The voice knew him.
Not in the way a stranger might. Not as a name on a page or a whisper in the dark.
It knew him.
Like it had been waiting.
Ezras fingers hovered over the doors surface, the sigil beneath his touch subtly pulsing, as if something on the other side was breathing in time with his own.
"Do you remember?"
The words slithered through his mind, curling between his thoughts, threading through memories that werent his.
A flash
Hands gripping an ancient book. A candle flickering, its flame bending unnaturally. A shadow moving where no shadow should be.
Another
A street swallowed in fog. A letter sealed in wax. A symbol drawn in blood.
Then
A place.
Somewhere just beyond his reach, its details blurred at the edges, as if his mind refused to look too closely.
Ezra inhaled sharply, his pulse slow and steady. Focus.
He didnt remember. Not yet. But the fact that something someone believed he should?
That was enough to make his skin crawl.
His fingers pressed against the sigil.
The whisper returned. Softer this time.
"Come back to us."
A sharp crack split the air.
Ezra yanked his hand away just as a fissure spread across the surface of the door. Thin at first, barely noticeablethen growing, splitting outward in jagged lines, like glass under pressure.
The sigil pulsed harder. The air shifted.
Ezra took a step back.
The whisper turned into a murmur.
The murmur into a chorus.
More than one voice now. Layered, overlapping, too many to separate.
His breath turned shallow.
They werent speaking words anymore.
They were speaking him.
His name, his thoughts, his fears, his memories pulled from his mind and echoed back at him in voices that werent his own.
Ezra clenched his jaw. This wasnt real.
It was trying to draw him in. Trying to make him step through.
'Not yet,' he murmured under his breath.
The whispering stopped.
Then
A single voice, clear and sharp, cutting through the silence.
"You are not ready."
The door shattered.
The world lurched.
And Ezra fell backward, the darkness swallowing him whole.