When The Door Is Not A Door Novels & Stories

Like someone or something had fallen. There was no one there when I opened the door, but a note… just at my door.

I pointed him in the direction of the steel. “This is the one,” I said, pointing. “I need this door open.” The bald man, years past his prime, steps forward, holding his hands up to the door. He looks back at me in confusion. “I don’t feel any magic on this door,” he says. Will had walked away, studying the makeshift bedroom made in the cell. That can’t be. I grab the handle, pulling on it, and unlike previously, the door opens. I make out the faces for four young people, none of them being Elias.

It was more like rotten eggs and the lingering fragrance you got after striking a match. “You can't be serious,” Janice said to nobody in particular. She tried the front door and was not in the least bit surprised it refused to yield. The doorknob had no give at all, not even the wiggle you get when you try to open a locked door. It was as though a mere model, a convincing sculpture or mockup of a door. “You're not going to let me in until I play your stupid game, are you?” Neither the door nor the vial answered.

There is no joy in his touch , there is no laughter , no happiness , no love and no passion ; instead all I feel is a touch of emptiness. We walk up to a giant wooden door – unlike the door at my father’s kingdom , this door has no appeal to it. There is no special design , there is no engraved patterns , no splash of colour ; the only thing that it does have is steel…lots and lots of steel and metal. The metal runs all around the door frame , while a big lion head of metal sticks out from the door. Though it was just a door and just a door design , I felt a cold shiver run down my spine.

The walls of the corridor exhibit a pulsing rhythm aligned with the Core's activity, contributing to a faint vibration felt underfoot. Finally, Kael reaches the end of the corridor, where he encounters a pair of stone doors with intricate carvings that appear ancient and layered, indicating that multiple artisans over different periods contributed to the designs. A warm amber light seeped through the cracks of the door frame. The doors have no handles, no visible mechanism to open them, and no response to touch or pressure in the usual way. As he stands in front of the doors, the sound of distant screeches grows closer, prompting him to place both hands flat against the surface of the doors.

Somewhere behind us, a door appeared in the stone. Not the one we came through. This one was smaller. Narrower. Made of black wood with no handle. A child’s door. My stomach turned. Because I knew that door. I had dreamed of it when I was little. For years. A door too small for adults. A door under the stairs. A door my mother said did not exist. Damien saw my face. “What is it?” “I know that door.” His grip tightened. The mirror woman smiled. “Then open it.”

asked Kasha as she went to sit down. Ayan opened her eyes. “ A soul door is a door that traps whoever passess through it without authorization from the summoner. The trespasser’s soul will be lost forever” explained Ayan. “ Then how was I able to escape?” asked Kasha. “The door wasn't activated. Her plan was not to harm you but to let you know that she was aware of your every move. I told you before, she is not to be messed with” said Ayan. “What do we do now?” asked Kasha impatiently.

“The missing vendor hasn’t reappeared. We don’t search. Whoever took him will either return him or not. In the meantime, we do our work.” “Good,” I reply. “Two main topics today: the ‘blind doors’ and the children’s silence protocol.” I place a short list on the table. “‘Blind doors’: we call those inner passages where the wall remembers use but no longer has a function. We don’t open them, we only name and mark them, so if someone outside is ‘searching for rhythm,’ they won’t find a door in their mind.”

I’d let it tell its story with me as the spine. Now I yanked on that spine. In my head, I pictured a door. Not the Game’s kind. Not a neat, glowing arch with EXIT stamped above it in font‑approved letters. A bad door. Rushed. Messy. Cracked at the edges, half‑formed in places, like something a writer sketched in the margins to remind themselves to come back later. A way *out*, not a way along. Not just for me. For all of us. I imagined it at the far side of the chamber, away from the central mirror. Tall. Slightly crooked. Flickering around the edges. Marked not by the system’s clean HUD text, but by my own, ugly handwriting scrawled over it: OUT.

"They will insist on playing loud music and games during the height of the zombie outbreak! And they won't stop even when you tell them to!" "They're also going to eat up all of your rations and then eat your pets too!" "Don't you ever open that door! It's your last line of defense against them!" The knocking on the other side of the door continued, and my vision somehow felt like it had just been attacked by a virus with how the live comments kept popping up non-stop. Yet, all of them warned me not to open the door at all costs. I carefully withdrew my hand, feeling my heart thumping loudly in my chest.