A guardian who has forgotten why he stands watch.
She sat at the kitchen table, staring at the letter. It had been there for days, perhaps weeks. A thin envelope, nothing dramatic. Just a form she needed to fill out and send off. But every time she picked up the pen, something more urgent would come to mind. Make coffee. Clean the windows. Send a message that could not wait.
Today, she had sworn she would do it. She took a deep breath, pulled the paper closer, picked up the pen. Her hand hovered over the first line.
And there it was again.
That faint sensation, as if something were shifting, barely perceptible, like a shadow cooling the room. It wasn’t the form that felt heavy. It was something else, unseen but certain.
The hallway in her mind was long and silent.
And there he stood. The man with the key ring. He didn’t move quickly; he didn’t have to. He knew exactly which door to open to change this moment.
A soft click echoed through the hall.
At the far end, a door opened and the Doubter stepped out. “Perhaps you should first check if you have all the documents.” Another key turned. The Anxious one joined him. “And what if you fill it out wrong? Better think it over again.”
The Keyholder, some also called him the Saboteur, was never loud or violent. His power lay in precision. He knew exactly which voices to summon at the same time so that a clear intention unraveled into a tangle of uncertainties. Every door he opened was an impulse; every voice, a small stone dropped into water, sending ripples outward.
She sat at the table, pen in hand, hearing her own thoughts like foreign voices weaving into each other. The letters on the form blurred. Her hand set the pen down.
Just for a moment, she told herself.
In the hallway, the Keyholder slipped the ring of keys back into his pocket. The doors remained open, the voices lingering in the air.
And he knew she would do nothing more today.
