Ezra didn't wait for Mara to argue.
His body moved on instinct—grabbing his coat, shoving his leatherbound ledger into his pocket with fingers that trembled more than he'd like to admit. Every second they stayed in this place felt wrong, like standing in the epicenter of a collapsing truth. The air inside the apartment had gone brittle, electric with something unseen, and Ezra couldn't tell if it was the echo's backlash or his own fraying nerves—but his vision swam, and a thin line of nausea burned at the back of his throat.
His head still rang from the attempt to pull the memory. The backlash had been more than resistance—it had been targeted. Ezra had handled damaged echoes before. Ones degraded by time or trauma. But this… this was different. Someone had sealed that memory shut with intention. And when he touched it, they had felt him.
That knowledge crawled beneath his skin.
Behind him, Mara hadn't moved. She stood frozen near the bookshelf, clutching the book like it might dissolve if she let go. Her eyes were wide—not the blank kind of shock, but sharp, terrified, aware. Her knuckles were bloodless around the frayed spine.
Ezra's gaze softened. She wasn't just scared. She was on the verge of shattering.
He crossed to her, fast but careful, placing a steady hand on her shoulder. "Mara," he said quietly, "we have to go."
She blinked up at him, still dazed. "But—"
"They know I touched the echo," he said, voice low and urgent. "They felt me reach into it. That book was a trap—guarded. And if they know we're looking, they'll come back. They might already be here."
Something flickered in her face—disbelief turning to dread. Slowly, she nodded.
Without letting go of the book, she followed as he opened the door. The hallway beyond was dim, washed in amber light from a weak wall sconce, but even that seemed to buzz strangely in the silence. Ezra paused, listening—really listening.
No creak of floorboards upstairs. No murmurs behind closed doors. Just the low electric hum of a building holding its breath.
He stepped aside and let Mara pass first, matching her pace as they moved toward the stairs. Her boots clicked softly on the worn wood, and Ezra followed, each step sending a jolt of pain through his legs. The mental strain of the echo pull still clung to him like static—his skull heavy, eyes oversensitive to light.
But he kept moving.
At the landing, Mara faltered—just slightly—but Ezra caught her with a gentle hand beneath her elbow. He didn't say anything. Just steadied her. She gave him a small, grateful nod that didn't quite reach her eyes.
They reached the bottom without a sound but still felt too loud.
The weight of something unseen pressed behind them.
Ezra turned once before opening the door, casting a final glance up the stairs. For a moment, just a breath, he thought he saw something—movement in the shadows near the landing.
He blinked. Gone.
His fingers curled tightly around the door's handle.
"Stay close," he murmured, and pushed it open.
The hallway swallowed them as soon as the apartment door clicked shut behind them.
What should have been familiar—aged wallpaper, faded carpets, a crooked portrait of a streetcar on the wall—felt suddenly alien. Every detail looked just slightly off. The air was heavier here, too, thick with something that wasn't quite dust or cold or memory, but some awful mix of all three.
Ezra kept Mara ahead of him, instinct tugging at the edge of every movement. His exhaustion gnawed at him, slow and grinding—the cost of the echo clawing back still burning behind his eyes. He gritted his teeth against the ache. He could sleep later. If there was a later.
The building groaned around them, the quiet kind of sound that normally came with age. But tonight, even that felt deliberate. Listening. Watching.
Ezra's fingers brushed the wall lightly as they walked, testing it for memory.
Nothing. Just a dead hum.
His heart kicked harder in his chest.
Normally, even in places touched by grief or loss, there were traces. A child's laughter caught in the corner of a stairwell. A whisper of music seeping from a party held years ago. Echo City was never truly silent.
But this silence wasn't the absence of sound. It was the absence of existence.
They reached the staircase. Mara paused, glancing down the dim shaft like it might drop straight into the dark. Ezra stepped beside her, taking the lead now. He offered her a hand without speaking. She hesitated for only a second before taking it, fingers cold and tense against his.
The stairs creaked under their weight, each groan echoing too long in the hush.
Halfway down, Ezra glanced behind them—and froze.
A door above had shifted open an inch. Not theirs. Another, near the end of the hall. Nothing moved behind it. No shape. No shadow. But Ezra's pulse jolted, sharp and animal.
Mara noticed his hesitation. "What?" she whispered.
He didn't answer. Just tightened his grip on her hand and kept moving. Fast, now.
The air thickened as they descended, the kind of pressure that came before a storm. Ezra's limbs felt heavy, like walking through deep water. The building wasn't just quiet—it was resisting them. Fighting them.
As they reached the final step, the ground-level hallway stretched out before them, longer than it should have been. Doors they'd passed on the way in now looked unfamiliar. Mismatched doorknobs. Numbers that weren't sequential.
Ezra's breath hitched.
"Ezra?" Mara asked softly.
He looked at her. Saw the panic she was trying to hide in the tight set of her mouth, the way she held the book like a shield.
He forced calm into his voice. "It's just the echo distortion. The building's been altered. Don't look too long at anything that feels wrong. Keep your eyes on the exit."
