Elias slept with the lights on for a week. He told himself he’d imagined it. Then he turned to the second gate: the Gate of Echoes .
The ninth gate opened anyway.
The next morning, the bookstore in Lyon found the book back on its bottom shelf. The inside cover was blank except for a single sentence in a spidery, unfamiliar hand:
At the center stood the ninth gate. It was a door made of polished obsidian, and it had no handle on this side.
The tenth gate is closing your eyes and pretending you never saw the first.
Place your hand on the door. Say, “I am the warden now.” The gate will open. The Kingdom will have its keeper. And you will have eternity to regret it.