The Hollow Between Worlds

                             The Door That Breathed

The sea didn’t crash that night.
It whispered.

Each wave dragged across the rocks below the Morren’s Edge cliffs with the sound of wet silk, too slow, too deliberate. The air was cold enough to sting. Above, the moon had turned the color of blood—a red coin suspended in bruised clouds—and everything felt tilted, like the world had forgotten which way was up.

Elara Quinn pulled her hood tighter. “I swear the ocean’s louder when it’s not making noise.”

“Exactly!” Jace beamed, balancing his camera on his shoulder. “That’s how you know the place is haunted. Empty sound. Negative space.”
His breath puffed white. “Welcome back to JaceQuest Paranormal! Tonight, we chase the legend of the Wailing Door!”

“Wow,” Nia muttered, “what a totally safe way to spend a school night.”

Elara smiled despite the unease twisting in her gut. She’d grown up hearing stories about these cliffs—witches buried upright, salt rituals, lost fishermen—but no one ever found anything except fog and broken shells. Still, the eclipse had called to her. For days, she’d dreamed of the cliffs breathing.

Now she could hear them do it.

The sound rose again—a drawn-out inhale through stone lungs. Pebbles trembled near her sneakers.

“Okay,” Jace said, aiming his flashlight toward the ground, “that wasn’t wind.”

The beam caught a jagged line snaking between their feet. The crack widened with a groan, coughing up a smell like old pennies and seaweed. The three of them stepped back as soil collapsed inward, revealing something black underneath—smooth, glistening, alive.

“What the heck…” Nia whispered.

It was a door.

Not built into the rock but grown from it, veins of onyx coiling along its frame. Spirals covered its surface, shifting whenever the light moved. When Elara crouched, she saw her reflection bend and stretch as if she were peering through deep water.

Her pulse synced to the faint rise and fall beneath her fingertips.
The door was breathing.

“Jace, get that camera away from it,” she said.

“Are you kidding? This is gold!” He zoomed in, grinning. “Imagine the clicks. Morren’s Edge—real haunted door!”

The moment his fingers brushed the handle—a curved black hook—the spirals tightened, like muscles flexing. A faint heartbeat pulsed through the ground.
Elara grabbed his sleeve. “Stop! Something’s—”

Then the cliff inhaled.

Air whipped past them, dragging their hair toward the opening. The door’s surface rippled and a sound like a thousand whispers burst out. For an instant, Elara saw inside—a corridor lined with wet stone, shadows fluttering along the walls, and at the end, a tall figure facing away from her.

It turned.

Her lungs forgot to work.
The figure’s face was her own.

Not a mirror version, not a trick of light—her. But pale as driftwood, eyes milk-white, lips moving soundlessly.

Then everything went black.

When Elara woke, dawn bled orange across the horizon. Grass clung to her cheek; the sea roared like nothing had happened. Jace and Nia lay sprawled nearby, breathing but motionless. The fissure was gone. The cliff looked untouched.

“Guys?” Her voice cracked.
No answer.

Her phone buzzed weakly in her pocket. One new notification:
JaceQuest uploaded a new video—“THE DOOR THAT BREATHED | Blood Moon Special”

Elara’s fingers shook as she tapped Play.

Static.
Then the cliffs, lit red by the eclipse. Jace laughing. Nia shouting. The camera jerks toward the black surface. The door opening wider than she remembered—darkness blooming like ink. And then—

The figure stepped forward.
Not hooded this time. Not distant.

It leaned toward the lens until its face filled the screen.
Elara’s own eyes stared back—blank, glassy, grinning too wide.

A whisper leaked through the speakers, low and wet, forming her name.

“Elara… you left the door open.”

The video ended with a single frame frozen: her doppelgänger reaching through the screen, fingertips almost touching the glass.

Her phone vibrated again—notification sound repeating exactly in time with her heartbeat.
But this time, it wasn’t from JaceQuest.

New Message (Unknown Sender):
📁 DoorFootage.MP4 — downloaded

“This one’s from your side.”