Chapter 20 – The Door That Shouldn’t Exist
Riven doesn't remember falling asleep.
One moment, he's sitting in the hideout, trying to piece together the fragments of what happened in the Hollow City. The next, he's somewhere else.
A room. Small. Familiar.
Too familiar.
The wallpaper is the same muted green from his childhood bedroom. The bed is the same, down to the frayed edges of the blanket he used to hide under. Even the air smells the same—dust, old wood, the faint metallic bite of city rain.
But something is wrong.
There is a door that shouldn't be there.
It stands at the far side of the room, tall, unnaturally dark, pulsing at the edges like a wound in reality.
He stares at it.
It stares back.
The doorknob twitches. A fraction of an inch. A breath of movement.
Riven's chest tightens.
Then—a knock.
Soft. Rhythmic. Too measured.
He swallows hard. Steps forward. Stops.
Something is waiting on the other side.
Something that knows his name.
Another knock. Three times.
His body tenses. Every instinct screams at him to turn, to run, to wake up—but he isn't asleep.
He knows he isn't asleep.
The door shudders.
A voice slips through the cracks, threading through the silence like smoke—
"Riven…"
A whisper. A greeting. A warning.
He backs away.
The door opens.
A rush of cold air floods the room. The lights flicker—shadows stretch unnaturally long—and something steps through.
It has no face.
No form.
Only an absence.
A hollowed-out shape of a man, built from darkness and the stolen echoes of voices that shouldn't be speaking.
"You left us behind," it says.
A thousand voices, layered on top of each other.
Riven runs.
---
He isn't in his childhood room anymore.
The world twists. The ground is a blur beneath his feet. He doesn't know where he's going—only that he has to get away.
The walls stretch and warp, pulling into a corridor that shouldn't exist. The floor shifts beneath him, refusing to hold still. Doors line the hall, each one slightly open, revealing glimpses of wrongness.
A city frozen mid-collapse.
A battlefield where time has stopped.
A room filled with versions of himself—watching. Waiting.
The whisper follows him.
"You left us."
"You don't belong."
"Come back."
A door ahead swings open on its own.
He doesn't want to go through it.
But the hallway is collapsing behind him, walls caving inward like a throat preparing to swallow him whole.
He has no choice.
He steps through.
---
He is back in the real world.
Or—at least, it looks like the real world.
The hideout. The dim light of the streetlamps filtering through the windows. The low hum of electricity in the walls.
But something is missing.
Something is wrong.
The air feels too still. The shadows are just a little too deep.
Riven exhales shakily, pressing a hand to his chest. His heart is hammering.
He turns—
And freezes.
There is a door behind him.
The same one.
Standing in the middle of the hideout.
Waiting.
And from the other side, he hears himself whisper—
"Let me in."