Chapter 1: The Three Doors of Hell

Chapter 1: The Three Doors of Hell

The glow of the monitor was a sickly, pale blue in the otherwise dark room, casting long, skeletal shadows across piles of clothes and forgotten coffee mugs. Daniel Keller stared at the spreadsheet, his eyes burning, but the numbers had long since blurred into a meaningless crawl of digital ants. 11:47 PM. He’d been pushing his deadline, working late not out of diligence, but out of a desperate, futile desire to outrun the night.

To outrun sleep.

He ran a hand through his greasy hair, his fingers scraping against his scalp. The familiar, heavy blanket of exhaustion was settling over him, a pressure behind his eyes, a leaden weight in his limbs. It was an old enemy, this fatigue. It promised relief but delivered only torment. Every night was the same battle, and every night, he lost.

His reflection in the dark screen was a stranger’s—a gaunt, haunted-looking man with the bruised, hollowed-out eyes of someone who hadn’t known a peaceful night’s rest in years. Since childhood, really. He was only twenty-five, but he felt ancient, worn down to the bone by a war fought on a battlefield no one else could see.

The yawn was a betrayal, a crack in his defenses. His eyelids felt like they were lined with sand. Giving in, he pushed away from the desk, the cheap office chair groaning in protest. He stumbled towards his bed, not bothering to change out of his jeans and t-shirt. The mundane ritual of preparing for bed felt like a mockery, like calmly dressing for your own execution.

Sleep didn’t offer him rest. It offered him a choice of three doors. And behind every door was hell.

He pulled the covers up to his chin, the cheap fabric a flimsy shield against the inevitable. He squeezed his eyes shut, praying for a void, for the sweet, dreamless oblivion he’d heard other people talk about. But the darkness behind his eyelids was never empty. It was a waiting room.

The descent was swift. The familiar sensation of falling, of his consciousness slipping its anchor to the real world, was followed by an icy, gut-wrenching plunge.

He opened his eyes to water.

Black, frigid, and endless. He was deep beneath the surface of a faceless ocean, the weight of a thousand atmospheres crushing the air from his lungs. Panic, cold and sharp, seized him. He thrashed, his limbs flailing against the suffocating pressure, but there was no up or down, no glimmer of light to strive for. The water filled his mouth, a bitter, briny violation. It was a silent, lonely death. The terror wasn't just of drowning, but of being utterly, cosmically alone in an abyss that didn't care. His lungs burned, a fire consuming him from the inside out until, with a final, shuddering gasp, he inhaled the deep and died.

He opened his eyes to a path.

The world was leached of all color, a monochrome landscape of gray dust and skeletal trees under a perpetually overcast sky. The silence here was worse than the pressure of the ocean; it was a heavy, mournful void that swallowed all sound. He was walking, his feet moving of their own accord down a narrow path.

And the path was lined with pikes.

He knew what he would see, and the foreknowledge was its own kind of torture. He forced himself not to look, his gaze fixed on the gray dirt, but he couldn't stop the peripheral images. On each wooden pike, weathered and splintered, was a head. His mother, her kind face slack, her eyes closed as if in peaceful sleep. His father, his jaw set with a stubbornness Daniel recognized even in death. His friends from college, his childhood neighbors.

Then he saw the last one. His Omi, her silver hair matted, her loving eyes, which always held a spark of old-world mischief, now vacant and staring into the gray nothing. A sob, raw and soundless, tore from his chest. Grief was a physical thing here, a poison that seeped into his bones, stopping his heart with the sheer weight of loss. He collapsed, his spirit breaking, and died.

He opened his eyes to a forest.

The transition was jarring. The silent grief was replaced by a primal, animalistic fear. Towering, black-limbed trees clawed at a bruised purple sky, their branches blotting out the sliver of a sickly moon. The air was cold, smelling of damp earth and decay. He was running. His heart hammered against his ribs like a trapped bird, his breath coming in ragged, painful bursts.

Behind him, something was keeping pace.

Snap.

The sound of a twig breaking under a heavy paw, too close. He didn't dare look back. He knew what was there. He’d been running from it his whole life. A low growl rumbled through the woods, a sound that vibrated in his very marrow, a predatory promise of violence. It was the purest form of fear, the terror of the hunted. His legs pumped harder, branches whipping at his face, tearing his skin.

But it was always useless.

A colossal weight slammed into his back, driving him to the forest floor. The impact knocked the wind out of him, and he could only lie there, paralyzed, gasping for air that wouldn't come. A hot, foul breath washed over the back of his neck, smelling of rot and old blood. Heavy paws pinned his shoulders, and he could feel a crushing weight settle onto his chest, right over his heart.

Tonight, though, it felt different. The weight was heavier, more solid. The pain of the impact wasn't just a dream-sensation; it was a sharp, radiating agony.

The beast lowered its massive head over him. He twisted his neck, catching a glimpse of a monstrous, wolf-like form, its fur the color of clotted blood in the gloom. But its eyes… its eyes were not animal. They were a brilliant, terrifying gold-yellow, glowing with a malevolent intelligence that stripped away every layer of his courage.

It opened its jaws, revealing rows of black, needle-like teeth. The growl deepened into a wet, guttural snarl. And then it bit down.

A scream of pure, unadulterated agony ripped through him as the teeth sank into his chest. This was not dream pain. This was real. Searing, tearing, a violation so profound it shattered the very fabric of the nightmare.

Daniel’s eyes flew open.

He was in his bed, the covers twisted around his legs. His room was silent, save for his own frantic, wheezing breaths. He was drenched in sweat, his t-shirt clinging to his skin like a second, colder flesh. His heart was trying to batter its way out of his ribcage.

The dream. It was just the dream. The same sequence, the same three doors.

But the pain…

A fiery, throbbing ache pulsed in the center of his chest. It wasn't the phantom echo of a nightmare; it was a persistent, physical hurt. His hand, trembling uncontrollably, went to the spot. Even through the cotton of his shirt, his skin felt hot and tender.

"No," he whispered, his voice a dry rasp. "No, it's not possible."

He sat up, his head swimming. With fumbling fingers, he gripped the hem of his shirt and pulled it up over his head, tossing it onto the floor. The cool air of the room hit his clammy skin, and he looked down.

And the last of his breath hitched in his throat.

There, sprawled across the pale skin of his chest, was a mark. It wasn't a rash or a scratch. It was a dark, sprawling bruise, an ugly constellation of deep purple and angry red, already turning a sickening black at the edges. It was large, almost the size of his hand, and it was centered directly over his sternum—the exact spot where the weight had pinned him, where the teeth had sunk in.

He stared, his pragmatic, logical mind scrambling for an explanation. He could have hit himself in his sleep. Thrashed around and struck the bedpost. He could have… he could have…

But the shape was too clear. As he looked closer, his blood ran cold. The mottled discoloration wasn't random. He could almost make out the distinct, cruel arcs of a jawline, the deeper, more violent punctures where individual teeth would have pressed the hardest.

It was a bite mark.

He touched the edge of the bruise with a fingertip. A bolt of sharp pain shot through him, real and undeniable. He snatched his hand back as if burned.

The nightmare had followed him home. The beast from behind the third door had tasted him, and it had left its mark. The walls of his room, his last sanctuary, suddenly felt paper-thin. The barrier between his mind and the world had been breached.

He was no longer safe, not even when he was awake.