Mira didn't remember driving home. One moment she was gripping the steering wheel so hard her hands ached, and the next she was sitting in her driveway, engine off, staring at the dark windows of her apartment building. Her mind drifted in and out of focus, replaying every detail of the archive: the cracking glass, the whispering pages, the shape behind her in the stairwell. The memory clung to her like wet clothing, refusing to loosen its grip.
She forced herself to breathe slowly. In through her nose. Out through her mouth. Her reflection in the car window looked hollow, pale, eyes too wide. She wasn't sure when she'd started shaking again.
She checked the parking lot carefully. Nothing moved except a few swaying branches in the wind. No shadows detached themselves from the dark. No unnatural shapes leaned from behind trees. For a moment, she allowed herself to believe she was finally safe.
She wasn't.
She knew that.
But she needed a moment—just one—before continuing the spiral her life had become.
Her phone buzzed, startling her so violently she hit her head on the window. She winced, fumbling for the device. Alex's name lit the screen.
She almost answered.
Almost.
Then her thumb froze over the green icon. If she heard his voice—warm, steady, familiar—she might fall apart. And she wasn't ready to let him hear her fall apart. Not yet. Not when she didn't even have the words to explain what she'd seen.
The phone buzzed again. A text followed.
ALEX: Did you get home? Please tell me you did.
She hesitated, then typed with stiff fingers:
MIRA: Home. Fine. Just tired.
She stared at the lie until the letters blurred. She put the phone face-down on the passenger seat and reached for the door handle.
The wind picked up as she stepped out, cold enough to cut through her jacket. She hugged her arms around herself and walked toward the entrance. Each step felt too loud. Too exposed. Her eyes scanned every shadow, every corner, every window reflecting the faint glow of streetlights.
Nothing moved.
But the silence pressed down on her like a weight.
Her apartment building's hallway smelled faintly of detergent and old carpet. The lights flickered—as always—but she flinched anyway. She climbed the stairs quickly, counting each step to keep her focus. Her keys jingled in her shaky hand. When she reached her door, she fumbled with the lock twice before finally turning it.
She stepped inside, closed the door behind her, and locked it.
The quiet was immediate.
She leaned against the door for a moment, letting her breath steady. She could almost pretend she was safe inside her own home. Almost.
Her apartment looked the same as always—simple, tidy, with a few plants on the windowsill and a stack of books on the coffee table. The only light came from the faint streetlamp glow through the curtains. The familiar shapes should've comforted her.
They didn't.
Tonight, even her own living room looked like a still frame from someone else's memory.
She turned on a lamp. The warm light pushed the shadows back.
Her stomach growled, reminding her she hadn't eaten since breakfast. She moved automatically to the kitchen, hands shaking only slightly now. She opened the fridge, stared at the food inside, and realized she wasn't hungry after all.
She grabbed a glass of water instead and brought it to her lips. Her reflection in the window above the sink caught her eye. She froze.
Her reflection seemed… slower. A fraction behind.
She blinked hard. Looked again.
Her reflection blinked with her this time.
She set the glass down, the clink louder than it should have been. "It's nothing," she whispered. "You're exhausted. You're imagining things."
But the fear didn't fade.
She pulled the curtains closed, shutting out the night. The room dimmed. She turned on another lamp. The soft glow calmed her slightly. Enough to breathe. Enough to think.
She sat on the couch and hugged her knees to her chest. The apartment felt smaller tonight—not unsafe, just too quiet, too aware. She needed to distract herself, ground herself, anything to stop the memories from looping inside her head.
She grabbed her mother's hidden pages from her backpack. The ones she'd taken from the archive. The ones that whispered.
She hesitated. But she had to look. She had to understand.
She spread the pages out on the coffee table. There were five of them. Each written in her mother's rushed, urgent scrawl. Mira traced the edges of one page, feeling a tremor beneath her fingers—not from the paper, but from her.
She read the first page again.
If you're reading this, they've found you again.
The sentence punched the breath from her lungs, same as before.
Again.
She still didn't know what "again" meant. But the pages hinted at something older, something her mother had been running from long before Mira was born.
The next paragraph mentioned a symbol—the same symbol Mira had seen in her childhood room, in her nightmares, even in the archive basement.
A barrier is only as strong as its vessel. You must never let them open the door inside you.
Mira pressed her palm to her chest, feeling the ache there. The words stirred something deep inside her—a memory she didn't fully have, something just out of reach.
She closed her eyes.
A faint image flickered in her mind: a red room, dimly lit; her small hand reaching for a door knob; her mother yelling her name; the sensation of being pulled—violently—backward.
She snapped her eyes open, breath coming fast. She hadn't remembered that before. Not clearly.
Her heartbeat reverberated in her ears. She reached for the second page with shaky hands.
If the shadows reach you, don't let them speak in your voice. They will try.
