Chapter Five: The Third Door
When I pushed the third door, it felt as if a tremendous force had sucked the air out of the world around me. The door didn't open in any normal way; it dissolved like mist, as if it had never existed at all. What I saw beyond it was not a room, nor a hallway, but a vast dark expanse stretching out endlessly—like I was staring into a night with no horizon, into a void that devoured even light itself.
I took a single step, and the world behind me disappeared. No door, no courtyard, no statue, no city. Only infinite darkness spreading from beneath my feet to an unseen edge.
I tried to step back, but the ground beneath me was no longer solid; it moved slowly, like the surface of a calm sea under a distant moon.
Then the light began to appear—not from above, but from below.
A floor made of glass… or something stranger. Beneath its surface, shadows moved like living creatures. I saw human features… faces… events… memories. As if the ground beneath me was a colossal mirror reflecting the past—but not as it was, rather as the city wanted it to be.
And suddenly, I heard his voice.
The voice I recognized the moment I first saw him:
"I knew you would enter here… No one can resist the third door."
I spun around quickly and found him behind me—the mysterious man, my shadow, the dark part of me I had left in the city decades ago.
But now he was different. No longer just a shadow—he was becoming solid, gaining a real body. His face was a distorted version of mine… close enough to terrify me.
I forced my voice to remain steady:
"Where are we? What is this place?"
He smiled slowly, as if he had waited years for this question:
"This, you… is the heart of the City of Shadows. The place where you were born… and where I was born. The place where the secrets were sealed."
He took a step toward me. With every step, the darkness trembled, as if the city itself breathed with him.
"Here, at this heart, you left a part of yourself. You left me. And you let the city guard the secrets. You left everything you wanted to forget."
My voice wavered:
"What did I leave? What is the secret of this city? Why can't I remember anything?"
He shook his head proudly, as if possessing dangerous knowledge:
"You don't remember… because you erased your memory. You are the one who built this city—and then tried to flee from it.
And anyone who builds a city for shadows… must forget. That is the price."
He came so close that his face nearly touched mine:
"But you returned, and that means the forgetting is over."
The ground trembled harder, and a massive crack split open beneath us.
Inside the crack, images appeared—no longer shadows, but clear memories.
I saw myself young, standing with the other six around a map, each of us placing our hands on the center of a black circle. Then I saw the first idea of the city—a place where secrets that no one should know could be buried.
I saw the sentence I had written with my own hand:
"The shadows keep what the light does not dare to reveal."
Then I saw the true reason the city was created.
I saw blood.
I saw fire.
I saw a crime I never expected…
My shadow smiled widely:
"Do you see now? Do you remember?"
I tried to look away, but the images were powerful, terrifying, immovable.
I saw myself standing over the body of someone I knew… someone close to me.
Someone who tried to uncover a secret that could not be revealed.
I saw the fear in my own eyes, the guilt, the beginning of running from myself.
My voice cracked:
"No… this is impossible… I didn't do this…"
But my shadow placed his hand on my shoulder and whispered:
"You did. And this city was built to protect you from the truth… not to protect the truth from you."
I fell to my knees. The glass beneath me began to show images of my face—through the years—trying to escape, trying to forget, trying to bury what had happened.
My shadow sat in front of me, his face close, his eyes deep and black:
"And now… you must know why you came. You didn't come to destroy the city only. You came to face the part of you that you never faced:
Me."
I stood up slowly, barely holding myself together.
"If you're a part of me… then why all of this? Why appear this way?"
He answered:
"Because I was the truth you refused to see. I was the fear, the guilt, the secret.
And every secret… if not faced… becomes a shadow."
Then he suddenly stopped, as if sensing something.
The darkness around us shifted.
The floor was changing—from glass to stone, from stone to ash, from ash to something like living flesh.
The entire place was suffocating.
I trembled:
"What's happening?!"
He answered with a soft, low voice for the first time:
"The City of Shadows is angry… because it knows you want to destroy it."
He looked at me, his eyes burning:
"But before you destroy it… you must cut me away.
Because I am its heart, just as you are its mind."
The words stuck in my throat:
"Cut you? You're part of me!"
He shouted, his voice shaking the void:
"And you are part of it! You cannot survive without killing part of yourself."
At that moment, something appeared in his hand—a black dagger, forged from the same shadow that covered his body.
He handed it to me.
"This is the moment.
If you want this city to end… you must stab me.
And if you do… you will stab yourself."
The dagger trembled in my hand.
I didn't know what to do.
I didn't know where truth ended and shadow began.
But the city was collapsing.
Invisible walls shattering.
The ground shaking.
Shadows screaming.
And my shadow stood before me, waiting.
Then he said the final sentence that changed everything:
"If you don't kill me… I will replace you. And I will walk out into the world."
I raised the dagger, my hand shaking violently.
I lifted my eyes to the face that looked like mine.
The entire city fell silent.
And in the moment the dagger neared his chest…
something happened that no one expected.