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 and a story clutched in trembling hands.
The same person, older now, helping a desperate writer solve an impossible plot hole.
Older still, more faded, giving away pieces of their childhood to strengthen someone else’s magic system.
Ancient now, translucent, feeding their own capacity for wonder into world after world until nothing remained but hollow purpose.
The final image: the Tavernkeeper alone in the chamber below, writing in their journal with hands that were already becoming mist: Perhaps if I give everything at once, the gift will be permanent.
“They knew,” Maya whispered, tears streaming down her face. “They knew what would happen, and they chose it anyway.”
Dr. Vex remained unmoved. “Martyrdom doesn’t solve the underlying problem. The tavern is still unstable. The hunger remains.”
She was right. Around them, the remaining patrons pressed against the walls as the floor itself began to buckle. Doors that had stood for decades warped in their frames. Some opened onto static. Others revealed worlds in the process of collapse—skies falling, oceans draining, entire civilizations blinking out of existence.
Marcus grabbed Jin’s arm. “We need to evacuate. Now. My world is still stable—”
“For how long?” Elena interrupted. “Look around you. Everything connected to this place is dying.”
As if summoned by her words, Marcus’s golden-runed door flickered. Through the wavering portal, they could see his perfect throne room beginning to tilt, its carefully planned architecture defying gravity as the world’s foundations cracked.
“No,” Marcus breathed. “No, that’s impossible. I built that world to last forever.”
“Nothing lasts forever without something to sustain it,” Dr. Vex observed clinically. “The Tavernkeeper was your sustaining force. Without them—”
She was cut off by a scream from across the tavern. The woman whose students had been plagued was clutching her door frame as her classroom world collapsed completely. Through the opening, Sam could see desks and children falling upward into a gray void.
“I can’t save them,” the woman sobbed. “They’re dying, and I can’t even reach them.”
More screams followed as world after world began its death spiral. A Western frontier town where the sun was setting in the north. A spaceship where gravity had reversed and the crew floated helplessly against the ceiling. A fantasy kingdom where dragons were eating their own wings.
“This is chaos,” Dr. Vex said, pulling out what looked like a strange device covered in blinking lights. “I’m initiating emergency extraction protocols for viable worlds.”
“Whose worlds?” Sam demanded.
“Those that meet preservation standards. Quality construction, narrative coherence, commercial potential—”
“Meaning the rich ones,” Elena said flatly. “The ones built by people who could afford to do this full-time instead of stealing hours between jobs.”
Dr. Vex didn’t deny it. “Resources are limited. Triage is necessary.”
She activated her device, and beams of light shot toward select doors around the tavern. Marcus’s door was included. So was Jin’s, and the romance writer who’d been arguing with her love triangles. Maya’s door remained untouched.
“Hey,” Maya said, stepping toward Dr. Vex. “Why isn’t my world on your list?”
“Magic systems with infinite energy potential create narrative problems,” Dr. Vex replied matter-of-factly. “Conflict becomes impossible when power is unlimited. Your world would require extensive revision to meet commercial standards.”
“Commercial standards?” Maya’s voice rose. “I didn’t build that world to sell it. I built it because I needed somewhere love could actually win.”
“Economic viability—”
“Fuck economic viability,” Maya snapped. “That world kept me alive through my divorce. It’s where I learned that relationships could be about support instead of control. You want to throw it away because it doesn’t fit your marketing plan?”
Dr. Vex’s expression never changed. “Sentiment doesn’t alter practical realities.”
But as she spoke, something extraordinary happened. Maya’s door, which had been flickering between light and darkness, suddenly blazed brighter than before. The love-heart symbols on its frame began to glow with warm pink light.
“What the hell?” Dr. Vex said, checking her device. “That world was marked for abandonment.”
Maya stared at her door in wonder. “I told it why it mattered. I reminded it what it was for.”
Elena caught on first. “The worlds aren’t just dying because the Tavernkeeper is gone. They’re dying because we’re treating them like property instead of living things.”
She turned to her own door, which had been flickering ominously, and pressed her hands against its dark wood.
“I built you to help me face my fears,” she said clearly. “Not to overcome them, but to face them. To look at the darkness and find my own light.” The door’s pale wood grew brighter. “You matter because courage isn’t the absence of fear—it’s what we do in spite of fear.”
Elena’s door stabilized, its horror-movie glow shifting from sickly green to something deeper, more purposeful.
Jin was the next to understand. He approached his sterile, scientific door and spoke to it like he was addressing a colleague.
“You exist to explore what’s possible,” he said. “Not just what’s probable, but what could be if we dared to dream beyond current limitations. You’re not about perfect science—you’re about perfect wonder.”
His door’s cold blue light warmed to something more inviting.
But Marcus stood frozen before his failing door, unable to speak.
“Come on,” Maya urged him. “Tell it why it matters.”
“I…” Marcus’s voice caught. “I built it to be perfect. Complete. A world where everything made sense and nothing was left to chance.” He paused, staring at the fractures spreading through his throne room. “But that’s not why it matters to people, is it? They come to my world because they want to believe that planning and effort can create something lasting. That care and attention have meaning.”
His door’s golden light flickered, not quite stable but not failing either.
Sam looked around the tavern. The worlds that had been actively acknowledged and spoken to were holding steady. But dozens of others continued to collapse as their creators either fled or stood paralyzed by the scope of the disaster.
And Dr. Vex’s extraction beams were still pulling select worlds away from the tavern entirely, severing their connections to the crossroads.
“You’re making it worse,” Sam realized, staring at the woman. “You’re not saving anything—you’re teaching people to abandon each other.”
“I’m being practical,” Dr. Vex said coldly. “This place is finished. These people need to accept reality.”
“No,” Sam said, and their voice carried a conviction they didn’t know they possessed. “We need to change it.”
They turned away from Dr. Vex and raised their voice to address the entire tavern.
“Listen to me,” Sam called out. “The Tavernkeeper said stories aren’t meant to be preserved—they’re meant to be shared. What if we stopped trying to save our individual worlds and started saving all of them together?”
A few heads turned, but most people were too panicked to listen.
Sam tried again, louder. “The tavern is hungry because it’s trying to connect our stories, and we keep fighting that connection. What if we stopped fighting? What if we let our worlds touch each other?”
“That’s insane,” Dr. Vex said. “Cross-contamination would destroy narrative coherence.”
“Or create something none of us could build alone,” Sam replied. “The Tavernkeeper’s last words—they said we never understood what our worlds were meant to become.”
Elena stepped up beside Sam. “I’m willing to try.”
Maya joined them. “My magic system could work in other worlds. Love-based energy connecting everything together.”
Jin nodded slowly. “Faster-than-light travel powered by emotional connection rather than exotic matter. It could work.”
Even Marcus, after a long moment, stepped forward. “Economic systems that span multiple realities. Trade in stories instead of goods.”
But as they spoke, Dr. Vex’s extractions intensified. More and more worlds were being pulled away from the tavern, their creators convinced that separation was the only path to survival.
“You’re too late,” Dr. Vex said. “Half the stable worlds are already in transit to secure facilities. In an hour, this place will be nothing but rubble and broken dreams.”
Sam felt desperation rising in their chest. Around them, the tavern continued its death throes. The obsidian walls were more crack than stone now, and through the fissures, they could see something vast and dark moving in the spaces between worlds.
The hunger. Still waiting. Still feeding.
And they were running out of time to figure out how to feed it something else.
Something that would save everyone instead of just the lucky few.
Something that would prove the Tavernkeeper’s sacrifice hadn’t been in vain.
But what?