4338.205 · July 24, 2018 AD
The Door That Chooses
Luke presses the button. The study wall blooms into impossible colour—crimson, indigo, gold—and for one breathless moment, Jamie and Paul see what he has seen. They follow him through. They stand in the ochre dust of another world, beneath a sky too blue to be Earth's. And then Jamie tries to leave. The Portal does not let him. It burns. It refuses. Clivilius, it seems, has opinions about who belongs.
The study door has never felt heavier. Behind it waits a revelation that cannot be unsaid, a threshold that cannot be uncrossed. Luke's fingers close around the Portal Key—smooth, unremarkable, humming with impossible warmth—and he knows that what comes next will change everything.
He presses the button.
The wall dissolves into light. Colours cascade in patterns that defy description, and for one suspended instant, Jamie and Paul stand frozen, their certainties crumbling. Then Luke steps through, and they follow—into Clivilius, into wonder, into a vastness that stretches beyond horizon.
But wonder does not last.
Jamie sees only dust. Only emptiness. Only a trap dressed in alien sky. When he turns to leave, the Portal resists. When he pushes harder, it burns—a crack of light, a flash of pain, the acrid stench of singed hair. His arm bears no wound, but the message is clear: the way back is closed.
Paul cannot pass either. Only Luke moves freely between worlds, and the implications of that settle over all three of them like a verdict none of them requested.
Clivilius welcomed them in. It will not let them go.
