THE HIDDEN WORLD OF ALUNA 

Chapter One  The Gray Room

Moments after stepping through the door the strange man had opened for her, Maya turned around, but the door was gone. The doorway she had just walked through had disappeared.

She pressed her palms flat against the wall, as if touch might reveal what her eyes couldn't. But it was seamless— no frame, no handle, no crack where a door should have been.

"That's not possible," she murmured to herself.

She turned slowly, taking in the room for the first time.  It was small and dim.  The only light came from somewhere above, though she couldn't tell where. The floor beneath her feet was uneven stone, the walls the same. There was no furniture. No windows. Nothing that suggested anyone had ever been here.

She spun back to the wall and ran her hands across it again, faster this time, searching for a seam, a hidden latch, anything.  There was nothing.  The room was sealed.

She didn't know how she had ended up here.  She didn't know where here was.  She didn't know how much time had passed since she'd last been somewhere that made sense.

Maya had spent most of her life avoiding uncertainty. She liked knowing what came next.  She liked familiar choices, predictable outcomes, and paths where the risks were small. It wasn’t because she had everything figured out. It was because, underneath it all, she felt like she didn’t.  The world inside her had always felt messy, full of questions she couldn’t answer and fears she didn’t know how to quiet. So she learned to control the things she could. She stayed where it was safe. She chose the practical option.  

But this was different. There was nothing to control.  No decision to postpone.  No distraction to reach for.  No way to convince herself she was fine.  She was trapped.

She had stopped moving, her back against the wall, when she noticed something carved into the stone.

Two words.

LOOK INWARD.

Maya stared at them for a long moment.  What does that even mean? 

She continued to search the room.  Again and again.  She shouted.

She pounded on the walls until her hands hurt.  Nothing.  Eventually, she stopped.

Her legs gave out and she slid down the wall, curling into herself. Her hair fell across her face as she struggled to slow her breathing. She had run out of walls to check. Run out of things to try. There was nothing left to do but sit there and wait.  

How could I have trusted that Fool?  She pressed her back against the stone and closed her eyes.

She didn't know how long she sat there.  Maybe minutes.  Maybe hours.  Time moved strangely in this place — or perhaps it didn't move at all. 

She found herself thinking, absurdly, about the life she had left behind. The things she would miss the most — especially her morning coffee. The warm weight of the mug in her hands. The smell of it, dark and grounding, and that first sip that made everything feel right for a moment.

A small laugh escaped her.  What a ridiculous thing to miss.

She thought of her parents,.  Her friends.  Dan.

What if this was it? 

Who would come looking for her?

What if this sealed gray room was where her story ended — not in any of the ways she had vaguely imagined, but here, alone, carrying a life full of things she had never done?  All the things she kept putting off.  All the promises she had made to herself in quiet moments and then set aside because there was always tomorrow, always next week, always some better and braver version of herself who would finally get around to living the life she had imagined.

Not yet, she had always told herself.

For years she had believed there would be time. Time to figure things out. Time to be brave.  Time to stop waiting and finally start.  

What if there wasn’t?

Lying here on the floor of a room that should not exist, in a place she could not name, she felt for the first time the full weight of all those postponed beginnings.  All the lives she had imagined living.  All the stories she carried inside her that no one had ever heard.  The dreams she'd quietly packed away because they no longer seemed possible. 

A tear slipped down her cheek.  She wiped it away quickly, annoyed with herself — not for crying, but for waiting until a sealed stone room to finally feel it.

Then something moved behind her.

Not a sound. Not a breeze. Just — movement. 

She went absolutely still.

"Who's there?" she said nervously.

Silence. Then — the whispers.

They arrived from no direction she could locate.  She couldn't make out words, only tone — not threatening exactly, but not comforting either. They drifted around her, close enough to feel but impossible to place or escape.

"Hello?" she called. Her voice came out smaller than she intended.

No answer. But the whispers grew closer, circling, layering over each other.  Panic rose.

"Stop," she said. Then louder, her voice cracking. "Stop it!"

Silence.

Then a voice came from somewhere in the darkness.

"Don't cry, my dear."

Maya went still.

She was not alone.