The voice spoke inside my head."Do you want to go there?"
I frowned, my throat dry. "Go where?"
"Go see him."
My breath caught.
"Him… you mean Johan?"
The voice didn't reply anymore, but I understood.It really meant Johan.
The voice spoke again, as if it could see straight into my mind. I didn't need to talk—it already knew what I was thinking.
That was when I received my first order.
I started seeing things again.
Or rather, I wasn't seeing them—the voice was showing them to me.
It was a bookstore I knew very well. After all, it was the place Johan and I used to go on our dates.
Deep down, I knew that if I followed those orders, I could never return to my ordinary life.
But if it was for him…
I would do absolutely anything.Or rather—everything.
I knew I was about to put myself in danger, but I didn't care.I packed a few safety items into my backpack and left for the bookstore.
I don't know why I thought I might see him there.Someone who had disappeared for so long wouldn't just appear out of nowhere.This wasn't one of his books, after all.
For the first time in a long while, I smiled.Thinking about him could make me smile, cry, and feel every emotion at once.
Then again, I had never lived a normal life—not like everyone else.
As I reached the bookstore, a strange portal opened before me.
What surprised me most wasn't the portal—it was that no one else reacted. People passed by, completely unaware.
The voices returned, casual, almost mocking."Of course only you can see it, stupid woman."
For some reason, I felt relieved I wasn't alone.
Following their order, I stepped inside without thinking.
On the other side, I found—
darkness that swallowed sound.
The air was cold enough to sting my skin, thick with the smell of old paper and something rotten beneath it. The warmth from the bookstore vanished instantly, like it had never existed. Towering shelves surrounded me, twisted and uneven, stretching upward until they disappeared into blackness.
There were no windows.No doors.No way back.
The books were wrong. Their covers pulsed faintly, as if something inside them was breathing. Some were stitched together with thread that looked disturbingly like veins. Others leaked a dark stain that slowly crawled down the shelves and onto the floor.
When I took a step forward, the floor groaned—not like wood, but like something alive, something in pain.
I felt it then.
I wasn't alone.
Whispers crawled along the shelves, too quiet to understand, yet close enough to brush against my thoughts. My name slipped through the voices, stretched and broken, spoken by mouths I couldn't see.
My heart pounded as I realized the truth.
This place wasn't meant for reading.
It was meant for keeping.
And I had just become part of it.
The voice spoke again, this time calm—almost patient.
"From now on, I will explain anything you wish. You may rely on me."
It paused, then laughed softly.
"But don't misunderstand. I'm only doing this because the Master ordered me to. I wouldn't help a stupid woman for nothing."
Before I could respond, it continued.
"Start by reading that book. It will teach you how the Other Side works."
I picked it up.
The moment I opened it, my head began to ache. The symbols twisted across the pages, shifting when I tried to focus. The contents were complicated—things no normal human should be able to understand.
And yet… with the voice guiding me, everything made sense.
That realization sent a chill through me.
With its help, I felt superior. Above normal humans. As if I had already crossed a line I could never return from.
The book explained that the Other Side was not a developed world.
It belonged to an older era—primitive, cruel, and unforgiving.
That was when I understood.
Most of the things I had brought with me were useless here.
I began changing my plans after only a few pages.
But one thing stood out above everything else.
The book kept repeating it, over and over, as if it were the foundation of this world.
This world contained magic.
All kinds of magic.
The words used to describe it were strange, unnatural. I couldn't understand them at first—but the voices explained everything, patiently carving the knowledge into my mind.
In this world, humans were born without magic.
To obtain it, they had to undergo a trial.
The average age to face the trial was seventeen, but the book made one thing clear—
any age could attempt it.
And any age could fail.
The pages should have ended when I reached the last one.
They didn't.
The book continued, endlessly, explaining how magic could be strengthened, how new types could be gained, how power could be grown.
It wasn't teaching.
It was preparing me.
The book warned that magic was not given. It was taken.
Those who failed the trial didn't simply die.
Some lost their minds.
Some lost their bodies.
And some remained alive—
without ever being human again.
I learned almost everything the book had to offer—
except the most important thing.
Doors.
The Doors of magic were not ordinary doors you could simply walk through to gain power. They did not wait. They did not obey.
The Doors chose on their own.
The trial itself was simple—deceptively so. All I had to do was knock on a Door, and one of the gods behind it would decide whether I was worthy of receiving a fragment of their power.
Easy.
Dangerous.
Because the real question was never which Door I wanted.
It was whether I could survive the power that answered.
The book spoke of ten known Doors. Nothing more, nothing less. Legends claimed that some had defied this limit—creating their own Doors, carving new paths, and eventually ascending as gods themselves.
I would have been satisfied with that.
Creating my own Door.
Reaching my goals without kneeling to another god.
But reality was cruel.
Before creating a Door, I had to be chosen by one of the ten.
Once chosen, there was no escape.
I would have to climb its levels—
—Door Level One, the weakest.
—Door Level Nine, the strongest.
And with every level…
the Door would claim more of me.
The book did not describe the Doors equally.
Some were given only a name.
Others were warned against.
—The Door of Zenith represented the peak—light so intense it burned, power so absolute it collapsed under its own weight.
Those who reached too high were always the first to fall.
—The Door of Legacy drew power from the dead.
Those who opened it carried the skills, memories, and sometimes even the bodies of those who came before.
Few remembered which thoughts were truly their own.
—The Door of Solitude erased presence itself.
Its chosen could vanish from sight, from sound—
and eventually, from memory.
—The Door of Insight revealed truth.
But truth, once seen, could never be unseen.
—The Door of Malice fed on conflict.
Power came easily.
Control never did.
—The Door of Paradox broke rules that should not be broken.
Reality never forgave those who used it
—The Door of Entropy unraveled everything—matter, order, meaning.
Its power was decay.
Its cost was inevitability.
—The Door of Stasis rejected change.
What it preserved never grew.
What it protected never lived.
—The Door of Fortune smiled without mercy.
Every gift it gave demanded a gamble.
And the house always remembered.
—The Door of Tragedy answered only those who had lost something they could never recover.
It gave nothing in return.