The village of Eldermere had no doors.
Not a single one.
Houses stood open to the wind, to the rain, to wandering cats and drifting leaves. The people believed that doors invited secrets, and secrets invited shadows. So they lived without barriers, trusting in light and honesty.
But beyond the northern forest stood something different.
A door.
It stood alone in the clearing, framed by two ancient stone pillars wrapped in silver vines. No walls. No roof. Just a door of black wood, tall and narrow, carved with twisting symbols that no one in Eldermere could read anymore.
They called it the Whispering Gate.
And they warned their children never to go near it.
Seventeen-year-old Arin had grown up hearing the stories. They said the Gate had appeared on a night when the moon turned red. They said anyone who touched it heard their own voice whispering from the other side. They said that once, long ago, someone had opened it—and something had opened back.
Arin never believed the stories.
Until the night his younger sister Lira began whispering in her sleep.
He woke to the sound of her voice floating across their small, doorless home.
"Don't listen," she murmured. "Don't open it."
Arin sat upright. The moonlight painted silver lines across the wooden floor. Lira lay on her bed, eyes closed, her hands clenched tightly around her blanket.
"Lira," he whispered, shaking her gently.
Her eyes flew open.
"They're calling you," she said.
"Who?"
She looked toward the northern forest.
"The ones behind the door."
The next morning, Lira remembered nothing.
But that night, she whispered again. And the night after that.
Each time, her voice grew fainter, as if drifting farther away.
Arin could no longer ignore the stories.
Before dawn on the fourth morning, he slipped out of Eldermere and into the forest.
The trees thickened as he walked north. The air felt heavier, humming faintly as though charged with unseen energy. Birds did not sing there. The wind did not move.
And then he saw it.
The Whispering Gate stood in the clearing exactly as the stories described.
Black wood. Silver carvings. Iron handle shaped like a coiled serpent.
Up close, the symbols seemed to move. Not physically—but his eyes couldn't quite hold them still. They twisted into shapes that almost resembled words.
Arin stepped closer.
The air changed.
He heard it.
A whisper.
Soft. Familiar.
"Arin."
He froze.
It was his own voice.
He hadn't spoken.
"Arin," it repeated, clearer now. "You came."
His throat tightened. "Who's there?"
A pause.
Then, softly: "You are."
His pulse pounded in his ears.
"This isn't funny," he muttered.
The serpent handle felt cold beneath his trembling fingers.
The carvings began to glow faintly blue.
"You left us," the voice said.
"Left who?"
"Us."
The word echoed, layered—as if many versions of him were speaking together.
Suddenly, images flashed in his mind.
A city of towering silver spires beneath a violet sky.
A sea that shimmered like glass.
A version of himself—older, sterner—standing before the very same Gate.
"No," Arin whispered, stumbling back.
The vision vanished.
The forest returned.
The door stood silent.
But his heart knew something had changed.
He ran home.
That night, Lira did not whisper.
Instead, she sat upright in bed, staring at him with wide, unblinking eyes.
"You opened it," she said.
"I didn't," Arin replied quickly.
She tilted her head.
"It knows you're lying."
The shadows in the room seemed to stretch longer than they should.
"I didn't open it," he insisted. "I only touched it."
Lira's lips curved into a small smile that wasn't hers.
"That's enough."
Her voice deepened—layered, echoing like the one he heard in the clearing.
"The Gate is thinning."
The room trembled.
The air rippled like disturbed water.
Arin grabbed her shoulders. "Lira! Fight it!"
For a moment, her eyes flickered back to normal.
"Don't let it remember," she gasped.
"Remember what?"
But she collapsed into sleep before answering.
The next day, Eldermere changed.
The villagers began to pause mid-sentence, staring north.
Children stopped playing and whispered to empty spaces.
An old man walked straight into the forest without a word.
Arin followed.
The clearing was no longer empty.
The door stood wide open.
Beyond it was not darkness—but light.
Blinding, silver light.
And silhouettes.
Dozens of them.
They looked human—but wrong. Their limbs slightly too long. Their heads tilted at unnatural angles.
One stepped forward.
It was him.
Not exactly—but close enough to steal his breath.
The other Arin smiled.
"You forgot," it said.
"Forgot what?" Arin demanded.
The figure stepped through the doorway, and the air seemed to bend around it.
"You closed the Gate," it said calmly. "You sealed us away."
Memory struck like lightning.
He saw himself—older, clad in strange armor—standing in that violet-sky city. He saw creatures pouring through the Gate into Eldermere. He saw destruction. He saw fire.
And he saw himself slamming the Gate shut.
Erasing his own memory.
Returning as his younger self.
Starting over.
"You divided the worlds," the other Arin continued. "You split reality in two. One peaceful. One ruined."
"That's not possible," Arin whispered.
The silhouettes began stepping through.
Each one wore a familiar face.
Villagers.
Friends.
Lira.
"You thought forgetting would fix it," the double said gently. "But Gates remember."
Behind them, the forest began to flicker.
Trees shimmered between green and silver.
The sky above Eldermere fractured like cracked glass.
"You don't belong here anymore," the other Arin said. "You belong with us."
"I won't let you hurt them again," Arin replied.
"Hurt?" The double tilted his head. "We are what remains after you saved them."
More memories flooded back.
The truth was worse than he imagined.
He hadn't sealed monsters away.
He had split his own world in half.
All the pain. All the darkness. All the mistakes.
He had pushed them into the other side.
Into another version of himself.
And now that version had grown.
The double stepped closer until they stood face to face.
"You can't destroy us," it whispered. "Because we are you."
The clearing pulsed.
The Gate trembled.
Behind Arin, he heard footsteps.
Lira stood at the edge of the forest.
"Brother," she called softly. "Close it again."
"How?" he asked desperately.
The other Arin smiled.
"You don't."
The silver vines around the pillars began creeping outward, slithering across the ground toward Eldermere.
"You open it wider."
Arin looked from his sister to his double.
If he closed it again, would the cycle simply repeat?
If he opened it—
The other side extended a hand.
"Merge," it said. "Be whole."
The sky split with a sound like tearing fabric.
Arin stepped forward.
His hand hovered inches from his double's.
Behind him, Lira screamed.
And the Whispering Gate began to close on its own.
But from which side—
No one in Eldermere ever built doors after that day.
Because in the northern forest, beneath the silver vines, there still stands a frame of ancient stone.
Empty.
No door.
No carvings.
Only two sets of footprints in the soil.
One leading in.
One leading out.
And sometimes, on windless nights, the villagers swear they hear two voices whispering their names from opposite sides of something unseen.