Her fingers tightened around the paper. A cold shudder crawled across her back, as though someone brushed past her, just barely out of sight.
She jumped and scanned the room.
Nothing.
But the air felt wrong. Heavy. Still.
She looked back at the page.
They know you. They always have. But you must not know them.
Her throat tightened. The next sentence had been smudged, water-damaged, impossible to read. She tried anyway, running her fingers over the blurred ink, willing something to make sense.
The third page was worse. Words crossed out. Sentences unfinished. Her mother's handwriting jagged, frantic, as if her hand had been shaking too much to keep up.
Harrow thinks he can control it. He can't. No one can. Not even—
The page ended.
Mira's breath caught in her chest. She flipped to the fourth page, desperate for something clearer, something that might ground her.
Instead, the page held a single line:
The shadows remember you because you were the first to see them.
Her vision blurred. Her mouth went dry. A ringing filled her ears.
The first.
The first.
What did that mean?
A faint sound reached her. Soft. Delicate. A whisper of breath on glass. She lifted her head slowly, dread sharpening every heartbeat.
The window behind her couch. The one she had closed the curtains over. The fabric swayed slightly, as if stirred by someone's breath on the other side.
No.
No, no—
Mira stood, her knees almost giving out, and took one slow step backward. Her gaze locked on the curtains. The faint outline of a hand pressed through the fabric. Not pushing—just resting. Waiting.
Her pulse thundered so loudly she almost didn't hear her phone buzzing again.
She startled at the sound and scrambled for the device. Alex's name flashed on the screen over and over, urgent. She answered with shaking fingers.
"Mira?" Alex's voice was hoarse. Panicked. "Where are you? Are you home?"
She opened her mouth, but no sound came out. She swallowed hard. "Alex," she whispered.
"What's wrong? Mira, talk to me."
She looked at the curtain again.
The handprint slid slowly downward.
Her voice broke. "Something's here."
There was a beat of silence. Then Alex's voice sharpened, shifting into a tone she'd only heard a few times before—once when she'd been hurt as a kid, another time when she'd collapsed from stress at work. "Stay on the phone with me. I'm coming over."
"No," she whispered, her gaze glued to the moving handprint. "Don't. Don't come."
"Mira—"
She backed away from the window, practically stumbling over the coffee table. Papers scattered across the floor. Her mother's pages drifted like falling leaves, whispering against the carpet.
The handprint faded.
Her heart dropped.
A soft tapping echoed from behind the curtain.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
Her whole body seized. She didn't blink. Didn't breathe. The tapping grew a little louder, a little faster, like fingers searching for the right rhythm, the right invitation.
"Mira, listen to me," Alex said through the phone, voice trembling now. "I need you to go to the door. Right now. Leave the apartment. I'm already driving."
She tried to move. Her legs felt anchored to the floor.
Another tap.
Then—
The curtain trembled, as if the hand brushing it was dragging downward, feeling its way along the fabric. Mira pressed a trembling hand over her mouth to stop herself from making a sound.
A voice whispered behind the curtain.
Not loud.
Not clear.
But unmistakably her mother's.
"Mira…"
Her heart clenched. Her legs nearly buckled. "Mom?"
"No," Alex's voice snapped sharply in her ear, cutting through the haze. "That's not her. Do you hear me? That's not her."
The curtain swayed again, and the whisper came more clearly this time.
"Mira… open the door."
Her chest constricted so tightly she could barely draw breath. The voice was perfect—tone, cadence, warmth. Exactly what she remembered. Exactly what she craved.
But something inside her twisted with certainty.
It wasn't real.
She stepped back, trembling so hard she nearly dropped the phone. "Alex," she whispered, "I can't stay here."
"Then go," he urged. "Now. Don't look back."
She moved slowly at first, then faster, stepping around the coffee table, the scattered papers, the shards of safety she thought her home once held. She reached for the front door, fingers fumbling with the lock.
Behind her, the curtain rustled again.
The whisper turned cold.
"Don't leave."
Her breath shattered. She flung the door open and ran.
She didn't stop to turn off the lights. Didn't stop to lock the door behind her. She didn't look at the window. She didn't look at her reflection in the hallway mirror. She didn't look back at all.
The apartment door slammed shut as she fled down the hall, phone clutched tight, Alex's voice calling her name through the speaker.
She didn't slow down until she reached the stairwell. She leaned over the railing, gasping for air, her vision blurring with tears and terror. The building felt too small, too silent, too ready to swallow her whole.
"I'm close," Alex said, breathless. "Just keep going. Don't stop."
She pushed herself down the stairs, her feet barely feeling the steps. Each floor down felt like peeling away layers of suffocation. When she finally burst out into the night air, she gulped it in as though she'd been drowning.
Alex's car screeched into the parking lot the moment she reached the sidewalk. He jumped out before the car fully stopped, sprinting toward her.
She collapsed into his arms without a word.
And for the first time since the archive, she let herself cry.