Sam sat alone in the collapsing tavern, surrounded by the devastation of abandoned dreams. Half the doors had been extracted by Dr. Vex’s organization, their creators convinced that separation meant survival. The remaining worlds flickered like dying candles, their stories too fragmented to sustain themselves. Marcus had left an hour ago, following his rescued world …
The obsidian walls began to crack. Not clean breaks, but spider-web fractures that spread like infection through the black stone. With each crack, images flashed—fragments of the Tavernkeeper’s consumed memories playing out in the reflective surface like a horror slideshow. A young person, no more than twenty, standing before their first door with shining eyes …
The Tavernkeeper’s body had become translucent, like looking at someone through fog. But their voice carried clearly across the panicking crowd. “Don’t mourn for me,” they said, even as pieces of themselves drifted away like smoke. “I have become what I was always meant to be. The foundation. The connection between all stories.” “Bullshit,” Elena …
“There,” Elena whispered, pointing toward the back of the tavern where a narrow staircase spiraled downward into shadows. “I’ve seen the Tavernkeeper go that way, but I never followed.” The stairs were carved from the same black obsidian as the walls, but here the stone seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it. Each step …
Sam couldn’t stop staring at the dead door. Twenty minutes ago it had been glowing with warm golden light. Now it looked like a piece of charcoal—black, lifeless, wrong. “It’s probably nothing,” Maya said, but her paint-stained fingers kept twitching toward her own door, the one marked with intertwined hearts. “Doors need maintenance sometimes. Right?” …
Sam clutched their crumpled fantasy world map and pushed through the tavern door, immediately diving sideways as a woman in a torn evening gown sprinted past, chasing what looked like a living shadow with too many teeth. “Sorry!” the woman called over her shoulder, brandishing a silver letter opener. “Romance gone wrong!” The shadow hissed …
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