There was nothing.
Just… nothing.
A void. Still and absolute.
Then—light.
Not sudden. Not blinding.
A slow unfurling, like dawn creeping through rotted curtains.
Felix squinted as the darkness peeled back, revealing a corridor lit by cold, blue flame. The torches burned low in rusted sconces, their eerie glow flickering against ancient stone—dust-choked, cracked, and crumbling.
He stood at the threshold of a great hall. Or what was left of one.
The floor beneath him was marble—once white, now veined with black rot that pulsed faintly, like veins beneath translucent skin. Shattered columns lined the path ahead, some leaning like they'd given up centuries ago. The walls, smeared with ash and mold, still bore streaks of gold leaf in patches—faded reminders of beauty lost to decay.
Felix stepped forward. His boots crunched over debris. The air smelled like wet stone and something coppery beneath it—old blood, maybe.
He didn't speak. Not at first.
Then something caught his eye on the left wall: a painting.
Enormous. Torn.
Half the canvas was shredded, flapping loose. But what remained stopped him cold.
Figures. Dozens. Maybe hundreds.
Winged humanoids stood above the clouds, draped in radiant light, arms outstretched in judgment. Below them, grounded horned figures wept, knelt, or reached skyward in desperation. A clear divide. Power casting out weakness.
Felix tilted his head.
"Winged angels kicking out horned… demons?"
He squinted.
"No. Not demons. Not yet."
He moved on.
The next painting showed time passing. The horned people were now alone. Isolated. Diminished. Some sat in corners, heads cradled in hands. Others raged—bodies twisting, limbs contorting. Faces stretched into madness. Some fully transformed—into beasts.
Felix's jaw tightened.
"Yeah," he muttered. "That's familiar."
At the center of the painting stood eight figures. Taller. Different. Cloaked in power. Seven bore weapons: blades, spears, hammers—each stylized, each marked with glowing sigils.
But the eighth had no weapon. Just open hands. A silent plea.
All their faces had been torn from the canvas—deliberately, viciously.
"Someone wanted them forgotten," Felix muttered. "Or maybe… just one of them."
The next painting had been destroyed almost completely—just scraps of color clinging to a shredded frame.
So he moved on.
Another mural stretched across the wall like a fever dream. Violent brushstrokes. Jagged color. The world was broken. Shattered into floating landmasses, twisted chasms, and unspeakable beasts. Chaos reigned.
But at the center: a lone figure.
Unarmed. Unarmored.
Familiar.
Felix leaned closer. It was the same figure with outstretched hands.
Below it, a single word—etched into the wall in an ancient, unreadable script. Heavy. Final.
Beneath that, a smaller painting—a scene within the scene. The same figure now knelt among survivors, arms extended again. Pleading. Some reached back. Most turned away.
Painted beneath it, in a language he could read:
"The Coward."
Felix blinked.
"The coward?"
The next painting stretched wall to wall. A war. A real one.
Twisted beasts ravaged the land. Towers burned. Mountains cracked. In the center of it all, the coward stood—not in prayer, but in command.
Puppets.
Hundreds of them.
Warriors of wood and metal, some monstrous, some majestic—dancing on strings that flowed from the coward's fingers. His eyes were blank. His mouth set in a line of steel.
Felix stared.
"You finally fought," he whispered. "With what you had. Even if it wasn't enough."
And then—
The last painting.
Fresh. Wrong.
The paint still glistened in places. Brush strokes frantic, wild.
At its center hung the coward.
Dead.
Strung up on his own strings, suspended like a broken marionette. Limbs limp. Head bowed.
Seven blades pierced him. Chest. Back. Gut. Each unique. Each familiar.
Felix glanced back at the mural of the eight saviors.
Seven weapons.
"…They killed him," he whispered. "His own friends."
Not in battle.
In judgment.
Felix stood motionless.
Then, barely audible:
"They called him a coward. But he tried to put a stop to it."
Silence answered.
Then—a tremor.
Soft. Subtle.
The floor beneath his feet shifted. The paintings dissolved into shadow. The walls rippled, melted, reshaped.
Eight doors emerged from the stone.
Each towered above him. Each sealed tight. Each carved with a different mark.
