The Weight of Wanting

Chapter 8: The Door between

I only got out of bed when Elira wasn’t home.

She still had to make a living, and I... I needed to move. To stretch. To prove to myself that I was still real.

The floor was cold beneath my feet. But I welcomed it. I’d grown too used to heat—fever heat, fire heat, the warmth of stillness that only pretended to be life. This was different. Bracing. Honest.

Each step felt like an unspoken question: Are you still dying?

And each time, the answer was: Not yet.

I didn’t tell Elira right away. Part of me feared the strength would vanish the moment I named it. That if I spoke of the door, it would close forever.

But I knew this much: something had answered my prayer. And the old magic stirring in my bones had nothing to do with gods.

There was only one way to understand it—through the dream.

So I chased it.

I slept as often as my body would allow, slipping between blankets with the hope that slumber would carry me back. But the dream never came from naps or shallow rest. Only when I surrendered fully—sleeping one day into the next—did the door return.

Each time, I got closer. And each day, I grew stronger.

But I knew this strength was borrowed. A kindness on credit. If I didn’t find the door—didn’t accept whatever bargain waited on the other side—then it would leave me. My body would fail again. And this time, I feared I wouldn’t have Elira at my side to guide me into the gods’ embrace.

Not that I even knew if they’d take me.

A soul that didn’t fit the plan. A vessel that had always ached to be something else. A failure.

But still—I dreamed. I kept walking.

On the third night, I reached the door—and opened it.

Beyond lay music. Ethereal. It curled through the air like mist: haunting and comforting all at once, a song I somehow knew but could not name.

Then I heard a voice. Faint. Distant. Yet impossibly clear.

“We are waiting for you.”

And I woke.

It was still dark. The world hadn’t stirred—not even the songbirds. But I was already awake, energy humming through my limbs like lightning caught in bone.

I tested one thing. Just one.

“Solmiren,” I whispered.

The word bloomed in the air before me, and with it, a small globe of light—soft and warm.

My oldest word.

My first spell.

The watching light.

It had seen everything. My rise. My failures. The slow rot within.

And now, it would witness my cruelest trick yet—if I failed.

But I wouldn’t.

I gathered my supplies, driven less by logic than by instinct. I didn’t know the path—not in any way I could name—but something inside me did. Some buried thread tugged with quiet certainty, pulling me toward whatever waited.

So I left.

I left the home Elira fought to keep over my head. The home where she had nursed me through nights I barely remember. The home where we had lived—not as lovers, but as something quieter. Steadier.

I left it all behind, for a chance.

A chance at life.

A chance to be whole.

Whatever the cost, I had to try.