Three years ago.
Rain hammered the skylights of the archive's north wing. Ezra stood in the reading chamber, dripping water onto the tiles, his coat soaked through. He hadn't meant to come here—not like this. Not at midnight. Not when the halls were closed and silent.
But Daniel was already there.
He sat cross-legged on the floor, a stack of memory-sheets fanned around him like petals. His hair was a mess. Ink smudged one cheek. He didn't look up when Ezra entered—just waved a hand without glancing over.
"You're late," he said.
Ezra scowled. "You said tomorrow."
Daniel finally looked up, all wide eyes and lopsided grin. "No, I said after midnight. Which makes this today."
Ezra opened his mouth, then closed it again. Arguing would only feed the smugness.
Daniel leaned back on his hands. "Come look. I think I found it. The spill point. The actual moment the Gutter-Wake distortion started."
Ezra stepped closer, curiosity overriding irritation. Daniel slid one of the sheets toward him—a fragile square of pressed memory-thread, pulsing faintly with the weight of what it held. Ezra took it in his hands. Closed his eyes.
The moment washed over him.
A voice—fractured, echoing—screaming from a collapsing tunnel of time. "Don't let them bury it—don't let them bury me—"
He jerked back, breath ragged.
Daniel didn't flinch. Just watched him with that quiet fire in his eyes. "That's what we're up against. History doesn't vanish. It gets hidden. Twisted. Buried alive."
Ezra sat down beside him, heart pounding.
That was the night he stopped thinking of Daniel as a fellow archivist—and started thinking of him as something else. Something dangerous. And maybe necessary.
Now.
The present snapped back around him. Cold night. Empty street. Mara at his side, watching him carefully.
"You okay?" she asked.
Ezra nodded once, though his throat felt tight.
"Yeah," he lied. "Just remembered something."
Mara walked beside Ezra, the city folding in strange around them, and tried not to let her grip on the book slip.
The cold didn't bother her. Not really. What chilled her was how quiet everything had become.
She used to love this part of the city—cobblestone alleys and flickering gaslamps, windows full of stories. She and Daniel used to walk home from the café this way, late nights after archive shifts, carrying too many books and half-finished arguments. He'd talk too much. She'd pretend to be annoyed. But she always listened.
He was good at lighting up the silence.
Now, that same silence pressed down like a weight.
She could still hear him if she tried—his laugh, low and warm, the way he hummed under his breath when he worked. But it was getting harder. Every hour, it slipped further from her grip, like a dream dissolving in daylight.
She hadn't told Ezra the worst part.
That this morning, she'd woken up and couldn't picture Daniel's handwriting.
She could remember his voice, the shape of his shoulders in the doorway, even the terrible coffee he made. But the letters—his looping, careful scrawl in the margins of her notes—that was gone.
Erased.
Not faded. Not forgotten. Removed.
She pressed the book tighter to her chest.
He had written in this one. She remembered it. Not much—just a note in the corner of a page. A question about a theory they'd been unraveling together. But when she checked earlier tonight, the margin was blank. The ink had vanished. Like he had never touched it at all.
She looked up at Ezra now, watching the tension in his shoulders, the way his eyes kept scanning the streets.
Mara didn't trust many people. But Ezra had always struck her as someone who noticed. Someone who listened.
So she asked, quietly, "What if I forget him completely?"
Ezra slowed beside her. Not stopping, but close. He didn't look at her, just answered in that steady way of his.
"Then we make sure you don't."
She blinked hard, throat tight.
Not a promise. Not false hope.
Just a vow to fight it.
She could live with that
They turned down Lamplight Row, the final street before the old archive district began. Here, the buildings leaned closer together, their brickwork dark with age, windows blind behind thick curtains. Gaslamps lined the path, but most had gone out—only a few still sputtered weakly, casting elongated shadows that stretched and vanished with every step.
Mara's boots clicked against the stone, the only sound besides the whisper of wind. Ezra hadn't spoken again. He moved like someone listening for something too faint to hear, like the whole city was speaking just beneath the surface—and he was the only one who understood its language.
