The charge—whatever it really was—was now filled to the top. Though the abyss itself still looked empty. The YouTube window on the tablet had been closed, and Noah didn’t know how he could open it again. There was no visible link, nothing.

  The only thing left to test was the last unsolved mystery—the strange freezing doors. Now, when the “charge” was at one hundred percent, something had to have changed there, right?

  Noah suspected that this place worked somewhat like an escape room. Because seriously—spending eternity just pouring from a full bucket into an empty well?.. To Noah, such a thought seemed absurd. There had to be something more. And that “something” lay behind the mysterious doors.

  Returning to the corridor, he again saw the hanging lantern. Without matches, this thing was nothing more than a decoration, of no use so far. With a sigh, Noah tapped the glass of the lantern with his finger, then tried to turn the rusty wick knob. Who knew—maybe there hadn’t been a wick inside for ages…

  The knob squeaked dryly.

  Behind the dim glass, a yellow light flared, instantly tearing most of the corridor out of the darkness. Noah blinked in surprise, still holding the knob between his fingers.

  This... damned thing didn’t need any matches?..

  Suddenly, he felt anger rising. At the owl-brained admins who had built this place but hadn’t managed to connect it with any common sense. At himself, for wasting time without trying every possible, even the most foolish-looking, solution. After all, no one had confirmed to him that the rules of the normal world had to apply in this place!

  For the next five minutes, Noah wasted time loudly cursing, swearing at nothing in particular, and pounding the wall with his fist.

  After that, he felt a little better.

  “All right then,” he told himself. “Now we start from the beginning and ESPECIALLY systematically.”

  When he approached the black doors, they were still closed and showed not the slightest sign of being enchanted in any way. Noah paced in a half-circle several times, trying to see if there was any difference, not daring to pull the handle. But, however you looked at it, that was the only way. Besides, the cold lasted only briefly and didn’t cause any lasting effects.

  Placing the lantern and the tablet on the floor, the young man drew several deep breaths and seized the black metal handle. At once, his hand was pierced by the same merciless surge of cold, just as aggressive as before. Not the slightest difference. Hissing, Noah jumped back, shaking his hand and considering alternatives.

  The T-shirt hadn’t helped, the pole hadn’t mattered to the doors… what if he poured the glowing water on them?

  Returning to the water pump, he tried again to lift a full bucket. It was still devilishly heavy. He had no choice but to pour out more than half of it right there on the floor. But even then, the weight of the bucket stayed the same.

  “As long as the charge is almost at one hundred percent, carrying the water becomes a serious problem,” Noah thought. “I’ll just have to wait until the energy drains a little.”

  Taking the opportunity, he went back to the little room, sat at the table, and lit the lamp standing on it. That one also needed no matches. The room instantly became pleasantly bright. Taking the chance, Noah once again carefully examined everything, even flipped and pressed the mattress, hoping to find something sewn inside. But there was nothing, and the room revealed nothing new he hadn’t already seen. The table had no hidden drawers or compartments, and not even at the bottom did he find any carved secret messages.

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  At last, only one object remained not fully inspected—the strange lantern. To be thorough, Noah brought the other two lanterns from the corridor, carefully examined both from all sides, and even tried to remove the glass. The glass came off quite easily but revealed no new secrets. The lantern’s body was made in an old-fashioned way, from thin sheet metal. Its parts were bent and hammered together, so it was impossible to take the whole thing apart without breaking it. For now, Noah avoided doing that, fearing that losing the item might affect his own existence. In this place, you couldn’t be sure of anything.

  When all three lanterns had been thoroughly sniffed at and returned to their places, he went to check the buckets. The glowing water he had spilled earlier was already gone—perhaps absorbed into the floor—so Noah immediately emptied the remaining water and carefully inspected both buckets.

  Again, he found nothing that could hint at a solution. Not even a maker’s mark was stamped into them. Just plain metal buckets, nothing more.

  In the end, Noah’s ideas ran out, except for that one he still couldn’t carry out. He settled near the water pump, on an upturned bucket, and waited patiently, noting everything he had tried and experienced in the tablet’s notebook. He remembered feeling hungry when he first woke up on the edge of the abyss. Now that feeling was completely gone, replaced with the all-powerful, mysterious “charge.”

  The beam of light blazing from the crack in the ceiling remained equally bright as time passed, so Noah could only quietly count seconds. Every five hundred seconds, he tried to lift a bucket filled with water, but so far it remained devilishly heavy. Tired of counting, Noah brought all three lanterns, lit them, and arranged them along the grotto walls. Maybe this way the “charge” would drain faster?

  And indeed—after about fifteen thousand seconds, the full bucket finally yielded and could be lifted without much effort. The tablet was still silent, not planning to sound any alarm about diminishing energy. Noah wasn’t about to pour water into the abyss anyway. He carried the bucket to the end of the corridor, where the impassable doors loomed. Stopping four steps away, the young man hurled the water with all his strength onto the surface of the doors. As it flew through the air, Noah dropped the bucket and jumped several steps back, expecting the worst.

  But all he heard was the most banal splash. The water drenched the doors, ran down their surface and across the floor in all directions, splattering the walls. No magical special effects, nothing… except that now the entire corridor glowed with ghostly bluish light.

  Disappointed, Noah exhaled. Had it worked? Had it failed? Either way, he would again have to grab the handle, because there was no other way to check.

  Approaching the glowing puddle of water, he frowned. Noah cautiously stretched out the tip of his sneaker into the water’s surface. He was dead, true. But how should one interpret the existence of sneakers? Did they count as separate physical objects, or were they part of his own afterlife body? In the first case, they should protect his feet from the glowing water’s effect, right?..

  Encouraged, Noah poked the water with his sneaker. And instantly jumped as if stung, flooded by a cacophony of screams.

  So, the shoes would not protect his feet at all. Just as the pole hadn’t protected him from the magic of the doors. His clothes and shoes were nothing more than an extension of his body here, most likely created out of hollow dreams. Noah could just as well have stripped naked—nothing would have changed. Only, he didn’t want to do that, still hoping for visitors someday. Meeting them naked would be a little awkward…

  This discovery meant that not only had he failed to solve the door problem, but he had also created another obstacle for himself. It was impossible to walk through the wet corridor without hearing all those screams. And he could endure them only two or three seconds at most, no longer.

  Disappointed, he returned to the main grotto and sat again on the upturned bucket.

  What else can I possibly do?..