Before me loomed a colossal door, its intricacies visible even at the distance I stood from it. There was something imposing about it, but equally inviting. I was drawn to its grandeur, like a primal instinct. The door’s only company was the dark void which permeated the world I found myself in. This portal in the midst of an all-encompassing void was firmly etched into my mind.

Lowering myself to the formless ground, I did my best to recall how I came to be there. Despite my best efforts, though, I couldn’t conjure a single memory. Standing up, I looked down at my body, searching for something that could give me a clue of who I was. On my left hip, I found a thick brown rope, a blade, and a book. Opening the book, I scanned the pages for words. White paper greeted my gaze, appearing page after page. The blade was of poor quality, essentially just sharp metal strapped to wood. I switched my focus to my right hip, where I found a torch and my sword. The torch reminded me of something I had yet to realize: there was no light. Despite this I could clearly see the door, still towering in my peripheral vision, and the torch in my hand.

Leaving that existential crisis in the back of my mind, I took another look at the clothes I was wearing. Tattered leather greaves, a battered cuirass, and bloodstained gauntlets. “Maybe I'm an adventurer, not an explorer?” I thought, taking a look around. Despite my supposed profession, though, there was nothing. No rations, no sleeping bad, not even a canteen to drink from. However, oddly enough, I felt no hunger or thirst, nor any pain, despite my battered appearance.

As if to protect myself from the vicious air, I grabbed my sword from its resting place on my hip and held it ahead of me. Again, more unanswerable questions rose from this weapon’s appearance: how bad of an adventurer was I to not have any stains on my sword, but be covered in them myself?

Turning my gaze back towards the door, I was drawn even more intensely than before, like some great power was being exerted upon my body. Daring not to resist the pull–and realizing the futility of staying in this black void–I surrendered and began moving.

I trudged along towards the door for what felt like an eternity; hours blurred into days, and days into weeks. At least, I assumed it had been that long, there wasn’t any real way to know. Regardless of the matter of time, I had traveled a great distance, and yet the door seemed only marginally closer. The realization that I was feeling no hunger or fatigue suddenly hit me, and I was relieved. “I’ll be able to make it!” I thought, rejoicing. The door, being the only thing I could see, became my solace and my driving force. Reaching it became something of a fanatical obsession for me.

It was only once I ceased my celebration that I realized I was still plagued by a singular sense: the searing pangs of pain radiating from my legs and feet. Yet even this newly discovered pain would not deter me from my goal, from the goal. I pressed into a run, gritting my teeth against the surges of agony.

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Eons seemed to have passed without any tangible process, and my motivation stood strong. For a moment on my endless trek, I had a moment of doubt in my goal. This doubt was the product of a strange shape that materialized ahead of me, quite the distance ahead, but still visible in this endless plane. Actually, I think I doubted my mind, not my goal. The door was a beacon of progress and hope, unshakable and indestructible–but I was not. I wiped my eyes, but the shape stayed, in fact the shape moved. It was unmistakably mobile, and as I stubbornly maintained my course towards salvation, the vague entity continued its journey as well, drawing closer and closer to me.

I couldn’t contain my excitement, for despite my loyalty to the door, I was relieved to find the entity’s shape similar to my own: two legs, two arms, a torso and a head. Perhaps another seeker would join me in the journey towards salvation. However, as I neared the figure, it regarded me with blank indifference. The creature was focused on its own objective, and I could not stop it. I felt compelled to call out, to ask it where it was going, if it knew where we were–but I was silent. The words would not leave my mouth, and my voice could not know the world.

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This was, though, merely the prelude to a litany of inexplicable encounters of similar result. I soldiered on, marching towards my goal, and figures of all shapes and sizes passed by on their own journeys, too. At the beginning I made note of each and every one in my mind, there were even some I recognized and could put a name to: humans, elves, orcs, and vampires. But there were also some for which I had no name for. These were the entities made up of what seemed to be pure energy, or large reptilian monsters with wings. After a while, I mostly ignored them.

There was something I found myself taking particular note of, besides the varied creatures. There was a particular excess of vampires, a truly unnatural amount. I would say ~50-60% of those that passed by me were vampires. After a while it was just another unanswerable question, though, and I let it go.

I refocused on my objective, and set off with renewed vigor. At this point, all linear progression of time has ceased to hold any tangible meaning as I continued onwards. The agony and pain that persisted in my legs and feet became muted, merely a nuisance that annoyed me. My glance wandered down to my feet for a moment, revealing that my limbs had twisted into grotesque parodies of their former selves. My limb’s horrific approximation of purpose still propelled me forwards, as if by sheer unbridled determination, and that was enough for me.

That was enough for me, because the door’s draw eclipsed corporeal limitations.

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At last, I stood mere paces from my savior’s base, and I craned my neck upwards to view the entirety of the monolith I had seen in the distance. Rather than the void, it now seemed the door stretched on for infinity, as it eclipsed my entire vision. Steadying myself, I looked back down at the surface of the door, studying the intricacies I had dreamed of seeing up close. Almost by reflex, I reached my trembling hand out to feel the smooth facade. However, the simplest whisper of contact between palm and surface was the solitary catalyst required to subvert this realm’s most rigid rule–a noise pierced this endless silence, reverberating with incalculable cosmic weight. It was a noise I could not describe, but it was one that reduced me.

In that instance, I became nothing more than a grain of sand on the shore of an endless beach, every assurance of reality wavering precariously.

“What… color am I looking at?” The words spilled from me, in some language I could not understand, some language which I could not speak. I mean to say that I spoke without my own body, as no body could ever produce the sounds as I had just done.

My eyes beheld the alabaster stone that my palm met, and my eyes were wrong. I had seen the door, and it held a color antithetical to that which I convinced myself of.

The door was black.

I recoiled, and steadied myself. I couldn’t accept this attack on my reality, this mutation of my very understanding of the world, and I flung myself against the denier–only for the surface of the door to convulse inwards like a viscous membrane, absorbing my entire being, swallowing me in a violent eclipse of shadows.

I fell helplessly forwards, and my perception was engulfed by a rough gray miasma as my body slammed into the unforgiving ground. Not mere pain, but a searing of my essence by the universe’s sharpest knives permeated through the entirety of my body. I thrashed upright, beholding the scene ahead of me–not at all what I had expected.

The unlit and monochrome chamber I found myself in stood in a stark austerity, adorned with few horrifying decorations. A towering throne of incomprehensible regality dominated my view, located in the middle of the room on my left. The construction held ominous spires and wings sculpted by no sane carver. My gaze was drawn down the length of the room, passing over rubble and destroyed walls.

As I cast my vision one detail pierced my vision with a spectral intensity: a faintly throbbing crimson orb lay in front of the throne. I was drawn to it, perhaps not to the level of the door, but drawn nonetheless. I did my best impression of a standing person before finding it easier to crawl while my legs recovered their past glory.

After a struggle, I pulled myself upright before the altar, reaching out towards the pulsating red orb. Closing in on the orb, words and shapes materialized, staying anchored in my sight regardless of my gaze. The jumbled text rearranged itself, twisting and morphing until it reached a state I could understand it in, displaying a title with purposeful certitude:

“Castle Lamia”