Chapter Three
The village well stood at the far end of Orun-Oke — older than any house, older even than the crumbling shrine where ancestors whispered behind masks of wood and ash. They said it was carved by the first settlers, but those who believed in older things — like Mama Tani — claimed it had always been there.
Waiting.
Asha found herself standing before it at dawn, drawn by a dream she couldn't remember and a feather she couldn't forget.
In her pocket, the black crow feather pulsed with a strange warmth. The silver thread tied around its shaft gleamed faintly, like a thread pulled between worlds.
She reached into her pocket and touched it.
Instantly, the ground trembled — gently, like a breath exhaled from deep within the earth.
Then she heard it again: her own voice, whispering from beneath the well.
"Find the third door before the tide turns red…"
Her heart stuttered.
She stepped forward.
There was no rope. No pulley. Just a stone ring and a dark mouth yawning wide.
But this was not a well for water.
This was a threshold.
She bent slowly, peering in.
And there — for the briefest moment — she saw a door at the bottom. Not a wooden one. Not metal. But something made of mist and memory, flickering in and out like a heartbeat.
Then, it vanished.
She returned to Mama Tani, breathless.
"There's a door in the well."
The old woman didn't blink. "The third door is not in the well, child. The well is you. The door is what you open when you stop running from your own past."
Asha frowned. "I don't understand."
Mama Tani placed both hands on Asha's head. Her palms were warm and smelled faintly of myrrh and cassia bark.
"You will. But to open the third door, you must first name the other two."
That night, Asha sat beneath the tamarind tree, staring at the stars. She began to remember.
The first door had opened when she was five — the night of the fever, when her heart stopped beating for seven full minutes. The elders thought she was dead. But then she had gasped — a sharp, unnatural breath — and looked around the room with eyes that weren't entirely hers.
She had spoken then — in a voice that was not her own.
They had never spoken of it again.
The second door was subtler — the moment her father drowned when she was twelve. She had been by the river. She had felt something tugging at her wrist. Something cold. Something greedy.
She never told anyone. But she had always known the river had not taken him alone.
Two doors.
Now the third had begun to whisper.
She went back to the well at midnight.
The sky was heavy with clouds, the moon cloaked in haze. The wind had stilled. Even the frogs had gone quiet.
She carried a lantern and the crow's feather tied around her wrist. Her hands trembled.
She stood at the rim of the well and whispered:
"I remember."
The earth quivered.
Then the mist within the well split, revealing once more the door — this time brighter, sharper.
And as she leaned forward, something rose to meet her.
A shape — tall, cloaked in violet shadows. Its face was made of smoke. Its mouth was a wound that smiled.
"You've remembered," it rasped.
Asha stepped back.
"Who are you?"
"I am the keeper of the forgotten. The shadow of your father. The mouth of the second door."
She shook her head. "You can't be him."
"I am what remains of him. What he became when your name was traded for his breath."
Her chest tightened.
"What do you want?"
"I want you to finish what began in your bloodline. The pact must be renewed. The third door must open."
"No."
The air thickened. The wind howled.
Then the spirit whispered:
"Refuse it… and your world will drown beneath the tangerine sky.
Accept it… and become more than flesh."
Asha raised the feather.
"I choose neither," she said, voice firm. "I choose truth."
The well roared.
The mist surged.
And the door opened — not in the ground, not in the sky, but inside her.
Her eyes rolled back.
And she fell.
When she awoke, Asha was not in Orun-Oke.
Not in the land of the living.
But in the realm between — where voices wear faces,
and every shadow remembers your name.