Mira stayed longer at the archive than she intended, long after the rest of the staff had filtered out into the night. Even Alex had left reluctantly, stopping in the doorway at least three times to make sure she was really fine. She'd insisted she needed only a few more minutes. Maybe an hour. Maybe time alone to think without Alex's worried eyes tracking her every expression. He didn't say the words—you're slipping—but she heard them anyway in his silence.
Midnight settled into the building with the weight of a held breath. The hum of the ceiling lights was the only constant in the otherwise suffocating quiet. Mira stood in the center of Room 3B, staring at the documents spread across the metal table. Her mother's handwriting stood out like fresh scars: sharp, angular, rushed. Each page looked like someone wrote it while afraid of running out of time.
She hovered her fingertips above the notes. She didn't want to touch them. She also couldn't stop herself.
A faint shudder trembled through the table. She jerked her hand back. The lights didn't flicker; nothing in the room visibly moved. Yet the metal beneath her had quivered like something alive beneath her palms.
She waited.
The hum returned. Nothing else.
Her nerves felt strung like wires. It wasn't fear this time. Not entirely. Something more complex rose inside her: anticipation, dread, grief, memory, all spiraling together into a tension that tightened her chest until it ached.
She exhaled, long and shaky. She reached out again, this time grabbing one of the pages, the one that had slipped out of the folder earlier. Dried coffee stained the corner. Mira traced her mother's looping "M"—a rare softness in her otherwise rigid handwriting.
"If you're reading this, they've found you again…"
Again.
The word felt cold. Heavy.
Her mother knew. She had known even then.
Mira set the page down, her hands trembling. The air in the room felt too thin. She wasn't imagining it; she had lived with this sensation her whole life—like something was about to surface, something she had always been meant to understand but had been shielded from.
She stepped back from the table, rubbing her arms. The warmth in the room seemed to drain into the floor. When she looked up, the shelves along the walls felt unfamiliar. The angles of the room seemed slightly altered, barely perceptible but wrong enough to make her skin crawl.
"Get a grip," she whispered.
The sound of her voice was too loud, too solitary.
A faint scratching noise came from the far end of the room.
She froze.
It wasn't the building settling. That sound she knew: the groan of old heating pipes, the occasional buzz-burst from the humming lights. This was different. A delicate, methodical scrape, as though something sharp dragged slowly along metal.
She turned toward the sound.
Nothing there.
The room looked exactly the same as always—rows of labeled boxes, gray shelves, a few extra chairs stacked in the corner. Too normal. Suspiciously normal, like an imitation of itself.
Her pulse throbbed in her throat. The scraping stopped. She took a careful step forward, checking behind one of the shelves. Nothing but dust and a few stray paperclips.
She felt eyes on her. Watching. Studying. Waiting.
The feeling had followed her for days, slipping into her shadow, hiding at the corners of her vision. It wasn't paranoia. Not anymore. The things she'd seen weren't hallucinations, and the fragments of her mother's letters only confirmed what her gut already told her: something was breaking through.
And it wanted her attention.
Mira moved toward the small window in the door, needing to anchor herself, needing something real to look at. The hallway beyond was empty. Pale. Still.
She stared at her reflection in the glass, searching for some reassurance.
Then the reflection moved.
Not much—just a slight tilt of the head, just barely enough to register—but it wasn't her movement. Her body stayed perfectly still.
Her reflection had tilted its head toward her.
She stumbled back, and this time the lights flickered, plunging the room into a dim, stuttering glow. The reflection blurred, growing taller for a heartbeat, then shrinking back down, shifting like a smear on wet paper.
"No," she whispered. "No, no—"
She turned to run, but something in the corner of her eye forced her gaze back to the window.
Her reflection was no longer hers.
Long limbs. Distorted posture. A head bent too far to the side. No face, not really—just the faint suggestion of one, like someone had tried to erase it.
It leaned closer to the glass from the other side.
The lights steadied.
Her breath shredded itself into panic. She grabbed the nearest object—a folder, useless—and backed toward the door. The thing in the window lifted a hand. Fingers impossibly thin stretched across the glass, pressing down with visible pressure.
A crack appeared beneath its palm.
Mira's entire body twisted with instinct. She grabbed the door handle and yanked it open.
The hallway outside was dark except for the emergency lights, casting a dull red glow that made everything look submerged in blood. Her steps echoed sharply as she barreled down the corridor, trying to outrun the cold breath on her neck, the lingering image of the reflection's hand cracking the glass.
Behind her, a soft tapping followed.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
Like long nails brushing walls.
She walked faster. Then faster. Her shoes scraped against the floor tiles as she nearly broke into a run, but she didn't dare lose control, didn't dare make too much noise. The building felt tensed around her, listening.
