Daniel didn't say anything.
He just looked at them once.
Kevin's hand rested naturally on Lily's waist, his thumb tightening like it belonged there.
Lily didn't pull away. She didn't even look at Daniel. She just dropped her gaze to admire her fresh manicure, like everything that had just been said was background noise.
Daniel lifted his eyes to the sky.
The clouds hung low and heavy. Wind swept grit along the curb, and the air felt damp and thick.
Rain was coming.
He tugged at his collar, didn't say another word, and turned away.
Behind him, Lily laughed.
"Oh, leaving already?"
"You really haven't changed. Always too proud."
Kevin laughed even louder. "Whatever. Forget him. Tonight's party time. If I keep talking to guys like that, I'm gonna start worrying my car's value will drop."
An engine roared.
The sports car tore off down the street. Dust billowed in its wake, drifting down slowly like an ugly kind of curtain call.
Daniel melted into the crowd.
The night wind skimmed along the road. Under the dim streetlights, his shadow stretched long—so long it felt like the whole city might swallow it.
Unpaid bills. A relationship that was gone. A dead-end job…
Everything reminded him, silently, of one simple fact:
You failed.
But the strange thing was, his steps stayed steady.
No anger.
No resentment.
He didn't even look back.
He just lifted his head and stared into the distance—
toward the direction of his rural hometown.
And then a memory surfaced, one he'd almost forgotten.
When he was nine.
Back home in the countryside, behind an abandoned church.
Weeds had gone wild. Vines choked a half-collapsed stone wall. The entrance to the cellar looked like someone had tried to erase it on purpose.
And in the middle of all that decay—
there had been a door.
Too clean. Too out of place. Like it didn't belong in that world at all.
Above the door, a line of deep blue words floated in the air, as if carved directly onto his retina:
"This is a doorway to any world. Let your will guide you, and it shall open."
Back then, the adults said it was just a kid's imagination.
Later, that door never appeared again.
And the world didn't change because of it.
Not until today.
And this time, what came back to him wasn't the door itself.
It was what had appeared after.
A line he'd thought he'd forgotten a long time ago:
"Every world requires balance."
"The soul that enters must replace the one who leaves."
In that moment, Daniel realized—
this wasn't a spur-of-the-moment impulse.
And it wasn't running away.
It felt like some process that had been written long ago, finally reaching the step where it had to be carried out…
He bought a long-distance bus ticket.
No hesitation. No plan. No texts to anyone.
By dusk, the bus rolled into the small town he hadn't set foot in for more than ten years.
The streets were narrower than he remembered, the buildings lower. The air smelled damp and old.
The church was still there, exactly where it had always been.
Its outer walls were stained and peeling, vines sprawling everywhere. The sign out front—PRIVATE PROPERTY, NO TRESPASSING—had long since toppled over, bleached pale from sitting in rainwater.
Daniel pushed the door open and went in.
The cellar entrance was still there, buried under weeds and dirt like a scar time had deliberately covered up.
He tore away the rotting boards with his bare hands.
Cold, wet air rushed up at his face.
Step by step, he descended the broken stone stairs, his footsteps echoing through the cellar.
And then he saw it.
The door.
It stood there quietly.
Ancient. Silent.
The crow emblem on it was still sharp, its black eye looking like it was watching the intruder.
The words on the wall lit up. A deep blue glow gathered slowly into shape:
"Every world requires balance."
"The soul that enters must replace the one who leaves."
Daniel stood in front of the door, not moving closer right away.
His heartbeat roared in his ears.
A low, rasping voice sounded in the air, like it belonged to some distant, ancient will.
"Do you want to leave this world?"
"Do you want to be rid of failure, pain—everything mediocre?"
"Fate can be rewritten."
"As long as you're willing—choose."
Daniel closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
He reached out and pressed his palm to the door.
The cold sank into him in an instant, drilling straight to the bone.
The next second, the words changed.
"Are you really… leaving everything behind?"
"If you are not the chosen one,"
"you will fall into nothingness forever."
"You will die."
It wasn't a warning.
It was confirmation.
A contract you couldn't take back.
The ground began to tremble. The air turned sharply colder.
The door let out a deep hum, as if countless souls were breathing behind it in low whispers.
And in some faraway other world,
someone opened his eyes.
In the mirror, the man was handsome and refined, dressed in a perfectly tailored noble's formalwear.
But the instant he lifted his head, a brief, stabbing dizziness hit him.
Like something that didn't belong to him had been forced into his body.
"…?"
His breathing slipped, just slightly.
In the mirror's reflection, the corner of his lips still held the lingering taste of banquet red wine.
"Damien Thornevale."
The name settled into the air without a sound.
And what he didn't know—
was that at this exact moment,
in another world, a soul had completely left its original place…
and gone somewhere else.