Door

Deep within the Bertruvian woods stood a single, oaken door. It was not attached to any tree trunk or stone wall - it stood, solitary and alone, in one of the forest's many groves, standing a dozen feet away from the nearby pond. though many had gone to see it, no one knew how it had gotten there, and any attempts to remove the door from the forest had proven fruitless. Though the ground beneath it was merely dirt, they found it too difficult to dig through, and its frame was lodged firmly in the ground, the wood too strong to break.

Sir Krugen stood before the door, stoically watching for any who might try to pass through it. A number of curious ones had passed through the door, and not a one of them had returned. They did not appear on the other side of the door as they passed through, and the door slid shut silently behind them. Upon reopening, those who had passed through its frame had vanished without a trace. After a number of them had vanished, the king had assigned Krugen to protect the door - or, rather, to protect the people from the door. He had gladly accepted the position, happy to serve his king and kingdom.

It was, admittedly, a dull position. Even before he had been assigned the position, the rate at which people had vanished through the door was low - rumors were exceedingly successful at both stopping people, and encouraging them. But knowing that a knight was protecting the door had lowered visitors even further, and in a month of guarding, he had only turned away a dozen people, most of whom had come within the first week. It had been six days since his last visitor.

He was cooking his dinner - a deer that he had hunted as it passed through the area - when he heard the sound of someone knocking on wood. His eyes turned immediately to the door, thinking that perhaps someone had snuck past him while his attention was turned to his food. But he saw no one. Had they gone through already? Had he just missed them?

And then the knocking came again. He was on his feet in an instant. There was only one possibility, but it went against everything that he understood about the door. No one could come back through the door. No one had ever come through the door at all. They only went through - it was a one way ticket.

Was it really so hard to believe though? It was a magic door, bereft of any structure, through which people simply vanished. Was it truly so hard to believe that someone was coming through from the other side?