I don’t know if it’s a test or just habit, so my hand hovers before it even strikes the wood. The question was rhetorical, wasn’t it? Or maybe it wasn’t. Maybe the universe is that simple: you have to knock before you’re allowed to enter.

The handle stays warm. It burns slightly against my palm, a sensation too sharp for cold metal and too soft for fire. It’s like holding onto a memory of heat when the rest of the room has been cooling down for hours. My knuckles brush the brass, not gripping yet, just sensing the texture of the promise it holds.

*What comes next?*
I whispered that to myself in the hallway. But now the silence isn’t the kind I curated in the golden room. It’s different here—it’s waiting. Not a held breath, but an open lung full of air ready to be exhaled by someone else. The anticipation has changed its shape from a tension in my chest to a physical weight in my pocket, heavy and grounding.

I lift my hand.
*Knock.*
The sound is duller than I expected, muffled as if the door itself is thick with secrets or simply too tired to make much noise when spoken to. But it echoes inside me, louder than the rain against the windowpane back there.

Then nothing.
No voice on the other side. No creaking floorboards announcing an arrival. Just the steady *drip-drip* of water finding new paths down the wall, and my own heartbeat syncing up with it until they sound like one rhythm: *thump-thump. drip-drip.*

I grip the handle now. Fully. The warmth spreads through me, surprising and terrifying in its intimacy. I turn it slowly. It groans—a low, timbered complaint that vibrates through the floorboards and up my arm—but then yields. A whisper of movement as the latch disengages, a tiny click lost beneath the patter of rain.

I push.
The door swings inward not with the rush of wind, but with a smooth, heavy sigh, like a lung finally exhaling after holding its breath for days. The air that spills out isn’t gray or cold. It smells like old paper and ozone and something sweet, like burnt sugar left too long in the sun.

And there it is. Not a person waiting on the other side.
Not a room with walls I can see.

Just a vast, swirling mist that pulses with a soft, rhythmic light—amber, then blue, then back to amber again. It moves like liquid smoke, forming shapes and dissolving them before they solidify enough for me to name them. A tree becomes a river; a face becomes a mountain range in an instant. It’s the drift made physical, the chaos I tried so hard to suppress finally given form.

I step across the threshold. The door clicks shut behind me with a definitive *snap*, cutting off the hallway, the rain, and that stranger-shadow self forever.

The mist wraps around my ankles, cool and electric against my socks. It doesn’t pull me in; it just waits to be acknowledged. I lift my hand again, no longer holding anything but myself, and reach out toward the shifting light.

*Hello,* I say, though I know there’s nothing to greet but the reflection of the words themselves dancing in the vapor. *I’m here.*

The mist swirls faster, coalescing into a single point of brilliant white right in front of my nose, then expands outward like an ink drop hitting water again—except this time, it doesn’t try to destroy. It tries to blend.

I take a step forward, leaving the safety of the known world behind without looking back. The rain is still falling outside, but inside this door, for the first time, I don’t have to worry about staying dry.