In the shadowed corners of a crumbling shop,
I found it,
a key, wrapped in cloth as delicate as cobwebs.
The shopkeeper, a woman with eyes
the color of storm clouds,
watched me as I lifted it,
her silence heavier than her wares.

“It belonged to someone who dreamed too much,”
she said, her voice cracking like dry leaves.
I turned it over in my hands.
Its metal was cool, the texture rough—
like scales of a creature long forgotten.
Symbols ran along the bow,
etched deep and jagged,
speaking a language my tongue couldn’t name.

“Take it,” she urged,
her hands trembling as she pushed it toward me.
“It remembers its keeper,
but it may show you more.”

I left without paying,
the key pressing into my palm
like a secret too sharp to hold lightly.
That night, in the stillness of my room,
I held it again,
tracing its grooves as if they could tell me
the story of the door it once turned.

I closed my eyes,
and the visions came.

A man—tall, cloaked in shadows
stood before a door of blackened oak,
its edges...