"What are all these stone plaques?" Alphard asked.
"Our fallen officers. Some from natural causes, others from our missions. I'll say it plainly — this work is dangerous, and I think you already understand why."
"Yes."
An atmosphere of tragic serenity settled over the chamber. Studying the walls more closely, the memorial plaques took on a weight both haunting and sublime, exactly as Charlotte had said.
They weren't mere decoration — they stood as the silent testimony of those who had given their lives to hold back this world's anomalies. The chamber itself stood as an eternal tribute; an indelible reminder of who they had been, and of the resolve that had carried them, right up until the horror finally consumed them.
"Well, we should head back. In the meantime, go find the archivist — he's an old man, and I'll warn you, he'll probably catch you off guard. He'll walk you through everything and help you open your first Door. Oh, and one more thing — before any of that, you'll need to sign a contract."
They approached the wall, its hidden mechanism sliding open to lead them back into the office. Charlotte walked straight to her desk and pulled out the contract papers along with a fountain pen.
Without a second's hesitation, Alphard signed his name at the bottom of the page and pressed his ink-stained thumb against it, sealing the agreement fully official.
"Well then, Alphard. Welcome to Noctis."
Charlotte rose and extended her hand, an unmistakable sign that the contract was closed. Alphard mirrored the gesture, and with a firm handshake, the two of them sealed the outcome they'd both been working toward.
"Alphard, before you go, I need to give you this."
Charlotte returned to her desk and pulled out a small package, a thick stack of bills resting inside. Fixing his eyes on the parcel, Alphard couldn't help the sharp pang of curiosity over exactly how much it held.
How much money could actually be in there? This is exciting!
"It's a modest wage, but enough to make it clear this is real work. You may go now."
Alphard left the office and stepped back into the thick gloom of the corridors. Despite the lack of light, his mind began sketching an almost perfect mental map, plotting a route back that turned out far shorter than he'd expected. He'd also managed, without meaning to, to memorize the layout of the various rooms Madeleine had shown him earlier.
Making his way through the corridors, he finally reached the workshop of that enigmatic old man. As he neared the entrance, Alphard caught the sound of low, muffled murmuring coming from inside, as though the old man were carrying on a conversation with someone invisible.
A shiver crawled up his spine, and he drew in a deep breath to steady his nerves before knocking on the door, its wood bearing the name Antonie carved into it.
Antonie? Seems like a pretty common name in this city. Whoever he is, my nerves are making it hard to think straight. Feels like I'm about to open some kind of magic portal.
Knock knock.
"Who's there?" the old man called from within.
"It's Alphard — Mrs. Charlotte sent me to have you help me out."
"Ah, all right. Come in — I'm on my way over."
The room enjoyed a far more generous light than the corridor's darkness, several gas lamps casting a striking interplay of light and shadow into its farthest corners.
The air hung thick with a dense scent — some strange blend of substances and ingredients entirely beyond Alphard's ability to place.
On one side, a large desk sat buried under dusty volumes; on the other, a side table held a notebook and a book both thrown open, displaying notes and diagrams on subjects that lay entirely outside his understanding.
What is this? Looks like it's written in some other language entirely.
Trying to read a bit of the book, Alphard found it packed with an enormous amount of content and information, illustrations of what looked like objects or gemstones scattered throughout, catching his eye despite not understanding a single word of the text.
This looks like something else entirely. Why does this gem have that particular color?
While he waited, Alphard began wandering the room at a slow pace. His eyes swept over potions, decks of cards, and various objects of unmistakably arcane design, brushing a few of them lightly with the tip of his cane.
Among the shelves, his attention caught on a clown mask, which he picked up to toy with for a few moments. But the echo of footsteps in the corridor cut his inspection short; with a cat-like agility, he set everything back exactly where he'd found it and straightened up, composing himself into a mask of total seriousness.
"Hello, Alphard."
That mysterious old man, wrapped in such an air of enigma, turned out to be none other than Antonie Fournier — the very man whose work order had pushed Alphard down into the depths of this place.
The moment he recognized him, a wave of open frustration crossed Alphard's face, and he made no effort at all to hide his irritation. Antonie, for his part, held his gaze with perfect calm; that flare of anger was a reception he'd already calculated down to the letter.
"Don't be sore at me — it was her orders. I've always just wanted to help you, being the good man that I am."
