The withered corridor of land stretched before us like a scar on reality. Trees stood half-remembered, their leaves flickering between green and ash as if time itself couldn't decide whether they lived or had already died. We'd been walking for hours since fleeing the Bone Orchard, but distance meant nothing here where moments folded into themselves.
I noticed it first when we stopped to rest—Ashara's shadow moving wrong.
She slept peaceful in my arms, tiny chest rising and falling with normal infant breath. But her shadow on the ground beside us had pulled itself upright, crawling on hands and knees that didn't exist, tracing patterns in the dirt with careful precision.
"Dorian." My voice came out steadier than I felt.
He turned from checking our supplies, and I watched the color drain from his face. The shadow-child continued its work, oblivious to our attention. Or perhaps aware and uncaring.
"It's playing," I breathed.
"That's not play." He crouched beside the shadow, hand hovering over its form. "That's practice."
When his fingers made contact, he jerked back with a hiss. "Cold. No—not cold. Absent. Like touching the space where something should be but isn't."
The shadow-child paused in its crawling, head tilting as if listening. Then its tiny hand began moving again, but with new purpose. Lines appeared in the dirt—not random scratches but symbols. Letters. Words.
My lullaby. The one I'd sung since Ashara's birth, written out in glyphs older than any alphabet.
"It's learning," Dorian said.
"No." I watched as the shadow carefully erased each line after writing it. "It's learning what to forget. Teaching itself which memories to keep and which to let go."
The shadow completed its strange ritual and settled back into normal shape—almost. That heartbeat delay remained, shadow following flesh like an echo learning to keep time.
Night fell with the weight of old stones, and with it came a sound that raised every hair on my body. Tapping. Rhythmic and patient, like knuckles on wood.
We followed it through trees that leaned away from our passage, finding the source in a clearing that shouldn't have existed. There, standing alone with no wall to support it, was a door.
Child-sized. Pale wood worn smooth by touches that had never happened. Seven brass hinges gleamed despite the tarnish of age, and from somewhere within came a humming—Ashara's lullaby played in reverse, each note a question instead of comfort.
Ashara stirred in my arms, then began moving. Not waking—her eyes remained closed—but crawling with the boneless determination of deep sleep, reaching for that impossible door.
"No." I snatched her back, heart hammering. "No, baby. Not that."
The door swung open.
Not violently. Gently, as if pushed by a small hand from within. Beyond the threshold lay not another forest or empty room but compressed darkness. Memory given weight and form, pressing against the boundaries of what should fit in such a small frame.
Images bled through:
My mother, young and terrified, giving birth to me while silver fire licked the walls. Her whispered prayer: "Let her be strong enough to refuse."
Velara—the real one, not my echo—speaking to the void in her womb: "You will unmake their certainties."
Dorian in a timeline where I'd died, teaching Ashara to walk. His face carved by grief but soft with love as her tiny fingers gripped his.
And future-sight that stole my breath: Ashara grown, walking alone through a field of doors. Her silver eyes closed, but behind her, reality opened and closed like breathing. Each door she passed swung wide, showing different worlds, different choices, different deaths.
"It's not trying to take her," Dorian said quietly. "It's trying to follow her."
"A companion-door," I whispered, understanding hitting cold. "Born the moment she chose not to collapse reality. All those possibilities she didn't become—they need somewhere to live."
"So burn it." But even as I said it, I knew the futility. How did you burn something that existed in the spaces between?
"What if we're wrong?" Dorian moved closer to the door, studying its impossible architecture. "What if this is her only map? A memory library of all the selves she chose not to be? She might need it to remember who she really is when the world tries to remake her."
"Or something might crawl through. Again. We've seen what happens when doors stay open."
Ashara whimpered in her sleep, and the door responded instantly—swinging closed with a click like a lock setting from inside. Protective. Responsive. Almost... caring?
Her shadow peeled away from where it should lie, crawling toward the door. It knelt beside the threshold like a child at prayer, hands pressed flat against wood that hummed with recognition.
"What if she doesn't walk into it," Dorian said slowly, "but becomes it? What if this is how she learns to move between what is and what might be?"
The thought chilled me more than any threat we'd faced. My daughter as living doorway, forever caught between states. But looking at her shadow—patient, learning, almost gentle in its wrongness—I wondered if we had any right to choose for her.
"We can't destroy it," I decided. "But we don't leave it wild."
From my pack, I pulled the bone knife Nima had pressed into my hand as we fled. Its edge drew blood easily from my palm, and I caught Dorian's tears on the blade when they fell—exhaustion and fear made manifest.
With blood and salt-sorrow, I drew symbols around the door's frame. Not binding—Ashara would need to choose her own bonds. But guidance. Parameters. Love given form through shared sacrifice.
"You may follow her," I spoke to the door, to whatever watched through it. "But you do not lead. You are companion, not master. Memory, not trap."
The door glowed—soft pearl light that reminded me of milk and moonlight. It absorbed the command, the symbols sinking into wood like water into drought-dry earth. When the light faded, the door looked... calmer. Still impossible, still wrong, but leashed by parental intent.
Ashara's shadow pulled back to where it belonged, moving in proper time with her body. Almost. That heartbeat of delay might never fully heal, but perhaps that was the price of being born between states.
We left the door standing in its clearing. Not destroyed, not embraced, but acknowledged. As we walked away, I felt it following—not physically but dimensionally. A weight in the corner of perception, patient as only unliving things could be.
"Do you think we chose right?" Dorian asked as dawn broke grey and uncertain.
I looked at our daughter, sleeping peaceful despite the strangeness she carried. Her shadow lay proper beneath her, though I knew it would wander again. Somewhere behind us, a door that shouldn't exist waited to catalog all the lives she'd never live.
"I think we chose not to choose for her," I said. "And maybe that's the best love we can give—the space to become whatever she needs to be."
The withered corridor began to heal around us as we passed, trees remembering their greenness, time settling back into linear flow. Behind us, carried on wind that tasted of possibilities, came the faint sound of hinges opening and closing.
Not threatening. Just breathing.
Just waiting for its child to grow into her inheritance, whatever strange shape that might take.
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