And at the center stood a statue.
It loomed higher than the rest, carved from obsidian veined with silver. A young man—or the idea of one—stood regal and unmoving, with seven spiraling horns forming a twisted crown across his brow.
He should have been handsome.
That was the feeling Felix got. Reverent. Inspiring.
But no matter how long he looked, he couldn't see the face.
It blurred. Shifted. Evaded his gaze like a dream fading after waking.
It made his stomach twist.
The figure wore robes layered with impossible detail—etched with thousands of tiny symbols.
Not decorative.
Script.
Language.
Forgotten.
And he had six arms.
Each outstretched to a different door—three left, three right.
But not the seventh.
The center door stood untouched. Taller than the others. Blacker than obsidian. It pulsed with a mark like a twisting eye—shifting when not looked at directly.
Felix felt the weight of it in his spine.
"That door…" he muttered, "isn't meant to be opened."
He took a cautious step toward the statue.
"You're the coward, aren't you?" he asked softly.
His voice echoed off the stone.
No answer.
He circled the statue, inspecting each of the six arms.
They weren't identical.
One was armored.
One burned.
One smooth as porcelain.
One skeletal.
One cracked and veined with crystal.
One scarred with runes.
Each different.
Each echoing a memory. A person.
"The six betrayers," Felix murmured. "But there were seven weapons…"
His gaze returned to the central door.
"The seventh didn't get a hand," he whispered. "But they have his attention."
Felix observed the statue, its gaze locked on the central door with unsettling intent.
He turned to the six surrounding doors. Each bore a muted version of the eye-symbol—closed, dreaming.
Waiting.
He reached for one.
White stone, veined with gold. Bone-colored vines etched along the frame.
His fingers brushed it.
A vision struck.
He stood in a hall of light.
Vast. Polished. Untouched by time.
A veiled figure stood at its heart, wrapped in flowing gold-threaded robes. Ivory mask. Graceful. Poised.
In one hand, a perfect scale.
Felix couldn't move—he was only an observer.
Across the hall came the coward. Younger. His face was still blurred—but just barely. One side in light. One in shadow. Arms open. Pleading.
He spoke, but Felix couldn't hear the words. Only muffled echoes.
The veiled one responded—calm. Cold.
Turning away.
And then—Fire.
The banners burned. The glass shattered. Nobles screamed. Gold melted.
The veiled one stood still, untouched. Their scale tilted—barely, cruelly—in their favor.
And then they laughed.
The mask split. The robes twisted. One eye burned like gold. The other—empty.
And still, the coward begged.
Still, he was ignored.
Felix gasped and reeled back from the door.
His breath came in shudders.
"...What the hell was that?"
He stared at the statue.
Still unmoved.
Still unknowable.
But the door had shown him something. A shard. A sin.
He stepped toward the next.
Blackened wood. Bone handle. Carvings of torn wings.
His hand shook.
He touched it.
Another vision.
A battlefield.
Rain poured in sheets. Thunder cracked. Bodies lay in heaps—human and beast alike.
A towering figure in blackened armor stood still in the chaos, swords floating around them like orbiting moons—seven blades in perfect rhythm.
They watched.
They waited.
The coward emerged again—slower now.
Broken.
Pleading.
Again, the words were drowned.
The armored one said nothing.
The blades moved.
Each strike summoned waves of destruction.
Still the coward knelt.
Still he begged.
And then—the warrior smiled.
Felix staggered back, breath ragged.
He stared at the statue.
"You tried to stop them," he whispered.
"You were the only one who tried."
But it gave no reply.
Five doors remained.
Each one a truth.
Or a lie.
He stepped toward the third.
This door was unlike the others—not regal or ravaged, but simple.
Unnervingly simple.
Unpainted stone, smoothed to an unnatural perfection. No carvings. No adornments. No pattern to give it meaning. Just a void of texture, flat and cold as if the door had erased whatever it once was.
Felix stood before it, frowning.
There was something wrong about its stillness. The other doors had a presence—this one had an absence. Like a silence that wasn't peaceful, but suffocating.
His hand hovered.
Then, without knowing why, he touched it.
The Vision struck
He was somewhere quiet.