"By tricking me? Why didn't you just tell me she was looking for me? It would've been a lot simpler. I nearly died."
"Because if I'd told you, you would have run."
Alphard understood Antonie's point perfectly well, along with the logic behind it. Still, grasping the reasoning did absolutely nothing to cool his irritation; the frustration sat just as sharp in his chest as before.
"That's not an excuse. Anyway — Mrs. Charlotte brought me here. She wants you to help me open my first Door."
Antonie's eyes went wide the instant he heard the word Door. He knew exactly how deep an abyss of risk that step carried: an extraordinarily dangerous, complex maneuver that demanded not only complete consent but an unbreakable will — even for something as small as the very first step.
Antonie stepped closer, studying every inch of him with care, making sure there was no physical issue that might work against him.
"To open your first Door, you need to go into it fully certain, with no hesitation, or you'll run into problems. Let me take a look at your opening first. Here — drink this."
At that, Antonie held out a vial containing a scarlet potion, thick and vivid as fresh blood. At his companion's insistence, Alphard downed the liquid in a single gulp; the brew left behind a caustic, bitter aftertaste, repulsive enough that he couldn't help twisting his face in open disgust.
Before he could protest, the reality around them seemed to dissolve. The office disappeared entirely, replaced by an abstract canvas dominated by a massive stain of pale blue light, vibrant and suspended in the void.
While Alphard stared at the anomaly, disoriented, Antonie examined the glowing shape with a surgeon's precision.
"This is your soul," he murmured, studying every shade and shift of the glow.
"My soul? What do you mean by that?"
Alarmed, he still couldn't grasp what any of it meant.
"Is that literally my soul? Or is it more like... my essence?"
"This is what your soul looks like. And looking at its structure, everything seems fine — no cracks, nothing risky here."
"Cracks?"
"If there were cracks, there's no way you'd be able to open a Door — not without risking corruption, even just from standing near a sacred artifact."
"Why's that?" he asked, worried, scratching his head in unease.
"Think of your soul like a bag, and power like little stones. If you drop stones into a bag with holes in it, they'll just fall right back out through the tear. That's more or less how it works."
As quickly as it had appeared, the vision dissolved, and reality settled back into its familiar weight. The office looked untouched, as if nothing had disturbed it at all.
Still, despite the apparent calm, Alphard felt a faint dizziness low in his stomach — a mild nausea that left his whole body feeling out of place.
"That's normal — it wasn't what you saw, it was the potion. You'll get used to it eventually."
Alphard took the moment in silently, and after a few minutes, recovered his usual cold, unshaken composure. Meanwhile, Antonie picked up the clown mask Alphard had been toying with only moments earlier.
The piece revealed a design as grotesque as it was sublime — its pupils resembled deep, spiraling galaxies, while trails of bloody tears streaked from the sockets. It also bore three suns etched into it, one set into the forehead and two more decorating the cheekbones.
"Wait — I already saw this mask earlier, and I don't remember it having any of those details."
"Probably because you don't yet have the power to see it properly. But with me holding it, you're able to catch a glimpse of its hidden details. It's a bit like this — once I opened my own Door, I gained the ability to see beyond the limits of human reason."
Antonie led Alphard to a chamber reserved exclusively for arcane practice, a room designed to host ascension rituals and the delicate process of opening a Door. The atmosphere inside carried such a biting cold that within seconds, his fingertips had already gone numb.
Atop a heavy oak table rested a collection of unusual objects, flanked by a small volume holding a meticulous list, and a gas lamp.
"As you can see, I'll let you choose your first Door. Whichever one you pick, you won't be able to switch it later, or alternate between two different Doors. Understood?"
"Yes, I understand."
"Good. As you can see, I only have Key 1 objects for a few Doors right now — the mask of sorrow, the cards of the future, and the muscle of a soldier. The rest of the relics belong to more advanced Keys, Key 2 or Key 3."
"What exactly are Keys?"
"Think of a Door as a path, and the Keys as levels along it. There are ten levels total, and you have to climb them one by one — no skipping ahead. Once you reach Key 10, there's nowhere further to go."
"And I can only take one Door?"
"That's right. Just one Door. You can't open one and later open a different one. Only one, ever."
"Are there no other relics to choose from?"
"No, that's all we've got — the rest we have are just more objects tied to the same Key 1 tier I've already shown you."
