“Now,” Arga’s mother said, “choose who you have to kill so you can wake up.”
The small scissors in her hand reflected the chandelier’s light. The blades were not stained with blood, but their tips were wet with something darker than shadow.
Arga stood in the middle of the dining room, with Elara beside him and the faceless figure behind the altar. Bima was still kneeling on the floor. Blood streamed from his chest, even though the wound on his body had vanished.
“This isn’t real,” Arga said.
His mother smiled sadly. “You always say that when reality is too expensive to accept.”
“If this is a dream, I can wake up.”
“Try.”
Arga pinched his own arm.
Nothing happened.
He slapped his cheek. Pain exploded, sharp and real. Elara flinched beside him.
“Don’t,” she said.
“Why?”
“Because the pain here can be borrowed too.”
Arga’s mother rose from her chair. The white dress she wore moved without any wind touching it. Her face was the same as in the last photograph Arga had kept—young, gentler, and nothing like the woman he had spent all this time missing.
“Choose,” she said again. “Bima or Elara.”
“Why does it have to be one of them?”
“Because someone has to pay for the door you opened.”
Elara stared at the altar. “Don’t listen to her. We have to find the black door.”
“The door is behind you,” Arga’s mother said.
Arga turned.
The black door was indeed there, but its distance changed every time he blinked. Sometimes it was only a few steps away. Sometimes it stood at the end of a long, wet hallway.
Bima lifted his head.
“Arga,” he said.
His voice was hoarse, but real.
“Don’t choose based on who you want to save the most.”
Arga looked at him. “Then based on what?”
“Who you want to believe the most.”
Behind Bima, the faceless man lowered his head. The two dark holes in his surface seemed to widen.
“Bad answer,” he said.
Elara reached for Arga’s hand. Her fingers were cold.
“Listen to me,” she whispered. “I’ve seen this place before.”
Arga turned to her. “You said you didn’t remember.”
“I don’t remember with my mind.” Elara closed her eyes. “But my body remembers.”
She pulled Arga away from the altar. Every step made the floor pulse beneath their feet.
“Back then, when my mother erased my memories, there was one thing she failed to erase.”
“What?”
“The way out.”
They passed the long table. The porcelain plates on it were empty except for one. On that plate lay the white envelope that had appeared in Arga’s dreams from the very beginning.
Arga stopped.
Elara tightened her grip on his hand. “Don’t open it.”
“Why?”
“Because it isn’t a message.”
“Then what is it?”
“An invitation.”
A faint tapping came from inside the envelope.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Arga stepped back.
A boy’s voice came from inside it.
“Arga, I’m cold.”
Elara went pale.
“Damar?”
The tapping turned into scratching. The envelope bulged from within, as though something were trying to get out.
Arga pulled Elara away.
“Don’t open it,” he said.
“I won’t.”
But Arga’s mother was already behind them.
She raised the scissors and snipped the end off the envelope.
A scream filled the room.
Not a child’s scream.
It came from Arga himself.
He collapsed to his knees. It felt as though his head were being split open from the inside. In an instant, he saw fragments of memories that weren’t his: a white hallway, hospital lights, a woman’s hand at his temple, and a young Elara staring at him from behind glass.
Then he saw Damar.
Damar stood beside Arga’s bed, holding a silver key.
“If he wakes up,” Damar said to someone behind the glass, “the dream will choose him.”
Someone answered from out of sight.
“Then make sure Elara becomes the anchor.”
The memory changed.
Damar turned toward little Arga. His face was full of fear.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
Then he placed the silver key in the baby’s hand.
Arga jolted back into the dining room.
Elara was kneeling in front of him.
“Arga, look at me.”
She held his face in both hands.
Behind her shoulder, Arga’s mother stood holding the opened envelope. There was no letter inside. Only a mass of darkness that kept moving.
“Damar wasn’t a victim,” Arga’s mother said. “He was the first guardian.”
“Guardian of what?” Elara asked.
“The door that must never be opened.”
The faceless man moved for the first time. He climbed down from the altar and passed through Bima’s body without touching him.
“Enough,” he said.
All the lights went out.
In the darkness, Arga felt Elara’s hand slip from his.
“Arga!”
He reached forward, but found only air. From far away, Elara’s voice sounded again.
“Don’t trust me.”
Arga stood.
Then another voice followed, closer and gentler.
“Arga, leave me.”
He remembered Elara’s warning.
If I ask you to leave me, it probably isn’t me.
So Arga ran toward the voice.
He crashed into something. Someone’s body.
Elara.
He embraced her and immediately felt the girl embrace him back. But when Arga opened his eyes, Elara’s face was too close to the faceless man’s.
The blank surface had changed.
Now it wore Elara’s face.
“Arga,” it said in Elara’s voice, “you’re too late.”
Arga shoved it away.
“Don’t touch her.”
The figure smiled with Elara’s lips.
“How do you know which one is real?”
Arga stared at the two figures before him. One stood beneath the faint light spilling from the red door. The other stood in darkness, wearing the same black dress as in the photograph.
Both of them looked at him.
Both held out their hands.
Then the Elara near the red door said, “I love you.”
The Elara in the darkness said, “I never loved you.”
The second sentence made Arga’s chest ache even more.
He stepped toward the figure in the darkness.
Not because he wanted to hear a declaration of love.
Because the real Elara had once told him that the words he most wanted to hear were precisely the ones he should doubt.
The figure in the darkness backed away.
“Don’t.”
Arga kept walking.
“If you love me, you wouldn’t tell me to come closer,” he said.
Elara’s face cracked.
Beneath the skin that wasn’t skin, darkness moved like smoke.
Arga reached for the figure near the red door.
Those fingers closed around his in return.
“Don’t let go,” Elara whispered.
“I won’t.”
“Even after you know everything?”
“There’s nothing left except everything.”
Behind them, Bima shouted.
“The black door!”
Arga turned. Bima had risen in front of the altar. Blood was flowing from his chest again, but he was holding the faceless figure back with both hands.
“Now!”
Arga’s mother drove the scissors into the floor.
The dining room split apart along a line of white light. The black door appeared at the end of the crack.
The faceless man screamed. The Elara face it wore collapsed, revealing bottomless darkness.
Arga pulled Elara into a run.
They reached the black door. Its handle was shaped like a closed eye.
Arga inserted the silver key.
Before he could turn it, Elara stopped his hand.
“If this door leads us to the archive,” she said, “you’ll learn why I chose you.”
“And if the answer makes me hate you?”
Elara looked at him. For the first time, she didn’t hide the fear on her face.
“Then hate me after we wake up.”
Behind them, they heard Bima fall.
Arga turned the key.
The black door opened.
Beyond it was a narrow room with walls covered in photographs.
Photographs of Arga sleeping.
Photographs of Elara crying.
Photographs of the two of them in the greenhouse, in the alley, inside Bima’s car.
And in the middle of all those photographs was one image older than the rest.
Little Arga stood beside little Elara.
Between them, Damar held both their hands.
Behind Damar, Arga’s mother stared at the camera.
But this time she wasn’t standing between the two children.
She was pointing at someone outside the frame.
Someone holding a pair of scissors.
Beneath the photograph was a single sentence:
Subject A-17 was not chosen to kidnap Elara.
He was chosen to kill her.
Elara read the words over Arga’s shoulder.
Her hand fell away.
“No,” she whispered.
Behind them, the black door began to close.
Arga reached for her hand again.
But Elara looked at him, her face no longer pale.
It was blank.
“Arga,” she said, “if you still love me, don’t let me wake up.”
Then she raised her hand and drove the silver key into Arga’s chest.