The word pulsed on the page – Mireya – once more than twice it seemed like it made waves through time itself.
Elias sucked in a breath that didn't belong to him. The ink bled upward, not down, wafting through the air like smoke beneath water.
Elias reaches for his desk to steady himself – but it wasn't there or maybe he missed it.
A weight wrapped around his ribs, first soft, then crushing. His lungs burned. His vision blurred around the edges.
He was sinking not through space or water, but through self.
Down, down, deeper.
The Archive grew distant, unreal, distorted as if viewed through rippling broken glass. The scratching of quills stilled for a moment, suddenly he could hear everything. The rain, the thunder, the mumblings of the other scribes. Everything was so close and still so far away.
Beneath him, opening like a mouth: a memory. Not his but it stood still as if waiting for him, only him.
A warmth filled his limb, ash and cinnamon. A lullaby growing closer hummed through the dark like light refracting in water.
He stood barefoot in a darkened room. The area pulsed its walls moving churning like stirring soup. The furniture was half formed, faded, remembered in incomplete thoughts. There was a fireplace somewhere in the distance. Elias felt no warmth from it.
The warmth came from her.
A woman stood over a crib, her back turned. Parts of her head were bleeding, ash mixed into the dark mop of her hair. Her voice humming that same lullaby shaking on certain parts like she was trying not to cry. She cradled something small – a baby, a child, him – or maybe not. He didn't know. The memory was blurry, the details lost.
But he knew this place.
He knew the ache in the air, the sense of betrayal and unseen but felt desperation.
He knew the shape of her shoulders, the tilt of her head, the lines of her dress.
"Mireya." He whispered slowly.
She stilled.
The lullaby stopped.
Slowly, impossibly, she turned. Her eyes – clear, wet, real – met him, staring at him as though she could see him.
"Why did you leave me?" She asked, no, demanded to know. The words bounced off the warped walls screaming at him to answer.
Elias choked.
"I didn't – I don't –"
His hands moved without control or his command. The ink on the page was gone, but something deeper unspooled from his chest. A thread of heat, or blood, or memory. And across the air – across the fabric of her pain – he wrote:
Let her remember the warmth, not the fire. Let her forget the screams. Let her know: she was not abandoned.
As soon as the thought was complete, the room quaked softly.
She whispered something to the child in her arms – words Elias couldn't hear. The air shimmered.
But he could feel it.
The edit had taken place.
And then, like the sea of reversing tides, the warmth slipped away. Dragging in a crack, sharp as a bone being split in half.
He surged upward–
Grasping. Choking. Reborn into air.
His chair had toppled behind him. The slip was blank. The lamp buzzed violently.
Elias was on his knees, drenched in sweat, ink smeared across his face like a deep black bruise. His gloves lay shredded beside him.
His throat was dry. His lips still moved.
"Mireya."
And in that moment, Elias knew three things:
1.That name was never meant for him to see.
2.That memory did not belong to him.
3.And that he had changed it anyway.