The door did not creak the way a fifty-year-old door should have.
It opened slowly, silently, its hinges gliding as though they had been oiled that very morning, and the darkness beyond seemed to exhale outward to meet them, cool and faintly sweet, like old flowers pressed between the pages of a book no one had opened in decades.
Lin Yue stood at the threshold for a long moment, studying the black rectangle of the doorway without stepping into it.
"Well?" Luo Ming said from behind him, arms crossed tight over his chest. "Are we going in, or are we going to stand here admiring the architecture?"
"We're going in," Lin Yue said. "I'm deciding who goes first."
"You, obviously," Luo Ming said. "You're the one who always knows what not to touch."
"Comforting," Zhou Ke muttered. "Really reassures me about my own survival odds."
