The Door Remembers. So Do We.

We climb out through the trapdoor into the apothecary, into the smell of dried herbs and wood polish and the particular grey light of a Vassenholm afternoon, and the city is exactly as we left it — loud and indifferent and fully, stubbornly alive.
Nneka blinks in the light like someone surfacing from deep water.
Esteban says nothing for a long time. Then he says, “I’m going to make something. Tonight. I don’t know what yet.”
Jabari looks at me. “What do you need?”
“Nothing,” I say. And then, because it is true and because I am tired of the stone in my throat but also, distantly, certain of something I cannot yet fully name: “Time. Just time.”
The door behind us is closed. The door behind us is silent. Nneka is here and breathing and blinking at the ordinary sky, and that is the thing we came for, and we have it.
It cost what it cost.
We walk out into the city.

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About the Author

Vael Mor’Kharr — necromancer who walks freely among the dead, communing with spirits and commanding the undead. His name is whispered in every cursed tomb.

— Vael Mor’Kharr

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Categories: Fantasy, Witchcraft/Curses

Tags: 10min stories, atmospheric fantasy, curses, dark fantasy, ensemble cast, fantasy, loss, magical door, short story, Vassenholm, witchcraft

August 11, 2026

10min-stories