Antonie pointed to the three objects laid out on the table and left the choice entirely up to him. Caught in indecision, Alphard weighed mentally which option might prove most useful for his survival.
Before settling on one, though, he decided to ask where each relic came from. Antonie laid it out for him: the cards of the future belonged to the Door of the Seer, the soldier's muscle was tied to the Door of Destruction, and the mask of sorrow belonged to the Door of the Clown.
What should I pick? I don't really know what any of these abilities actually do, but I don't want to ask too many questions and end up sounding clueless.
Going by the names alone, I'd guess the soldier's muscle gives more raw strength, the cards would let me see the future somehow, and the mask probably grants some kind of tricks or illusions.
"You should go with the mask. Maybe you'll end up leading the Church of the Clown someday."
"I suppose so," Alphard said, forcing a laugh to avoid seeming out of step, though in truth, he hadn't understood the joke at all.
I've already had a bad run-in with clowns in this world, and it's fitting given that book I bought too — but it might also be the most practical choice. If I could glimpse the future, I could anticipate important events, though that's not exactly a direct kind of power either.
Brute strength doesn't sound bad at all, but it wouldn't exactly make me stand out as someone important.
The clown route would probably make me a target for ridicule, but it could let me blend in — maybe even deceive fate itself, or trick whatever's coming for me. I'll figure out how to use it properly once I actually test what it can do.
"I'll take the clown mask."
"All right. But before we begin the ritual, there's something important you need to know. You'll have to make a sacrifice."
A mix of bewilderment and fear froze Alphard's expression at the requirement. Unable to fully process it, he asked what a "sacrifice" actually meant in this context.
Unbothered, Antonie explained that it wasn't a physical or mortal tribute, but a mental alteration: his future emotions ran the risk of turning false once the ritual was complete, and, in all likelihood, he wouldn't even notice the change happening to him. He made clear as well that, just like the relics, each Key of each Door carried its own corresponding sacrifice.
Alphard fell silent for a moment, weighing it over. Making an offering like that wasn't an easy thing to accept, especially now that he'd started growing fond of the world around him; still, he understood that hesitating here would only become an obstacle standing between him and his real goal — getting home.
Setting aside whatever fear remained, he made his decision firmly: whatever it cost, he would accept it.
With the preparations complete, Alphard dropped to his knees and held the mask of sorrow between his hands with reverence. As a final warning, Antonie stressed one crucial rule: under no circumstances was he to open his eyes while invoking the Door.
At that exact moment, the atmosphere turned suffocating and dense; darkness swallowed the room whole, plunging it into a profound black, as Alphard began chanting the words of invocation:
"God of Misery, God of Divinity and Fate — wrap me in the mantle of desire, of fortune, of love. Take my misery and turn it into blind joy. Take my soul, my life, so that others may rejoice, and shield me from every imposition of the world's eternal light."
The visible world faded away — though this wasn't the real plane he found himself in. The darkness transformed into a roaring current of sound, thunderous laughter tangled with desolate weeping, as the sky itself tore in two.
An inexplicable, glacial cold gnawed at everything around him; the darkness bled into a deep, bloody red, shattered apart, and at the end of that current, an imposing door emerged.
The door seemed to take on a life of its own, purely to mock Alphard's existence, screaming his name in a warped, cruelly mocking tone. It stood bathed in the waters of that sinister river, and in place of an ordinary handle, it bore a clown's horn; far from provoking laughter, its sound rang out in something jarring and deeply disturbing.
Every step Alphard took turned the roaring laughter into shrieks of agony, all beneath the light of a lone sun burning down on him from above, as if he stood in the center of a circus ring — a macabre spectacle where gods bent the course of history at will, and all of humanity remained captive, reflected endlessly in the pupils of the mask of sorrow.
Understanding nothing of what was happening, the chorus of laughter tried to break his mind; with every step, he felt the weight of his own pain being demanded back from him, as he pressed forward through some cold, viscous fluid whose nature he couldn't begin to guess.
Reaching the door, the horn's shriek rang out once more. Though the discomfort threatened to freeze him in place, Alphard didn't hesitate for a second and threw it wide open.
A blinding white light swallowed him instantly. It struck like a sharp blow to the skull — and just like that, his motionless body reacted the moment he crossed the threshold, jolting him awake all at once, his heart hammering against his chest, drenched in a cold sweat.