(Author here; Please leave comets and power stones)
Mary had waited.
She'd watched Lela vanish through her door. Watched the singing child return beside her. Watched the Codex hum with the weight of what had been reclaimed. And still, she had waited.
There were doors for all of them now.
Some pulsed with color. Some gleamed with bone-white light. Others flickered like flame, ephemeral and uncertain.
Mary's door did neither.
It stood still. Gray. Ordinary. Almost invisible unless you looked closely — like a scar that had faded but never healed.
She stepped toward it.
"Are you sure?" the Friend asked, gently.
Mary didn't answer right away. She ran her fingers along the doorframe. No symbols. No glyphs. No welcome.
But the wood was warm.
"I have to go back," she said. "Back to where I never finished."
The Friend lowered his head in quiet understanding. He knew better than most: the most powerful stories weren't always the ones we chose. Sometimes they were the ones that chose us.
Mary opened the door and stepped inside.
She arrived in a house.
Her old house.
Not the one she remembered from childhood. No. This was something else — a stitched-together amalgamation of every home she'd ever lived in, every hallway she'd wandered in grief or confusion. The wallpaper peeled in the same way her grandmother's had. The stairwell creaked like her first apartment. The air carried a scent of dust, cinnamon, and something burnt.
She walked forward.
Footsteps echoed behind her — faint, light, and impossibly familiar.
She turned quickly.
Nothing.
But the house changed as she moved. Rooms she had forgotten appeared. Closets she had never dared open now stood ajar. A kitchen sat undisturbed, where the kettle boiled without heat and a newspaper headline flickered endlessly:
DAUGHTER MISSING AFTER MIDNIGHT FIRE.
She tore her eyes away.
"No," she whispered. "That's not how it happened."
But the house didn't argue. It didn't need to.
It remembered.
Mary found herself in the backyard, though no door had taken her there.
The trees were blackened, twisted. A swing hung by one chain. The ground was covered in ash, but flowers still bloomed — strange, pale flowers with ink-stained petals and hollow centers.
In the middle of it all stood a child.
Her.
At least — a version of her. Eight years old. Wearing a raincoat though there was no rain. Clutching a stuffed fox with eyes scratched out.
The child looked up.
"You left me here."
Mary felt the words slam into her chest.
"I didn't know," she said, trying to step forward. "I didn't understand what was happening—"
"You understood," the child said, her voice flat and ancient. "You just didn't want to see it."
The swing began to move on its own. The wind picked up, scattering ash into Mary's eyes.
"I was trying to survive," she said.
"So was I," said the child.
Mary fell to her knees.
The child pointed toward the house. It was on fire now — the flames ghostly and silent. No heat. Just illumination. Flickering orange across every window.
Mary stood and walked toward it.
Inside, the rooms had changed again. They were now built from paper. Each step she took left behind burned footprints. The fire followed her, but did not consume.
On the living room wall, there were photographs — but the faces were blurred. Only one was clear: a woman holding a small child by the ocean. Her mother.
Mary reached for it.
"Don't."
The voice was her own.
She turned — and found another version of herself. Mid-thirties. The version that had once nearly drowned in grief after her mother passed, and refused to write for three years.
"I failed her," Mary whispered.
"No," the other Mary said. "You failed yourself."
The flame surged.
The photograph burned.
And in its place, a window opened.
The window led to a study — cramped, cold, and filled with unfinished manuscripts. Pages were tacked to the walls like desperate pleas. Each one bore a title Mary remembered abandoning:
The Girl Who Waited Too Long
Chronicles of the Silent Father
Echoes from the North Stairwell
She touched each page, and memories returned — not of writing, but of stopping. Of fear. Of silence. Of voices in her head whispering that none of it mattered.
"What's the point?"
"No one will read this."
"You're not the one to tell this story."
She heard them now.
Louder than ever.
"Enough," Mary said.
The pages trembled.
She stepped into the center of the room and drew a circle in the dust.
"I am not afraid of what I left behind," she said. "I'm afraid of what I never let myself begin."
The room sighed — a great, shuddering breath.
And the pages unpinned themselves.
One final drawer sat locked.
She hadn't noticed it before — not in any house, in any memory.
But now she knelt beside it.
A key appeared in her palm.
She opened it.
Inside, there was only one thing: a letter.
Folded. Yellowed. Never sent.
Addressed in her own handwriting to a name she hadn't spoken in over a decade.
"Dear Sofia…"
She sat down, trembling.
It wasn't just a letter. It was a confession. A truth she had hidden from herself for so long that she'd forgotten it had once been love.
A first love.
Unfinished.
Unspoken.
Unwritten.
"I'm sorry," she whispered, tears slipping down her cheeks. "I wasn't brave enough then."
She read the letter.
All of it.
And when she finished, the house went still.
Mary stood at the front door again.
But now it was open.
Light streamed through — not golden or radiant, but soft. Real. Like morning through curtains.
Behind her, the house no longer burned. The child was gone. The swing hung still. The pages were quiet.
She stepped through the door and back into the glade.
The Friend was there, waiting. Lela too. And the singing child. All quiet.
They looked at her.
"You're different," Lela said.
Mary nodded.
"I went back," she said. "And I forgave the girl I used to be."
She held the letter in her hand. It no longer trembled.
"And I think," she said, "it's time I write her story."