
one door pulsed faintly.
Old wood. Iron frame.
Cracked in the center.
It bore no face.
Only a name:
"Seriah."
He reached for it, hand trembling.
And the moment his skin brushed the surface—
Flame erupted from the seams.
Not heat.
Emotion.
Love.
Rage.
Guilt.
Everything he had buried.
Everything he had promised to forget.
The door burst open.
And he fell again.
But this time—
He fell into a memory not of the world.
But of his heart.
He stood at the edge of a cliff made of crystal.
A younger Seriah waited for him there, wind tearing at her robes, her eyes lit with furious light.
"You weren't supposed to leave," she said.
"You died," he said.
"That didn't mean you had to forget me."
He fell to his knees.
And she stepped forward.
Touched his face.
And he remembered—
Her hand felt like fire and stars.
Her voice like song and thunder.
Her presence like everything he had sworn to protect.
"I still carry your name," he whispered.
"Even in silence."
"Then prove it," she said.
And pointed behind him.
He turned.
And standing in the dark—
Was a version of himself with no face.
Only eyes.
Burning.
Watching.
Judging.
The silent version stepped forward.
And lifted a blade made of broken memories.
Nael stood.
And for the first time since Seriah's death—
He chose not to run.
Nael stood in the dark, face to face with the Faceless Self.
It moved like him.
Breathed like him.
But carried no expression, no name, no soul.
Only eyes — burning like dying stars.
Only silence — thick, suffocating, and eternal.
And in its hand, a blade forged from splinters of memory — jagged, impossible, alive.
Not just any memory.
The memory he had buried the deepest.
The Faceless Self struck first.
Nael barely raised his arm in time to parry — and even then, the touch of the blade lanced through his skin, not like steel, but like truth.
In an instant, his mind erupted:
Seriah, smiling beneath a sky of falling embers.
His own hands letting go of hers.
The moment he chose to forget.
The prayer he whispered to no god: "Erase her."
Nael staggered.
"I had no choice," he gasped.
The Faceless Self said nothing.
It attacked again.
And again.
Each strike was a moment — a memory — a sin.
Nael bled.
Not red.
But gold.
The color of broken oaths.
He fell to one knee.
The blade pressed to his throat.
The silence pulsed with a question he dared not voice:
"Why did you let her die?"
And finally—
He spoke the truth:
"Because I was afraid of what I'd become if I didn't."
The blade stopped.
The Faceless Self hesitated.
The silence broke.
From behind him, Seriah's voice returned. Not angry.
Just aching.
"Then become it."
Nael stood.
Blood dripping.
Hands shaking.
Eyes wide open.
He grabbed the memory-blade with bare fingers.
It burned.
It screamed.
It tried to escape his grip.
But he held on.
"No more forgetting."
The Faceless Self vanished.
Collapsed into him.
And the blade—
Changed.
No longer broken.
But whole.
A sword not of memory.
But of remembrance.
The void around him cracked.
The doors shattered like glass.
And once again—
Nael fell.
But this time, he knew where he was going.
He landed in the canyon once more.
The real world.
The real ash.
The real sky.
The Second Door behind him was closed.
Its glyphs extinguished.
But in his hand, he now held the sword.
And within that sword—
Burned the name of Seriah.
Nael looked westward.
A storm gathered there.
Not of weather.
But of returning gods.
He walked forward.
A new fire in his veins.
No longer just the Gravekeeper.
No longer just the Witness.
But something more.
The one who remembers.
The one who bears the names.
The one who will not let them be forgotten.