The darkness distorts everything around you. In a room of pitch black, only the distant light ahead as your guide, you have no idea how wide the chamber ahead of you is. Or even if it is just flat tile. If it's safe to move across at speed.

The footsteps slapping against the tile behind you give you little option. They move with purpose, advancing into the darkness of the prior room with no hesitation.

Panic aches around your mind as you start off with a longer gait, still attempting to step cautiously, just in case there are steps or a drop. As your feet pad against solid, level ground, your pursuer speeds up. The loud splashes as they stomp in your direction now hold a clearer purpose—they want to catch you.

You aren’t keen on that happening, so you run. A risk when you are nearly blind, but the alternative is worse. A few steps across tile and then you stumble as your foot strikes water. Only a few inches deep, but the surprise resistance has a flash of panic grip at your chest.

The unknown character chasing you down is gaining distance, bouncing against the turn in the corridor. Images of some manner of fish-like or bog monster covered in seaweed flood your mind, dripping fresh horror at the imagined sharp teeth eager for your flesh. The water you are running through deepens by another few inches, slowing you down as you fight against it. You’re still twenty feet away from the next passageway where the light flickers in promised hope.

But what then? There’s no metal door to throw yourself behind. It’s just more tiles. More maze. Exhaustion burns through your muscles as you do everything you can to keep up pace. Yet it is getting closer.

The water is almost up to your knees now. Part of you feels claustrophobic, your lungs struggling to filter in the oxygen needed to keep your legs moving. You expect a sudden drop, your feet to strike nothing and you will just fall into the darkness.

Your pursuer hits the edge of the water behind you, sloshing through via their momentum. Cold droplets spray around as they closed in. They didn’t seem to be as slowed by the liquid as you were. Now you could hear them - muffled grunts and a snapping maw. Your breaths shorten, sharper. The creature hisses with excited anticipation. Passageway is close. Tired. Cold. Hopeless.

Relief runs through you as your foot strikes solid, dry land. Something brief, as you can feel the air shift, the creature lunging at you from behind.

You spin in place and lash out with the book, striking empty air. As your eyes scour the darkness for the shape of the monster, you see nothing but the dissipating ripples of the water barely illuminated by the light behind you.

Expecting to see glowing eyes or for this to be another trick, you freeze in position. Breathing haggard as your heart thumps through your temples. After half a minute of tension, you allow yourself to relax.

The water is still now. It’s quiet around you—silent, in fact. Whatever was chasing you has now vanished. You are growing to suspect that this is all some sick joke being played on you. Like one of those reality prank shows. They wouldn’t have this kind of budget though, and this is way past the point of being amusing.

You glance back toward the light, the empty passageway ahead rather neutral despite the horror that had just occurred. What a miserable place. With a quick shake of your head, you move toward the light, ears listening for the reemergence of the water monster. Silence, aside from your light footsteps echoing down the hall.

After passing the light, you find this direction opens up into another room. Maybe fifteen by twenty-five feet, extending from where you are to the right. Part of the floor opposite is recessed and filled with calm water. Three feet wide, maybe nine long, and barely a foot deep. It seems to serve no purpose and has no method of filling or draining. As you walk through the single exit down at the right side into a similar room, you feel very lost.

You had heard of liminal spaces before. Areas of repeating terrain that were reflections of reality, but odd and confusing in their setup. As if put together by someone with zero understanding of normal structural conventions. Ever repeating, like a maze with no end.

Is this something like that?

It is nice to think there can be an end. You are really cold, your tracksuit soaked up to your knees, and sweat from the run cooling off and taking your body heat with it. In terms of energy, you are running on fumes. The constant fear and panic being switched on and off has completely drained you. You’re hungry as well, despite feeling like you need to throw up. The only thing keeping you going is the desire to be home again.

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Your legs want you to stop and sit down. Toes wrinkly and your soles aching from walking around barefoot. Even your spine feels rough after all that crouching in the library. Maybe you have earned feeling whiny, but this is unfair.

Second, third, and then a fourth room passed through. Each is similarly designed. Plain tiles, small pools of calm water in various sizes and shapes. Caged bulbs lighting things, the reflections repeating over each small ceramic tile.

