Uncle Dalice removed his oversized sunglasses, revealing the empty eye sockets and glowing eye lights underneath. If there were any consciousness to the door, she knew it would react to them, a display of his undead nature.


    “Confess the truth!”


    Freckle clenched her fists. By the door’s commands, she knew the door meant that they had to recite the New Learning’s dogma at it. What she hadn’t worked out was what safeguards it had against insincere confessions: was this door blocking them, or was it off to the diagonal, ready to be taken?


    “Confess the truth! How’s that supposed to keep us out?” Gullshower slipped toward the paper-thin crack beneath the door, but the door splintered itself to cover the gap and thus stopped Gullshower.


    Freckle stepped toward the door, flexing her fists. “The only way through is to confess.”


    “Confess?” Lifeblood asked, peering at Uncle Dalice’s sockets. “You mean like our secrets? Like the door is our own personal diary now? That’s why he’s up there, isn’t it? To confess to the door that he’s undead.”


    Shaking her head, Freckle stepped toward the door. “I’m the one technically registered to be here. I should handle this.”


    “Confess!”


    Freckle stopped in front of the door and dug her fingernails into her palms. “I confess I’m a t-terrible….”


    She was a terrible person who’d trained for this all her life and still couldn’t handle infiltrating the cult when the time came. She was a terrible fraud who led her father on about how ready she was to confront the Trials because she didn’t want to be a bad daughter. Terrible. A terrible example of pretending to be something she wasn’t, believe something she didn’t, in order to infiltrate the evil religion of the time, rather than leading a new religious order as herself to begin with.


    Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.


    Freckle punched the door, and her fist came away with a splinter. Wailing, she plopped down in front of it. “They’re just words that I’ve always been responsible to speak! I should be able to say them!”


    Gullshower attached to her shadow. “What’s this? You’re letting a door walk all over you? Stand up straight and tell it to let you through! Tell it you’re exactly what the New Learning needs, and you’ll punch it again if it doesn’t give you the respect you deserve and open up!”


    Freckle shook her head again. “It won’t open for just any confession. It’s…. They’ve gotten smart. One good way to win a chess match is if you can psych your opponent into making mistakes, so they’ve made the door to respond only to some sincerity in reciting their self-loathing dogma.”


    She didn’t know if it responded to sincerity, but if the New Learning set all this up, why wouldn’t the door be listening for sincerity?


    “That doesn’t make it a choice between-”


    “Oh! It wants a sincere confession?” Lifeblood bent down. “I love acting! What does it want me to say?”


    Gullshower shaped his shadow to let light bleed through where his eyes would be, and then he narrowed his eyes at Lifeblood. “Why do you want to let a badly sanded door walk all over you?”


    Sap searched through his utility belt. “He’s right. Maybe we don’t have to let the door make demands. If I have more acid somewhere, I’ll-”


    “I thought we weren’t leaving a trace, Hubby?” Lifeblood leaned against Freckle, giggling. “I’ll let the door recruit me into its cult, and then you use those amazing creations of yours to free me on the other side!”


    Uncle Dalice cleared his throat and rapped on the door. “I confess that I’m the useless idiot who stood by and watched as my girlfriend’s soul got eaten with the rest of the band’s. Yet, I am here to prevent my further slide into hell.”


    Freckle gasped as Uncle Dalice’s life story opened the door and confirmed that she’d be committing further fraud to infiltrate the New Learning.