Chapter 2: Don’t Touch the Basement Door
The air between us thickened, like an invisible thread stretched tight across a trap.
Jae-min’s eyes didn’t flinch.
Neither did mine.
He took a step closer.
The floorboard creaked beneath his foot, but his voice remained calm.
“You touched it, didn’t you?”
“The rune on the door?”
I tilted my head.
“It was calling to me.”
He looked at me like he was trying to solve a puzzle he’d seen before but forgotten the answer to.
“You’re not from around here.”
I didn’t respond.
“Who made that seal?” I asked instead.
“I don’t know.”
He wasn’t lying.
That was rare.
“But I know you shouldn’t touch it.”
“Why?”
He didn’t answer right away.
Instead, he brushed a hand across the old wooden frame.
“It’s been here since before the school was even finished. The door doesn’t lead anywhere anymore — or at least, that’s what they say.”
He turned back to me.
“But people who’ve opened it? They don’t stay the same.”
“Define ‘don’t stay the same.'”
“Some transfer out and disappear. Some forget everything. One guy opened it and just started screaming.”
“Lovely.”
He took a breath.
“So don’t touch it again.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“Are you worried about me?”
“Just don’t want to see anyone else lose their mind.”
A flicker of something passed through his expression.
Guilt?
Regret?
I filed it away.
The bell rang in the distance.
The final bell.
End of school day.
We both turned.
“Come on,” he said.
“I’ll walk you out.”
We left the old building in silence.
But my mind wasn’t silent.
That rune had no place in this world.
Which meant someone like me had been here before.
Someone who broke the laws.
Or never followed them in the first place.
The next day, class was unusually quiet.
A girl in the front row was crying softly into her sleeve.
The teacher wasn’t there.
Another substitute stood awkwardly at the front, reading from a textbook no one was listening to.
I tapped my desk.
Jae-min leaned over from his seat behind me.
“What happened?”
“Yuna,” he whispered.
“The girl who usually sits near the window. She didn’t come back home yesterday.”
“Did she…”
“Yeah.”
He didn’t need to say more.
Missing student.
After touching the wrong door.
The substitute droned on about chemical bonds, but my focus tunneled in on the empty desk in the front.
That made two things I couldn’t ignore:
Someone else had touched the door.
And someone didn’t want them to survive it.
After school, I went to the library.
Not the modern one.
The hidden one on the second floor of the old teacher’s lounge.
Dust clung to the air like a curse.
The room was filled with forgotten ledgers, school history files, and books students weren’t allowed to check out.
I traced my fingers along the shelf until I found a black leather binder titled Incidents.
I flipped through.
March 1994: three students vanished after a field trip to the observatory.
July 2002: a sinkhole in the west garden swallowed the old well.
November 2011: a fire broke out in the chemistry lab — source unknown.
Each event circled back to one place.
The basement.
The sealed door.
The forgotten history of the school was screaming in silence, begging to be heard.
I closed the book, shoved it under my blazer, and left.
That night, I couldn’t sleep.
Not because of guilt.
I don’t feel guilt.
But because of hunger.
Hunger for answers.
And magic.
Real magic.
Not this caged existence.
I stood at the mirror in my dorm bathroom, holding my wrist under cold water.
The seal burned red under my skin.
Still active.
Still locking away everything I used to be.
“This place is a cage,” I whispered.
“But someone here still has the key.”
The next day, we had gym class.
Normally, I’d skip it.
But today I needed to see something.
I walked into the gym, joining the line of students stretching.
My eyes locked on one figure.
Jae-min.
He was watching me again.
Too closely.
Coach blew the whistle.
“Pairs! Sparring time!”
Martial arts class.
They taught it like self-defense.
In my world, it was war training.
Jae-min stepped beside me.
“Guess we’re partners.”
“Guess so.”
“Try not to break me,” he grinned.
“No promises.”
We stood facing each other.
The coach barked, “Start!”
Jae-min came at me fast.
Faster than a normal student.
I stepped aside and twisted his wrist, flipping him over my shoulder.
He landed hard.
Gasps echoed across the gym.
He coughed and groaned.
“You don’t fight like a transfer student.”
“You don’t move like a human.”
We stared at each other.
The coach clapped.
“Good! Next pair!”
As we walked off the mat, Jae-min leaned closer.
“I want to show you something.”
I didn’t reply, but I followed him.
We snuck out after class and cut through the back garden.
Behind the maintenance shed, he reached into a rusted panel and pulled a key out of a hidden latch.
“How do you know about that?” I asked.
“My brother used to work here. Before he… left.”
He didn’t need to finish that sentence.
He unlocked a trapdoor under the shed and motioned for me to follow.
We descended into darkness.
The air grew colder.
Damp.
Dead.
My seal burned like it was trying to warn me.
But I ignored it.
The basement corridor stretched ahead, lined with old brick walls and flickering lights.
At the end was another door.
Not wooden this time.
Metal.
Covered in ancient markings.
I stepped closer and recognized the language.
My language.
From the Kingdom of Velrath.
Words carved in stone: Only the broken shall see.
“What is this place?” I whispered.
“My brother said it was a testing room.”
“Testing for what?”
He looked at me.
“For people like you.”
The door creaked open on its own.
Inside, a single chair stood under a beam of light.
Next to it, a pedestal.
On the pedestal was a mirror.
Not an ordinary mirror.
A truth mirror.
Only used in war trials.
To expose traitors.
And fakes.
It pulsed with residual magic.
Old.
Powerful.
“I need you to sit,” Jae-min said.
“Why?”
“Because I need to know who you really are.”
“And if I refuse?”
“You won’t.”
He was right.
Because I wanted to know something too.
Who he really was.
I sat down.
The mirror lit up.
And then — my reflection began to shift.
And behind me…
A shadow with glowing red eyes appeared.
Watching.
Breathing.
Waiting.
And it whispered in my ear.
“Hello, daughter of the Dark King.”