You stop in the fifth and hold the book up. It hasn’t gotten wet despite all the trouble you’ve been through. Maybe you should see if it was actually useful before lugging it around further.

A low groan echoes around from somewhere deep in the maze.

Your right eye twitches, but you decide to ignore the sound. If your heart palpitations can be on that same page, you will appreciate it. Instead, you step over to the closest bulb and lean yourself against the wall.

With a sigh, you hold the book up and give the title a tired look. You open it up to a random page.

And there was the door. On the left was a drawing of it in red ink, almost like an architect's design. Thin lines detailing the grooves and cracked paintwork to a fine degree. What a coincidence. You turn to the page before it. Red door. In fact, you flip through the first half of the book, and every page is the same.

As another groan radiates through the passageways, closer, you roll your eyes and turn your attention to the right side page, which is labored with paragraphs of text.

If this book is to be believed, the red door is indeed an eldritch entity. Despite that making sense, it doesn’t quite sink into your brain properly. There is even an actual name for it. Rot Portal.

You were expecting something Latin-adjacent for some reason, but it is actually bastardized Germanic, as far as you can tell. Rather than decay, it meant red. The Red Portal. Which is close enough to saying red door, so you feel rather underwhelmed with this information.

As your eyes switch to the next paragraph, your brow furrows.

The narrative reads as if it is describing folklore rather than something factual, but is serious and dry with the prose. Unlike the fantasy stories you are used to, it just plainly stated the door was bad news.

It sought out the lost and tormented them. Presented different worlds beyond reason or care. There was no emotional reason for the action, it was just a function it performed, like a robot disjointed from the need to have reason.

You weren’t lost; you were just curious on your way home.

The next section is about documented types of experiences people had gone through after going through the door. You skim this, not wanting to have anything else to plague your nightmares. The important point is that if they knew this, then some people must have survived.

Below this, there it is. The red door can be escaped. You have to perform three acts to satisfy the entity, although they seem to be different for everyone who entered. You can not damage the door and ignoring it will just make it torment you harder.

Great.

That is it. Pretty useless, other than giving you the glimmer of hope that you may be able to survive this. Still, the book does little other than annoy you. You are mad at this whole event, to be honest.

A groan emanated from one of the many chambers.

“Oh, fuck off already,” you growl. Not quite done enough to shout your exasperation, but your frustrations threw a heavy blanket over the fear. Maybe it was the door that needs tormenting instead.

It is tempting to throw the book into the nearby pool. Instead, you snap it shut and keep it in your grip. Even if the words give you no salvation, you never knew in what other ways it can become useful.

You flex out your aching toes and continue forward, some stiffness in your legs. As soon as you make it back to the real world, you will start up running regularly again. All it took was for an afternoon of horrors beyond your comprehension to agree to start looking after your fitness. You pause and look out at the inert chamber, hoping that your acceptance of that may have been one of the trials to complete.

If it was, the pools don’t seem to care to let you know.

Rolling your eyes, you head to the next room. Just getting out of this tiled bathroom area will be nice. The next room has five different exits, arranged all around the circular chamber. There is a hole in the middle of the room that you assume at first is another small water area, but as you approach it is not.

It’s just a dark pit. After around five feet, the bulbs of this room do not reach, so it is just pure pitch black - an unknown depth. You don’t have anything in your inventory that is worthless enough to test it out.

Briefly, you wonder if this is the way you have to leave the room, rather than one of the doors. It is more likely to lead to your doom, but it is hard to really know for sure. Are there any real answers to this sort of thing?

You step around it, and over to the first door. It leads off into a passageway, same as any other. Rotating to the next, you note that they all look the same. Other than the different directions, they are equal—almost to the point you think it could be the same hall that has some spacial distortion or something.

With a glance back, you work your jaw. The door you entered from has vanished. It is playing with you—you have always been at its mercy. The door is tormenting you.

Do you want to spend the rest of your life wandering around these endless tunnels, feet raw, just hoping it would switch up the horror for something slightly less miserable?

No. You will take control of your own destiny.

With two confident strides, you take a deep breath and hop into the hole in the center of the room.

Darkness envelops you as vertigo whips around your exhausted form.