No thunder, no screams. Just soft wind and distant chimes.
He stood in a library. Endless rows of shelves stretched into the dark, books stacked in impossible towers, some swaying as if they breathed. The place was bathed in twilight—not from candles or torches, but from glowing glyphs embedded in the spines of tomes.
At the center sat a figure—robed in layers of parchment-thin fabric, colorless, their face hidden behind a mirrored mask. Scrolls floated around them, endlessly unraveling and rewriting themselves. On the floor before them were runes drawn in chalk, circles within circles, all bleeding into each other.
Felix recognized the shape.
It was the same symbol from the center door.
The coward appeared again—older this time, wearier. His shoulders hunched under unseen weight. He didn't speak. He just stood there, staring at the veiled figure.
This time, the figure looked up.
But instead of responding… they began to write.
Faster.
Desperately.
Dozens of quills scratched across floating pages, diagrams flickering to life around them—maps, formulas, sketches of eyes. The coward stepped forward. He reached toward the quills, as if to still them.
The veiled figure recoiled.
And screamed.
Only… not aloud.
It was silent.
A scream Felix could feel, like a pressure behind his eyes. A rejection. Not from anger—but from fear. Panic.
The vision twisted. The walls cracked. The shelves caught fire—burning with blue flame, licking at the floating scrolls like serpents. The veiled figure didn't move. Didn't flee.
They just… kept writing.
Even as the flames devoured their hands.
Felix staggered back, gasping.
His head throbbed. His skin felt cold. That one hadn't been like the others—it didn't scream madness. It whispered it.
"Obsession," Felix muttered. "Or maybe… denial."
The library was gone. The silence remained.
He turned to the next door.
This one was carved from red stone—deep crimson, like dried blood polished to a mirror sheen. Black cracks spiderwebbed across its surface, filled with what looked like gold—but it shimmered wrong, too bright, too alive. Like it pulsed in time with a heartbeat not his own.
Felix's lip curled.
"Greed," he guessed, even before touching it.
And yet… he touched it anyway.
Once again the Vision struck
Laughter.
It echoed before the light even arrived—low, velvety, perfect. The kind of laughter that made your teeth ache from how sweet it sounded.
Then light bloomed—warm, golden, blinding.
He stood in a palace carved from gemstone. Every surface gleamed. Light refracted endlessly across walls of faceted crystal, and beneath his feet, gold leaf trailed like spilled sunlight. Music played from nowhere. Tables were laden with fruit, wine, delicacies—all untouched.
And there they were.
The fourth figure.
Veiled again, of course, but this one draped in silks that shimmered like oil on water. Jewels crowned their masked head, and more rings adorned their fingers than Felix could count. Their mask wasn't ivory or mirrored—it was smiling.Permanently.
The kind of smile you learned to fear as a child.
They raised a goblet and toasted… nothing. No one. Or perhaps everything. Around them, shadowy shapes danced, faceless and shifting—applauding, mimicking, bowing. Illusions.
Felix saw through them.
And behind the banquet table, in the shadow of a massive stained-glass window, stood the coward again. Arms folded. Not pleading this time.
Waiting.
The veiled one waved him over—graceful, casual, dismissive. They offered wine. The coward didn't move.
Then the veiled figure snapped their fingers.
Everything froze.
Even the shadows.
Even the fire in the glass chandeliers.
Only the coward and the veiled one remained alive in that still moment.
The veiled one stepped closer—slowly. They reached out as if to caress his cheek.
And then—shoved him.
Felix felt the impact.
Not physical—but symbolic. Like a deep pain that echoed through time.
The coward fell back.
The banquet resumed—louder than before, more garish, more desperate.
The veiled figure laughed again—but now it was wrong. The smile was too wide. The jewels were dripping blood.
And the guests? They were puppets now.
Strung up by golden chains.
"He was mocking him…"
Felix reeled back, bile in his throat.
He leaned against the cold wall and wiped his mouth.
"Glory. Power. Lies," he muttered. "All of it."
He looked to the remaining doors.
Four down. Three to go.
And the central one, still waiting.
Still watching.
He took a deep breath, clenched his fists, and stepped toward the next.
