Work Text:
Don’t turn left.
The Lord scribbled the warning into the small book with a shaking hand. The pen kept catching on the paper, as if even the page didn’t want to know what he’d seen. Footsteps echoed behind him. They were too close, too heavy, too real. Someone was there. He had to leave.
He had already left. It had been months since he’d walked away from this place, sealed the book inside the chest, locked it, but not forgotten it. He had been there, and then he was gone.
But his eyes still watched.
They wandered through events long past and yet to come, collapsing into one another like pages of a book being turned by yellow hands. He saw stone breaking, felt the rise and fall of a breath that wasn’t his and never would be. Never again. Everything was happening at once. Everything was before him. After him. There with him.
He was back again, standing in front of the doors. The same doors. They were open for him, begging for his gaze. He couldn’t leave. He couldn’t leave. He couldn’t leave.
It’s beautiful.
I can’t leave. Not now. Not when the doors hum like they’re breathing, like they’re screaming. I watch as Avery reads what I have written for him, but I’m not there to see eyes widen. I’m not anywhere at all. And neither are you. You won’t see what’s behind those doors. You won’t understand what waits there. I won’t let you.
Please. Don’t turn left.