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Agh. His thoughts were becoming too full again. Too present. Too self-aware, perhaps?

No. Questions were bad. Yes, exactly. He tried to move on. The next door. Where was it?

Agh. Again, wrong. Why was this so difficult? No!

Dammit.

He had to take a minute. Or several. Or many more than that, even. It took as long as it took, and being conscious of the time was counterproductive, he felt.

He found his center again. His clarity. And the doors. They were still there.

Everything was familiar, he realized. All the doors. They were all his. In various ways. Leading to different parts of himself. Even Rasalased and Garovel--they counted, too. They were part of him now.

It wasn’t a question. He could simply tell. That was the truth.

Huh.

And yet.

There was one more door. Not like the others. Quite different, in fact. Not immediately knowable to him. Mysterious, somehow.

Strange. Uncertain.

And those qualities were begging for questions out of him. Yeah. That was the issue he’d run into. Trying to focus on that particular door was way harder. Just perceiving it made him want to ask about it.

No. Not just that.

The door itself had a desire. He could feel it. The questions weren’t just trying to emerge from within himself. They were stemming from the door, too. From beyond it.

It wanted to know about him.

Unsettling.

Very much so.

Enough to threaten his clarity. As it had done before.

But this time, at least, he held on. Held together.

Held true.

Yes.

That door wanted something.

And he didn’t know what that was.

Which meant... that the door... either didn’t belong to him like the others did... or... it led somewhere within himself that he was still not aware of, even in this place.

One. Or the other.

Ah.

Indeed.

That was not even a door, he realized. It was a staircase. Leading down.

Deeper. Deeper. Down and down.

Without even realizing it, he was already taking it. Down the steps. Winding, spiraling, circling down into a vast darkness.

There was fear here. Terror, even. He could already feel it. Growing stronger, becoming part of the very environment.

It was a struggle now. Maintaining clarity. Harder than ever before. Because this fear was familiar. An old friend, of sorts. The kind that knew all his sore spots. The kind that might not have ever really been a friend in the first place.