The fourth door is a knot in a rope that hangs from nowhere. You untie it with a promise you know you will break.

The second door is a mirror in a frozen lake. To pass, you must not recognize the thing that looks back.

The ninth door is not a door at all. It is the moment just before you die, stretched into an iron thread. You step through it sideways, and on the other side, the shadows are not waiting for you.

The eighth door is a child’s drawing pinned to a wall in a house that burned down. You enter by remembering the smell of the crayons. The shadow kingdom begins here, in the nostalgia of things that never lived.

...