In a dark room, lit only by a thin thread of light slipping through the curtains, two boys sat in two chairs. One was made for gaming, and the other was a plain wooden chair that the second boy had clearly dragged up from downstairs just to have a seat.
Timo sat on the wooden chair. He looked like a normal, cheerful kid, with clean features and a healthy build. Lunet, across from him, sat in the gaming chair. His body was a little thin next to Timo's, his face pale, and dark circles showed clearly under his eyes. The two didn't look like brothers. They looked like friends.
They'd shut the door tight, just in case someone tried to come in. They didn't want anyone interrupting what they were doing. The two of them sat in front of a new computer, its screen glowing black. They weren't playing anything on it. They were reading.
"Zol is power. Zol is wealth. Zol is life." Lunet read the lines out loud.
For the whole past month, Lunet had searched everywhere for this book. Normally, people used well known apps to read books, or went to a bookstore and bought a copy.
That was the usual way to read books, normal books at least. But what sat in front of them now didn't look like a normal book at all.
"Book One of the Five Doors," Lunet said, with a bit of relief in his voice.
The only way they'd found to get the book was through some unofficial site, closer to forbidden than anything else. The Five Doors series was made up of five books.
Throughout history it had been known as one of the most dangerous books to exist, and many people thought it was nothing more than a legend. Strangely enough, if it hadn't been for Timo's help, they probably never would have found it at all.
Lunet smiled lightly and patted his friend's back.
"You can be useful sometimes, you know that?"
Timo felt flattered, and he didn't even try to hide how pleased he was. That wide grin, wide enough to look almost unsettling, said it all.
"Don't mention it."
Lunet tried, with some difficulty, to hide his nerves and the shaking of his hands, thinking to himself
'I don't have another way out. I have to perform the ritual.'
The books held different rituals, each one holding its own. It was said that these rituals let people enter a non physical realm called the Realm of the Fate, where they would step into a story that held rewards.
The main purpose of the ritual was to see the future, and that was what drew so many researchers, lovers of mystery and metaphysical things, to search for the book and spread rumors about it.
Lunet, on the other hand, didn't care about any of that. The reason he'd searched for this mysterious book, the reason he wanted to perform the ritual, was simple. He was sick. Sick with something that couldn't be cured by ordinary means, or by any easy way.
No one who caught the illness ever lived past sixteen. The government always made sure of that, killing them before they turned that age. Because if someone did survive past it, they wouldn't die. They'd turn into a monster called a Whisperer.
One page of the strange book claimed the ritual could cure Lunet's illness, known as Soul Rot.
After a few minutes of reading, the two of them rose lightly from their chairs and walked to the middle of the room.
"Ready enough."
Then, after a moment, he added
"If we make one wrong move, stop the ritual right away."
Lunet nodded. He didn't try to joke. This wasn't the kind of moment that left room for it.
No candles, no smells, no sounds. Just the table in the middle of the room, a circle drawn on it in an uneven line, marked with short symbols Timo had written by hand.
Timo pointed at the floor.
"Stand here. Don't move after that."
Lunet stepped into the circle. The floor was cold under his feet, strange for a summer day, but he didn't pay it much mind.
Timo picked up his notepaper, covered edge to edge in messy handwriting.
"The world of the Five Doors can be dangerous, so try not to die in there. That's how we'll know you made it back."
"And if I don't come back?" Lunet asked.
Timo paused for a second, then said, plain as anything
"I'll tell your mother you loved her."
Lunet let out a short laugh.
"Why are you even talking like that?"
Timo gave him a look that was a little too serious for how ridiculous his face made it look.
"Shh. Lie down. Lie down."
Lunet swallowed his laugh and just said
"Begin."
Timo sat on the floor at the edge of the circle and reached one hand inside it, careful not to cross the line completely. He pressed his fingers against one of the marks.
"Focus. Don't try to do anything. If you feel a sharp pain, just try to hold through it."
Lunet noticed something strange in his friend, something that hadn't been there a moment ago. He chose not to think about it too much.
He took a slow breath and tried to fix his eyes on one spot on the wall, but within seconds the feeling in the room began to shift. Not sudden, just gradual. A light pressure building in his head, then a heaviness settling behind his eyes.
"My head's starting to hurt," Lunet said.
"That's normal. Don't fight it," Timo replied, without looking up.
The headache grew. Not sharp, but like something was pressing outward from the inside. The sounds around him blurred together for a moment, then sharpened again.
Standing suddenly felt harder, like his body was a step behind his own commands. He breathed again, deeper this time.
"My vision," he said, quieter now, "it's going blurry."
Timo answered at once.
"Close your eyes. And don't open them, no matter what you see."
Lunet obeyed. He shut his eyes, and the second the light disappeared, so did his sense of the room around him. The last thing he heard was his friend's voice
"Please die in there."
It was a strange thing to say, but Timo said strange things all the time, so Lunet just laughed it off.
Then came the dark. Thick, complete. Lunet couldn't see a thing. A small thread of worry crept into him.
This is taking too long. Why is it still dark?
After a minute, light broke through. It wasn't really bright, more just comfortable, but coming after all that darkness, it felt blinding at first.
Once his eyes adjusted, he looked around. A wide, open space with no walls and no ceiling, the ground beneath him flat, gray, and silent. The light had no source, steady from every direction. The air didn't move. Far above, some vast gray mass shifted slowly, its layers folding over each other without sound. Everything else was still.
So this is the Realm of fate , Lunet thought, staring straight ahead. Just like the book said. Different for everyone, but the one thing that stays the same is the five Doors of Fate.
In front of him stood five doors. Plain, ordinary, made of regular wood, nothing special about them to look at. But their appearance didn't matter. What mattered was what they led to, since each one opened onto a story where whoever performed the ritual would be both its main character.
He started toward the doors, then stopped short, mouth falling open, because something stood there that wasn't supposed to be. Something the book never mentioned.
"What… what is that?"
A doll, massive, nearly the size of a small mountain, hung in the sky with nothing holding it up. It had no real features besides a wide smile stretched across its face. Its giant hands reached outward, and from every finger hung a thin thread.
Below it stood hundreds of smaller dolls, human sized, frozen in place. Ten threads dropped down from the giant doll's fingers, each one tied to a single small doll among them.
Lunet walked up to the door and tried to open it, but it wouldn't budge. He looked down and found a lock built into it.
"Great. And where am I supposed to find a key for this?" he shouted, his voice echoing through the empty space.
It was only when he turned back toward the crowd of dolls that he spotted it: a small key hanging from the neck of the one doll tied to the threads. It hadn't been there before, or maybe he'd just missed it the first time, too rattled to notice.
He moved between the rows of dolls, heart pounding, every step feeling like it took forever. He kept his eyes open for any sign of movement. When he reached the tied doll, he swallowed hard and reached out for the key.
The thread holding the doll's arm snapped the moment he touched it, and the arm dropped limp. Lunet jumped back with a yell, certain for one second that this was how it ended. He grabbed the key off the ground and ran for the doors.
He tried the first lock. Nothing. The second. The third. On the fourth, it finally clicked open. He turned the handle and stepped through, fear still gripping him, but he knew there was no going back now, not without finishing a story.
He walked through the door, and a voice rose out of the emptiness
[Welcome]
[Story One… Land of Slaves]