Wake up and open the door. . .

2:50 a.m.

The window is open. The night exhales into me, a cool hush across my skin. It feels cleansing—as if the world beyond the glass can breathe out my fears and breathe in my safety.

Or so I thought.

2:52 a.m.

The room is thick with air and shadow when I hear it—a voice pressed against my ear, urgent, steady, inhumanly calm:

Wake up. Open the door.

Wake up. Open the door.

Wake up. Open the door.

Moonlight crawls across the hallway. The silence listens. And though I am not brave—though darkness has always undone me—fear abandons me.

What rises instead is something older. A knowing. A command in the marrow .A task already decided.

2:21 a.m.

I stand. Bare feet against the floorboards. Certainty carrying me forward.

My hand closes around the knob. Cold metal. The turn is slow, deliberate. The door sighs as it gives way.

2:22 a.m.

My eyes fly open—but now I am awake in a different way. A deeper way. And I understand, suddenly, the weight of what I’ve done.

I let them in.