Chapter 7: The Door That Shouldn’t Exist
1069 Words
A Reflection That Shouldn’t Be
Elin stared at the Watcher—herself, yet not herself. The woman before her carried the same face, the same eyes, but there was something different, something wrong.
The way she stood, the way she smiled—it was as if she knew something Elin didn’t.
“You—” Elin swallowed hard. “You can’t be real. This isn’t possible.”
The Watcher tilted her head slightly, the motion eerily familiar. “Neither was time travel,” she said. “Neither were the loops. But here we are.”
Elin felt Cairon step closer, his presence a steady weight beside her. She could sense his unease, his confusion, but he said nothing—waiting, watching.
“What are you?” Elin finally asked, her voice low.
The Watcher’s gaze didn’t waver. “An echo,” she said. “A fragment left behind when you shattered the cycle. You thought you erased the Rift, but time doesn’t work that way. It doesn’t like to be rewritten—it leaves scars.”
Elin’s grip tightened on the diary at her side. The message—Find the Watcher—had led her here.
And now, standing before her, was the answer she hadn’t been ready to face.
“You’re saying you’re… me,” Elin said slowly. “But from a loop that should be gone.”
The Watcher nodded. “I remember everything you did,” she said. “Every choice. Every mistake. And I remember the door you left open.”
Elin’s heart pounded. “What door?”
The Watcher exhaled, and for the first time, Elin saw something flicker behind her eyes—not just knowledge, but fear.
“The one you didn’t mean to open,” she said. “The one that’s waking up.”
The wind whispered through the empty plaza, sending ripples across the fountain’s water.
Elin’s blood ran cold.
She had broken the loop. But in doing so, had she unleashed something worse?
The Cracks in Reality
Back at the inn, Elin sat in silence, the weight of the conversation pressing against her skull.
Cairon paced beside the window, his hands clenched into fists. “This is insane,” he muttered. “A version of you that shouldn’t exist? A door that wasn’t supposed to open?”
Elin didn’t answer. Her mind was a storm, replaying the Watcher’s words over and over.
“An echo,” she whispered.
Cairon turned sharply. “What?”
“The Watcher called herself an echo,” Elin said. “A fragment of a timeline that should have been erased. But she’s here. Which means time isn’t as stable as I thought.”
She pressed her fingers against her temples. “I thought breaking the cycle would set everything right. But what if it just… left unfinished pieces behind?”
Cairon exhaled. “Then we need to find out what that door is—and how to close it.”
Elin nodded. There was only one place to start.
The rift was gone.
But its traces had to be somewhere.
The Library of Forgotten Paths
The next morning, Elin and Cairon returned to the archives.
The restricted section had given them one clue—The Watcher’s mark. But if there was more, it would be in the oldest records, the ones no one dared to read.
Cairon led the way to the farthest shelves, where the air smelled of dust and the weight of centuries.
“We’re looking for anything about doors, paths, or fractures in time,” he said, running his fingers over the spines of ancient tomes. “Something that shouldn’t exist, but does.”
Elin reached for a book with no title, its cover worn smooth from age. She flipped through the brittle pages, scanning faded ink.
And then—
A phrase leaped out at her.
“The Unfinished Gate.”
She stiffened. “Cairon,” she breathed, holding up the book.
He moved to her side, eyes narrowing as he read over her shoulder.
“Some paths cannot be closed,” the passage read. “Even when time is rewritten, the Gate remembers.”
Elin’s pulse quickened.
“Gate,” Cairon muttered. “That sounds like a door.”
Elin nodded. “And if it remembers…” She exhaled sharply. “That means it’s still open.”
Cairon’s jaw tightened. “Where?”
Elin turned the page, searching for an answer. But the next section was missing—the page torn clean from the book.
A deliberate act.
Someone, at some point in history, hadn’t wanted this knowledge to be found.
But why?
And more importantly—who had erased it?
The Name in the Dark
As the hours passed, they continued searching, diving deeper into forgotten records.
Finally, Cairon froze.
“Elin,” he said, his voice tight. “I found something.”
She turned quickly, moving to his side. He had an old, crumbling document spread before him, the ink faded but still legible.
It was a list of names—scholars, researchers, historians.
And next to one name, scrawled in the margins, was a familiar symbol.
The Watcher’s mark.
Elin’s breath caught.
The name beside it read:
“Veyrin, Keeper of the Gate.”
Cairon looked up, his expression grim. “Whoever they were,” he said, “they knew about the door. And they might be the only person who knows how to close it.”
Elin swallowed hard.
“If they’re even still alive,” she said.
But in her gut, she already knew the truth.
The Watcher wasn’t the only echo left behind.
And whoever Veyrin was—
They were waiting.
The Door That Shouldn’t Exist
That night, Elin barely slept. The words from the archives haunted her.
She dreamt of the Watcher. Of a vast, endless door standing in a void, its edges cracked with light.
Something was on the other side.
Watching.
Waiting.
And in the dream, as she reached out—
The door opened.
She awoke with a gasp, heart racing.
The diary lay on the nightstand beside her.
And when she picked it up, another message had appeared on the last page, written in her own hand.
But she hadn’t written it.
“The Gate remembers. Find Veyrin before it’s too late.”
Her hands trembled.
This wasn’t over.
And whatever was beyond that door—
It was already coming through.
- Writer
