The Stillborn Door

Stone.

Cold. Damp. Alive.

Anna lay on the floor of the Womb Room—only it wasn't a room anymore.

It was a cell.

And it breathed.

Each time she pressed her hands to the walls, they pulsed. Like flesh. Like something was inside. Or she was inside something else.

There was no crib now. No altar.

Only a single door. Seamless. No handle.

The air reeked of lavender and rot.

She screamed once.

It went nowhere.

Sound died here. Not echoed—died.

And the silence left space for memory.

Not her own.

But Annora's.

Images flickered behind her eyes:

Evelyn, whispering to a mirror, "You'll stay quiet for her, won't you?"

Anna at age five, standing at a well, looking down—but seeing her own face looking up.

The first dream Anna ever had in Dorma, the night she moved in—of something knocking from under the floorboards.

She had never dreamed that.

Annora had.

Anna wasn't trapped in the room.

She was trapped in Annora's life.

A shadow made solid. A forgotten twin's broken reality wrapped around her like a cocoon.

But even shadows leave cracks.

Anna stood and faced the door.

"Let me out," she said.

The room inhaled.

"Let me—"

"Out?" a voice replied.

It wasn't Annora's.

It wasn't Evelyn's.

It was the house.

Dorma.

"You were never in, Anna. You were always borrowed. A vessel. A distraction. A choice made out of pity."

Anna backed away.

"I'm not just her," she said. "I'm not just a mistake."

"No," Dorma agreed. "You are a question."

And with that, the seamless wall cracked.

A seam split vertically. Slowly. Like lips unsealing after a long, cold silence.

Beyond it: nothing but a narrow passage of pulsing flesh and distant lullabies.

At the end, barely visible, a girl stood.

Her back turned.

Dark hair.

Small frame.

She looked… unfinished.

As if someone had stopped building her halfway.

Anna stepped forward.

"Annora?"

The girl didn't turn.

But her voice reached back:

"You came back late."

And then—

The ground shifted.

Not fell—shifted, as if Anna had been standing on someone's memory the whole time, and that memory decided to forget her.

She tumbled through darkness again—

—but this time, she wasn't alone.

Hands brushed hers.

Fingers—her fingers—wrapped around her own.

Two heartbeats. Two minds. Two names.

One body.

The merge had begun.

Anna is merging.

And Dorma wants only one daughter.

Annora's Struggle to remain separate.

Annora stood in the Hollow Wing, her hand still hovering above the sealed ledger.

"Merging imminent."

The words glowed faintly, then faded, like breath on a mirror.

She stepped back.

No.

No.

This was her life. Her name. Her body reclaimed. She wouldn't give it up—not again. Not now that she'd finally felt real.

She bolted from the ledger room, down hallways that twisted mid-step, through doors that led to rooms she didn't remember until she stepped inside.

But the house was closing.

Tightening.

The walls leaned in. Paint peeled in reverse. Doors she'd passed now sealed shut behind her like blinks.

She reached the attic again. The mirror stood still.

Anna's image flickered there.

Faint.

Fighting.

Annora saw her.

Hands pressed against the other side of the glass. Anna's eyes wide, desperate. Not pleading.

Challenging.

"Let me back," Anna mouthed.

Annora's throat clenched.

"No," she whispered. "You had your life."

The mirror rippled.

"You were chosen," Anna mouthed again. "But I made something of it."

Annora screamed. Fists clenched. "I was something! I was everything you forgot!"

And the mirror shattered—

—but the shards hovered in air, frozen, caught in a frame of invisible tension. Each shard showing a piece of a life:

Anna laughing at school.

Evelyn crying in secret.

Annora watching from beneath the floor.

Memories tangled.

Truths blurred.

A shard near Annora's foot whispered in Evelyn's voice:

"One heart cannot beat for two."

Annora fell to her knees.

She looked at her hands—solid now, warm, real.

She pressed them to her chest.

It beat.

But faintly.

Shared.

Anna was pulling. Fighting. Refusing to be overwritten.

And Dorma was watching.

Waiting.

One daughter. One name. One keeper of the house.

Annora stood, teeth bared.

"Then I'll burn the name," she said. "Both of them."

She turned toward the stairwell—the one that led to the fireplace, to the last pages of the journal Anna had hidden.

If she could burn the origin, maybe Dorma couldn't choose.

But the moment she took a step, she felt it—

A hand on her ankle.

Cold.

Tiny.

Familiar.

From beneath the floorboards, something old and unfinished pulled back.

And whispered:

"You're not done yet."

She's ready to burn the origin. But Dorma is made of more than memory—and fire may not be enough.

The hearth of names of Annora descended the staircase like a revenant—no hesitation, no fear. Only purpose.

The house shifted beneath her, trying to stall her steps: halls lengthening, shadows crowding close, doors she'd already passed appearing ahead of her again.

But she was no longer a whisper.

She was a will.

When she reached the hearth, the air was thick with smoke—not from fire, but from forgotten things. The room hummed low, like an organ note too deep to hear with ears.

Anna's memory of this place had been warm, nostalgic, tragic.

Annora's truth was colder.

The fireplace was empty now, save for a pile of unburned pages, blackened at the edges but intact. Their ink shimmered red.

She approached.

The journal Evelyn had used—the one Anna thought she'd destroyed—lay open on the stones. And there, at the very end:

A name.

Not Evelyn.

Not Anna.

Not even Annora.

It read:

"The Daughter of No Voice."

Annora's pulse quickened. The house shivered around her.

The page was hers.

The name they'd written in secret, without ink, without breath.

The name Dorma had given her.

The one that gave her form.

She knelt.

Pulled the matchbox from the mantle—Evelyn's old one, wrapped in silver thread. She struck it.

The flame flickered blue.

Wind screamed down the chimney.

The name moved on the page, curling like a living thing. As if burning it would hurt.

"You're choosing silence," the house whispered.

"No," Annora said. "I'm choosing me."

She dropped the flame.

The page lit like dry skin, curling instantly.

The room shuddered.

The air pulled away, like it was being sucked into the fire. The walls shook. Windows cracked. The floor beneath her split slightly—and through the crack, she saw eyes.

Looking up.

A dozen. A hundred.

Children Dorma had taken. Names Dorma had held.

She wasn't burning just hers.

She was burning the binding.

And Dorma screamed.

Not like a voice.

Like a storm through bones.

The fire flared white—

And then went out.

The journal was gone.

The hearth was cold.

Annora stood alone, chest heaving, skin glowing faintly red from the heat.

In the silence, the voice that had once called itself Dorma spoke again—

Smaller now.

Fainter.

"You will forget yourself."

Annora smiled.

"No," she said, stepping away from the hearth. "I rewrote myself."

And for the first time, the floorboards beneath her did not whisper.

They listened.