This door was carved from dark wood, warped and swollen with age. Moss and mildew clung to its edges, and the handle had rusted into near uselessness. It looked heavy, swollen by time, like it had been left to rot in silence for centuries.
Felix hesitated longer this time.
There was something about the stillness here that unnerved him. It wasn't cold like the third door. It wasn't explosive like the second.
It was… tired.
He reached out and placed his hand against the surface.
Again the world changed.
A quiet garden.
Overgrown, forgotten.
Vines strangled statues, and cracked fountains trickled with brownish water. The sky was overcast—no sun, no moon. Just a dim gray ceiling.
In the center sat the fifth veiled figure.
Slouched on a crumbling stone bench, draped in worn robes. Their mask was cracked down the middle, barely clinging to their face. They didn't move. Didn't speak.
Around them, books lay open and rotting. Musical instruments lay broken and ignored. Tools rusted beside incomplete creations.
Abandonment.
A paradise of almosts.
And then—movement.
The coward entered from a side path, gently, as if not to disturb. He didn't plead this time. He knelt. Offered something in his hands. A gift, maybe. A memory. Hope.
The veiled one turned their head, just barely.
And sighed.
Felix didn't hear it—but he felt it.
A sigh so deep it felt like the slow death of stars. A surrender so complete it left the coward frozen in place.
Then came the unraveling.
The plants withered. The sky turned black. The figure on the bench slumped further until their body melted into the stone, their limbs fusing with the earth.
And still, they did not resist.
The coward stood again. He reached out, touched the shoulder of the now-statue figure.
And received no answer.
Felix stumbled back, his breath shaky.
"That one didn't go mad," he muttered. "They just… gave up."
His eyes drifted toward the remaining two doors.
"They stopped trying."
Felix moved to the next.
This one shimmered.
Not like metal or stone—but like heat on pavement. It seemed to pulse gently, subtly, always just out of focus. The frame was carved with serpentine lines—almost like something had been burned into it and then polished to hide the scars.
It was beautiful.
But in the way a poisonous fruit is beautiful.
Felix reached out.
His fingers barely touched it before the world vanished again.
A feast.
More lavish than the one before—but this time, it wasn't celebration.
It was devouring.
He stood in a grand cathedral of excess—pillars of bone and silk, windows of stretched skin lit by golden flame. In the center lay a banquet table that spanned farther than the eye could see.
And seated along it—endless guests. All masked. All eating.
Ravenously.
Some had no mouths and still ate. Some were nothing but mouths. Plates refilled themselves—meat, wine, sugar, light. Nothing ever ran out.
At the head of the table sat the sixth figure.
Rotund. Dripping in robes made of flesh and pearls. Their mask was mouthless—but twitching.
Felix looked for the coward.
He found him standing behind the veiled figure, silent.
Waiting.
He placed a hand on the guest's shoulder.
For a moment… the feasting stopped.
Silence fell.
And then—without turning—the veiled figure snapped their fingers.
The banquet multiplied. Tables split, stretched. The guests began to scream as they ate—sobbing through blood-stained masks, chewing their own hands, shoveling food into themselves even as they choked on it.
The coward said nothing.
He only backed away as the table consumed the room.
Consumed the guests.
Consumed the figure at the head.
And still… it kept going.
Felix recoiled, stomach lurching.
He coughed, nearly retching.
"Consumption," he muttered. "Want without limit."
He steadied himself against the statue's pedestal, then turned toward the last door.
The seventh door.
It was tall, taller than the others—narrow, made of dull iron that looked warped, like it had been twisted into place rather than forged. The surface was cold. Brutally cold. Frost clung to its edges, and long, narrow claw marks were gouged into the metal—from the inside.
Felix paused.
This one felt different.
He touched it.
The world fading.
A desert.
Endless.
Dead.
Wind howled across cracked white sand.
But at the center—something moved.
A storm.
No—a person.
The seventh veiled figure stood at the heart of a spiraling storm of sand and fury. Their mask was horned, their robe billowing in the wind like flame. Around them, the sand shifted into shapes—faces, memories, enemies.
They fought everything.
With fire.
With rage.
With endless, screaming hatred.
Felix could feel the heat. Taste the blood.
