Opening Monologue:
"Some truths don't speak in words. They borrow the voices of those long gone, stitching warnings into the silence. Walk far enough into the unknown… and you may hear yourself calling back."
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The corridor stretched endlessly, a throat of metallic walls and shifting golden veins. Lullaby stepped forward slowly, each movement careful, each exhale controlled. The orb hovered at his side, brighter now—brighter than it had ever been—emitting a soft, trembling hum, as if it sensed what lay ahead.
The air changed. Thickened. Vibrated.
Lullaby froze.
A faint voice echoed down the corridor.
At first, he thought it was someone else—a survivor, a wanderer, maybe even one of the forgotten children rumored to roam the Door's inner maze.
But then it repeated.
And he recognized it.
His own voice.
"Don't move…" the echo whispered faintly, distorted, as if dragged through water. Lullaby's pulse spiked. The orb flared, casting a sharp beam down the hallway—but nothing appeared.
"Is that… me?" he mouthed.
The corridor answered again, louder, more urgent.
"Turn back."
"I didn't say that," Lullaby whispered. His breath sounded too loud, too exposed.
The golden veins lining the walls dimmed suddenly, then pulsed violently—like a heartbeat skipping a step. The orb flickered, struggling to steady itself.
Something was coming.
Not walking. Not slithering. Forming from the walls themselves.
The golden veins twisted, spiraling, knitting into shapes—first a silhouette, then another, and another. The corridor filled with figures, bodies of light and shadow, faces blank except for hollow amber eyes that burned like dying stars.
One stepped forward.
It tilted its head, studying Lullaby with eerie patience.
When it spoke, its voice was layered—his voice overlapping with countless others, a choir of stolen echoes.
"You shouldn't be here."
Lullaby's throat tightened. His instincts screamed to run, but something held him in place. Curiosity? Fear? The Door's influence? Maybe all three.
"What… are you?" he asked.
The figure didn't move. Instead, the wall behind it rippled like liquid metal, revealing a faint outline of a door—small, hidden, shaped like a handprint.
But not just any hand.
A child's hand.
The orb chimed violently—a warning.
The echo-figure's head jerked unnaturally, glitching. "If you open it… you won't come back the same."
The child-sized imprint glowed softly, waiting. Inviting.
Lullaby's fingers twitched toward it before he could stop himself. The closer he reached, the more he felt something—memories that weren't his, sorrow that didn't belong to him, fragments of voices whispering:
"Help us."
"Find us."
"Remember us."
The corridor darkened. The echo-figures leaned forward. The orb's glow wrapped around Lullaby like a trembling shield.
He placed his hand over the glowing imprint.
A click.
A shudder.
A breath from behind the wall.
A faint metallic ringing filled his ears.
Then—
The imprint sank inward.
And the corridor collapsed into blinding gold, warm and deafening, as if the entire world had exhaled.