A whisper crawled up the back of her mind.
It remembers you.
The same words she had heard from the fallen paper. She pressed her hands to her ears, as if that could block out something that wasn't sound but thought.
"No," she hissed. "Stay out."
But the whisper slid deeper, curling around her memories.
The hallway stretched too long. She knew this corridor. She had walked it a hundred times. But tonight it felt doubled, its far end pushed back, receding each time she stepped forward.
The door to the stairwell should've been ten feet away. It looked fifty.
Shadow pooled along the corners of the walls, darker than darkness, slow-moving like a spilled liquid creeping toward her.
Her breathing quickened. She broke into a run. Her footsteps echoed harshly, each one louder than the last.
Halfway down the corridor, her vision dimmed around the edges. Not from faintness. More like the lights themselves were shrinking away from her, pulling inward, giving space for something else.
She didn't look back.
She couldn't.
Her mother's voice—her real voice, warm and certain—flashed through her mind.
Mira, if anything ever happens, don't look behind you.
What had she meant? What had she known?
The stairwell door finally appeared ahead. She slammed into it, nearly dropping the handle in her panic. She shoved through the door and closed it behind her.
Silence.
Not the normal kind.
This silence was thick. Absolute. The kind that makes your heartbeat sound wrong.
She leaned against the wall, sliding down until she was crouched on the cold concrete steps. Her hands trembled uncontrollably. Sweat chilled her skin.
She needed to call Alex.
She needed to get out.
She needed—
A faint pressure touched the stairwell door.
Not a knock.
A push.
Slow.
Steady.
She stared at the metal handle, her chest tightening like a trap around her ribs. If it moved—if anything pressed it down—
"I'm not doing this," she whispered, pushing herself to her feet. "I'm not waiting."
She descended the stairs quickly but not running, afraid the sound of frantic footsteps might draw something forward. The stairwell spiraled down three floors, each landing feeling more claustrophobic than the last.
On the second landing, the lights above flickered once.
Then again.
Then went out.
She froze.
A breath, cold as ice water, touched the back of her neck.
Her body locked. Every muscle screamed at her to run, but her legs felt rooted in concrete. She didn't move. She didn't breathe.
Something moved behind her.
Slow. Dragging. Like limbs too long for the space.
Her heart slammed against her ribs. She didn't turn around. She didn't dare.
One step.
Another.
Something was walking toward her.
Her throat constricted. Tears prickled her eyes. She squeezed her fists so tight her nails bit into her palms.
There was a faint click above—the emergency lights kicking back on for a split second.
One second was enough.
In that flash of dim red light, she saw a silhouette directly behind her.
Too close.
Too tall.
Its head hung just over her shoulder, bent down as if watching her breathe.
The lights snapped off again.
Mira hurled herself forward, stumbling down the steps, catching herself on the rail at the last second before falling. Her shoes slammed against the concrete, her breath coming in sharp gasps.
She didn't hear the thing chase her.
But that didn't mean it wasn't following.
She reached the bottom of the stairwell and burst through the basement door. The air smelled old, heavy with dust and forgotten storage. This part of the building was barely used, dimly lit with only a few functioning bulbs.
The corridor felt colder than upstairs.
Her breaths came out in clouds.
She wrapped her arms around herself, fighting the disorientation swirling through her mind. She needed to think. She needed to get outside. She needed—
Something shifted to her left.
A soft drag. Like cloth being pulled across the floor.
Her pulse skyrocketed. She sprinted toward the exit at the far end of the hall. Her footsteps echoed ahead of her, the sound battering the walls and bouncing back like something with too many legs was following.
Halfway to the exit, she felt it.
A presence. Impossibly close. Matching her pace without making a sound.
She didn't slow.
She grabbed the exit bar and shoved the door open, spilling out into the open night air. The parking lot was empty, lit by the harsh glow of a single flickering streetlamp. The cold air hit her like a slap, grounding her, reminding her that she was still here—still alive, still breathing.
But her relief was cut short.
Behind her, through the narrow strip of glass in the door, a dark shape slid past. Not walking. Gliding. Wrong in a way her mind couldn't articulate.
She backed away from the building, eyes locked on the door. The shape paused. Turned. Leaned closer to the glass as though trying to follow her gaze.
Then the glass cracked.
One thin fracture line.
Mira felt the world tilt. She swallowed a scream and ran blindly toward her car. Her keys nearly slipped from her shaking fingers as she jammed them into the lock, threw open the door, and collapsed inside.
She slammed the door shut and hit the locks.
The parking lot stayed silent.
No footsteps. No shadow. Nothing.
Just the cracked window staring at her from across the lot, a reminder. A warning. A promise.
Something had watched her tonight.
And next time, she knew it wouldn't stop at watching.