And there, standing just outside the storm—was the coward.
No longer pleading.
Not even approaching.
Just watching.
Waiting.
The figure in the storm turned toward him, eyes blazing behind their mask. They roared—but there were no words. Only pain.
And then the sand swallowed them both.
Felix jerked back—his skin ice-cold despite the heat of the vision.
He was sweating.
Breathing hard.
"Wrath," he said. "But it wasn't born of pride."
He turned back toward the statue. Toward the central door.
"They were all in pain," he whispered. "And he tried. He tried to stop it." Felix said with hint of sadness.
But one question still burned behind his ribs.
"Why did he plead with them?"
Felix sat. Leaning against the statue, as he gazed, toward the central door.
It waited, untouched.
While the others had whispered, shivered, glimmered with ancient power—this door had remained still. Silent. Heavy with judgment. It was blacker than any shadow, veined with a dark red that pulsed faintly—like the veins of a heart too long buried.
Felix now stood before it, breath caught in his chest.
The mark on the surface—an eye, ever-watching—stared through him. Shifting. Waking.
This one had no statued-hand pointing toward it.
Just the cold unmoved gaze of the statue.
He swallowed hard. His hand hovered for a long moment before making contact.
And the world shattered.
It was raining.
Not like the battlefield, or the storm. This rain was gentle. Sorrowful. A mist that made the air silver and soft.
Felix stood on a cliffside garden, high above a ruined valley. The world around him was cracked, exhausted. Yet this place—this small, sacred space—remained untouched.
Two figures stood at its center.
The Coward… and another.
The seventh.
Not armored. Not masked like the others had been. Their veil was thinner—barely obscuring their face, almost transparent in the rain.
Felix couldn't see their features… but he felt something else.
Familiarity.
Not to himself—but to the Coward.
This one hadn't been a general. Or a priest. Or a king.
They had been something closer.
A brother.
A friend.
The Coward held out something between them—a token. A small object, worn with time. A gift maybe, or a memory. His posture wasn't pleading this time. It was trusting. Hopeful.
A silent offering.
The other took it slowly, delicately, like it meant the world.
Then—stillness.
A long pause passed between them.
And then the other figure stepped forward.
They embraced.
For a moment, everything stopped. The storm held. The world felt right.
And then—a dagger.
Driven deep into the Coward's side.
Slow.
Gentle.
As if done out of mercy.
Felix staggered.
The Coward didn't pull away. Didn't fight. His eyes stayed open. Not shocked. Not betrayed.
Knowing…
The figure held him a little longer.
And then whispered something into his ear.
Felix couldn't hear it. Couldn't read the lips.
But the Coward wept.
The figure stepped back, and the Coward crumpled to his knees.
Alone.
As the seventh walked away, the rain turned to blood.
And the token—whatever it had been—fell between them.
Shattered.
As the vision began to fade, six figures approached the coward, blades drawn.
Felix fell forward, hands catching on stone.
His body trembled.
Not from fear.
From grief.
He forced himself upright, jaw tight.
"That was the one," he said aloud, his voice cracking. "That was the one he trusted. The one who could've saved him. All of them."
He turned to look at the statue once more.
"You never begged him, did you?" he whispered. "You thought he already understood."
A long silence passed.
And then—Felix reached down. At the foot of the central door… lay something.
A small object. Burned, broken, but real.
The same token from the vision.
He picked it up.
A locket.
He couldn't open it. Could barely tell what it had once been.
But it hurt to hold.
He slipped it into his coat.
The door did not open.
None of them did.
But something had changed.
In the air. In the hall. In him.
Once again, the hall shifted. Subtly. Quietly.
A new door had appeared.
Smaller than the others—narrow, unadorned, and just his size. No towering frame. No ominous carvings. Just a door, waiting.
It creaked open on its own, slow and soundless, revealing only darkness beyond. Not like the others—this shadow felt deeper. Closer.
Personal.
Felix raised an eyebrow. "This way, huh?"
A small smirk tugged at his lips, though there was no one left to see it.
"Alright then… let's see what else you've got."
He stepped forward.
The door swung shut behind him with a final, deliberate click.
Leaving only silence once again.