Nyra was already late when the stair decided to betray her.
The third step from the bottom dipped under her weight, just enough to make her stumble and swear under her breath. She caught herself on the railing, heart pounding, then stood there for a second longer than necessary, staring at the chipped stone like it had done this on purpose.
"I hate this building," she muttered.
The building, ancient and unmoved, did not care.
The lower district was already awake. Vendors setting up stalls, children darting between carts, the smell of hot bread and metal and dust thick in the air. Bells rang somewhere overhead, it was midmorning already. Nyra exhaled sharply and adjusted the strap of her satchel, mentally calculating how much trouble she'd be in this time.
Probably manageable. She was useful enough that people tolerated her lateness.
She took three steps away from the stairs, then froze.
Her notes.
Nyra squeezed her eyes shut.
"Of course."
She turned and jogged back up, boots thudding against stone worn smooth by centuries of feet. Inside her apartment, the air was cool and faintly stale. Sunlight filtered in through the narrow window, catching on floating dust motes and the edges of parchment stacked everywhere.
She crossed the room, scooped up the folded star charts from her desk, then hesitated.
The mirror by the door caught her reflection at an angle.
Nyra paused. not because she looked strange, but because something felt… off. A pressure behind her eyes. A faint sense of delay, like the room was half a breath behind her.
She lifted a hand. Her reflection did the same.
Exactly the same.
She frowned at herself, then shook her head and grabbed her coat.
"You're tired," she said aloud. "That's all."
Five hours of sleep and too much reading would do that to anyone.
She locked the door and left.
The Archive Annex smelled like ink and old paper. It was mostly quiet. Nyra liked it there. The place didn't judge you for staying too long or asking too many questions. As long as you were useful, it let you exist.
She slipped into the west wing just as a lecture was starting, taking a seat near the back. Her satchel thumped softly against the bench. She pulled out her notes, smoothing the creases with practised care.
The lecturer was already halfway through a familiar explanation, droning on about fixed constellations and immutable celestial order. Nyra tried to focus, really tried to but her eyes kept drifting to the diagrams projected above.
They were wrong.
Not obviously, the change was not enough for anyone else to notice. But Nyra had stared at those patterns for years. She knew where each line should sit.
Something had shifted.
She made a small note in the margin, then crossed it out. Added another. Crossed that out too. Her pen hovered, frustrated.
"That hasn't moved," someone whispered nearby, probably reacting to a different point entirely.
Nyra's jaw tightened.
She raised her hand before she could stop herself.
"Yes?" the lecturer said, already weary.
"The eastern arc is misaligned," Nyra said. Her voice sounded steadier than she felt. "Just slightly. It's been drifting for a while."
A pause.
A few heads turned.
The lecturer adjusted his glasses, peering at her over the rims. "That arc has been stable for centuries."
Nyra swallowed. "I know. But it isn't now."
A murmur rippled through the room; some people turned their heads with curiosity and skepticism, while others did so with faint amusement.
"Stars don't move because we decide they have," the lecturer said gently, the way people did when correcting children.
Heat crept up Nyra's neck. "I didn't decide. I measured it."
Silence stretched.
Then the lecture continued, her comment neatly ignored.
Nyra stared down at her notes, pen pressing too hard into the page.
Something is wrong, she thought.
And no one else seemed to hear it.
She noticed him later. Lectures had ended and she was back doing her job.
Not right away, not in some dramatic way. Just a flicker at the edge of her awareness while she was shelving charts in the west wing. Someone standing too still. Too focused.
Nyra glanced up.
He was tall, dark-haired, leaning over one of the older star maps. It was the kind most people skipped because the language was inconvenient and the margins were crowded with conflicting annotations. He read like he wasn't struggling.
That alone was unusual. He didn't seem like he part of the temple. She observed that he had no robe, which means he wasn't part of the temple's hierarchy.
An outsider was reading star maps without any interpreter. How unusual.
She told herself not to stare. It happened anyway.
When he looked up, their eyes met.
The sensation hit her like a misstep on solid ground. A brief, dizzying shift, as if the world had tilted and corrected itself too quickly.
His brow furrowed.
Nyra looked away first, heart suddenly racing for no clear reason.
She finished shelving the charts with hands that felt slightly unsteady. When she glanced back, he was still there, attention returned to the map like nothing had happened.
Coincidence, she told herself.
Still, she left the Archive that day feeling unsettled, the air outside too bright, the noise of the street too sharp.
That night, she dreamed of stone corridors and bells that didn't ring.
The dreams came more often after that.
Not every night. Just enough to be annoying and disrupting her mental state.
She dreamed of a vast chamber carved from pale stone, the ceiling lost in shadow. A throne stood at the center. It was not ornate, or gilded. Just there. Waiting.
She never saw who it was meant for.
Nyra stopped mentioning the dreams after the second time someone suggested she take a break from the Archives. Instead, she started tracking them in the margins of her notebooks, right alongside star movements and historical inconsistencies.
That was when she realised the gaps were lining up.
Small things. Missing references. Records that should've overlapped but didn't. Dates that refused to agree no matter how carefully she cross-checked them.
It felt like someone had edited the records badly and hoped no one would notice.
Nyra noticed. It was one of her attributes that made her stand out.
She saw the dark-haired stranger again a week later.
This time, he was arguing with an archivist.
He wasn't loud, but he sounded like he was stubbornly trying to prove a point.
"That chart contradicts itself," he said, tapping the parchment. "You can't reconcile both versions unless something changed."
The archivist sighed. "Or unless one of them is wrong."
"Which one?" he asked.
Nyra paused mid-step.
The archivist opened his mouth, then closed it. "That's not the point."
The stranger didn't look convinced.
Nyra surprised herself by stepping closer. "He's not wrong," she said. "The older record aligns with what I've been seeing."
Both of them turned to look at her.
For a moment, the room felt… tight.