Ahead, the café came into view.
Or rather, the absence of it.
She slowed.
There should've been golden light in the window. A chalkboard sign out front. Familiar mismatched chairs stacked behind the glass.
But it was dark.
Still there—but hollow. Dim. Like a memory trying too hard to be real.
Mara felt the hairs rise on her arms.
"I used to meet him here," she whispered. "Every week. Thursdays. After the archive closed."
Ezra stopped beside her.
"Anything still feel right?" he asked.
She looked at the building.
"No," she said. "It feels… copied. Like someone remembered what it looked like and tried to rebuild it from the outside."
Ezra stepped forward, laying a hand against the wall beside the café's door.
A moment passed.
Then he pulled back, jaw tight. "Nothing."
Mara closed her eyes. It hurt—this absence. Like pressing against a bruise she couldn't see.
"I think this was the first place that started to forget him," she murmured.
Ezra nodded, slowly. "Then that's where we start."
Ezra crouched near the café's threshold, fingers brushing the frame where the door met the wall. His movements were methodical, reverent—like a musician tuning an instrument that had been silent too long.
Mara watched in silence, her heart thudding hard enough to feel in her throat. She remembered standing in that exact spot with Daniel. Him fumbling for his keys, teasing her about always ordering the same thing. She could almost hear it.
But Ezra's brow furrowed.
"Too thin," he muttered. "Even the ambient impressions are wrong. It's like someone scrubbed it clean and left a fake layer behind."
He stood, shaking out his fingers like they were cold. Or burned.
Mara stepped forward. "Can you still try? Pull something from deeper down?"
Ezra hesitated.
"The risk's higher," he said. "If it's like the apartment… whoever's behind this may have left more traps."
"I don't care," Mara said, too fast. "Try."
Ezra looked at her then—really looked. Not just at her face, but at the set of her shoulders, the desperation held in her hands. He gave a slow nod and knelt again, this time placing his palm flat against the wall beside the door.
Mara watched as his expression shifted—first to stillness, then strain. His breath grew shallow. His lips parted slightly.
And then—
His hand jerked away as if shocked. He staggered back, eyes wide, breath ragged.
Mara caught him before he could fall.
"Ezra?"
He blinked hard, sweat beading at his temples. "It fought back. Worse than the last one."
"Did you see anything?" she asked.
His gaze flicked past her to the café's window, then back to the street, then to her.
"A chair," he said softly. "One chair. Turned the wrong way. And someone watching through the glass—but not Daniel."
"Then who?"
Ezra swallowed hard. "I don't know. But they were waiting."
The city around them felt like a photograph left out in the rain—edges bleeding, colors fading, details smudged beyond recognition.
Ezra stood motionless, his hand still tingling from the backlash of the memory trace. He stared at the café's façade, now seemingly untouched, ordinary. But he knew better. Beneath that veneer lay a void where memories once resided.
Mara clutched the book to her chest, her knuckles white. "What did you see?" she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.
Ezra hesitated. "A chair, turned the wrong way. Someone watching through the glass—not Daniel. Someone else. They were waiting."
Mara's eyes widened. "Waiting for us?"
"Maybe," Ezra replied. "Or for anyone who dares to remember."
He turned away from the café, scanning the street. The gas lamps flickered erratically, casting elongated shadows that danced and twisted unnaturally. Buildings that once stood familiar now appeared alien, their features subtly altered.
"The city's changing," Mara said, her voice trembling. "It's like it's... forgetting itself."
Ezra nodded grimly. "Memories are being erased, not just from people, but from places. The fabric of the city is unraveling."
They began to walk, each step feeling heavier than the last. The silence was oppressive, broken only by the distant, distorted chime of a tram bell.
As they turned a corner, they encountered a mural that had once depicted a bustling marketplace. Now, it was a blank wall, the paint peeled away, leaving no trace of what had been.
Mara reached out, touching the wall. "Even art isn't safe," she murmured.
Ezra placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder. "We need to find the source of this erasure. Before everything is lost."
They continued their journey, the city's memory fading around them, determined to uncover the truth behind the hollow silence.