4338.205 · July 24, 2018 AD
The Door That Only Opens Once
The dust is the colour of dried blood, and the welcome is telepathic. Paul Smith followed his brother through impossible light—and discovered too late that some doors refuse to let you leave. When Jamie is thrown backward by the portal and Luke vanishes with the only key, Paul confronts a truth more devastating than the alien wasteland surrounding him: he may never see his children again.
Paul Smith has walked through walls before—metaphorical ones, built of failing marriages and family obligations and the quiet desperation of a life that never quite matched his expectations. But the wall Luke opened in his study wasn't metaphorical at all. It was a gateway to Clivilius, an alien dimension of rust-coloured dust and telepathic welcomes, and Paul stepped through it with the trust of thirty-four years of brotherhood.
That trust shatters the moment Jamie tries to leave.
The portal that swallowed them so easily now rejects them with violent force. Luke passes through freely while Paul and Jamie remain trapped, prisoners in a wasteland Luke calls destiny. When Luke suggests bringing Paul's children through the gateway—casually, as if condemning them to the same imprisonment were simply logistics—Paul's fury erupts with years of accumulated frustration.
But rage solves nothing. Neither does despair. And somewhere beyond the rise, a river flows through the impossible landscape, carrying the first whisper that survival might be possible. That even in exile, even in betrayal, the universe occasionally offers something worth holding onto.
