Ryan felt the new door before he saw it.
It was different from the others—not silver, not gold, not black, not light. It was the color of absence. The color of a place that had never known presence. It pulsed at the edge of his awareness, a slow, steady rhythm that matched the beating of his heart.
He walked to the edge of the garden. The door was there, waiting, patient.
Mira appeared beside him. "Dada, I can't feel anything from it."
Ryan's scar blazed. "I can. It's empty."
"Empty how?"
"Like the void before the void. Like a place that never learned to exist."
---
The fragments gathered around the new door.
Their red lights flickered with unease. They could feel the emptiness too—a vast, ancient absence that pressed against their consciousness.
"We don't like it," one of the fr
