The Secret of the Locked Door

Previously

…It wasn't fear, not exactly. It was more like the feeling one gets just before a storm breaks, a charged stillness that hums with an unspoken promise. The air grew cooler, tinged with the scent of damp earth and something else, something older, like forgotten stone and slow-growing lichen. Then, the path opened. Not into a clearing, but into a small, almost perfectly circular glade, enclosed by a ring of ancient, gnarled trees whose branches intertwined overhead, forming a natural, shadowy dome. And in the center of this glade, bathed in a single, ethereal shaft of light that pierced the canopy, stood a door. It was unlike anything Alex had ever seen. It wasn’t part