Mara nodded, clutching the book tighter.
Together, they moved.
The hallway seemed to ripple at the edges, warping slightly as if the architecture didn't quite remember how it had been built. A cold draft blew through the space, though no windows were open. The fluorescent light overhead buzzed once—then sputtered and went dark, plunging the corridor into shadow.
Ezra's breath caught.
Footsteps—faint, wrong—echoed above them.
Not following. Circling.
"Go," he said, low and urgent.
They broke into a run, boots slapping the warped tile, shadows sliding along the walls beside them. The front door, only paces ahead, shimmered like a mirage, flickering with distortion. Ezra felt something closing in—some presence, or echo, or unfinished memory that didn't belong.
Just before they reached the door, Ezra grabbed Mara's hand again.
They burst into the cold night—and the moment they crossed the threshold, the pressure snapped.
The building behind them fell still.
Ezra turned, breath ragged, sweat dampening his collar despite the freezing air. The door they'd come through looked perfectly ordinary now. No warping. No distortion.
Just a building that had never remembered Daniel Finch.
The night greeted them like a splash of cold water—sharp, raw, immediate. Ezra staggered a step onto the slick cobblestone, pulling Mara with him. His pulse thundered behind his eyes, his hand still wrapped around hers like a lifeline. He didn't let go right away.
Around them, the street stretched quiet and uncertain. Gaslamps flickered overhead, their light stuttering like a failing heartbeat. The city's usual glow—soft, golden, threaded with memory—was dimmer tonight, washed out like an old photograph left too long in the sun.
Ezra scanned the street with a practiced eye.
Nothing moved. No pedestrians. No night traffic. Not even the faint drift of sound that should've bled from the buildings around them—snippets of arguments, music from a third-floor window, the soft imprint of laughter pressed into stoops and benches.
Instead, the silence clung thick and unnatural. This part of the city wasn't just empty.
It was hollow.
Ezra's breathing still hadn't evened out, the residual weight of the memory echo clawing at his ribs. His muscles ached like he'd run miles instead of descending two flights of stairs. But beneath the fatigue, something else gnawed at him—alert, primal.
Mara stood close at his side, arms wrapped tight around herself. The book she carried was pressed flat against her chest. She wasn't shivering from the cold.
Ezra reached into his coat, pulling the hood up. His fingers brushed the charm sewn into the lining—a memory ward. Old, frayed, but still warm. He let the familiarity center him. A small ritual. A habit born of long nights spent chasing half-lost ghosts.
"We're not safe here," he said finally, eyes still scanning the street. "Whoever's behind this… they're watching. Maybe not with eyes, but with something worse."
Mara swallowed. "Do you think they'll come after me?"
Ezra didn't answer immediately. He didn't want to lie.
"I think they already have," he said softly.
Mara went still beside him. But she didn't cry. She didn't collapse. She just stood a little straighter, jaw tight.
Ezra noticed. And he respected it.
He turned his attention back to the city. The wind swept through the alley behind them, rattling a loose piece of signage. In the distance, a tram bell echoed once—sharp and lonely.
"The city remembers Daniel," Ezra murmured. "Somewhere. Maybe not here anymore, but… memory can't be erased perfectly. Not without consequence."
"How do you know?" Mara asked.
He hesitated. His voice, when it came, was lower. Wearier. "Because the city's breaking. And the past doesn't go quietly."
He took a step forward, then another—glancing back to make sure Mara matched his pace. When she didn't, he slowed slightly, the smallest of gestures, but deliberate.
It was how he moved through the world. Constantly adjusting to others. Listening. Matching. Anchoring.
She caught up. Together, they headed toward the café near the archive.
The cobblestones shimmered faintly beneath their feet, like the city was trying to remember something that had just slipped from its grasp.
And behind them, in the windows of the apartment building they'd just fled, not a single light stirred.
As if no one had ever lived there at all.
The café wasn't far—just four blocks down, near the edge of the old archive district—but it felt like crossing into another world. The silence followed them, thick as fog. Ezra could still feel the memory echo's backlash behind his eyes, a phantom ache that refused to dull.
Each step drained him, and each shadow felt just a little too deep.
Mara broke the silence first. "You said the past doesn't go quietly."
Ezra didn't answer right away. He glanced over at her. Her face was pale, but composed—barely. She was holding it together through sheer force of will, and he could see the cracks starting at the corners of her eyes.
He hesitated, then said, "When a memory is natural—when it fades—it leaves behind residue. You can still feel it, like the scent of smoke after a fire. But when it's ripped out, erased completely…"
He trailed off, jaw tightening. "It leaves a void. Like tearing a piece out of a woven rug. Everything else starts unraveling."
Mara hugged the book tighter. "So it's not just Daniel."
"No," Ezra said, his voice low. "It's not."
They stopped at an intersection. The street was empty, but Ezra still looked both ways, scanning the shadows like something might leap out of them. He could feel the hairs rising on his neck. Not from fear. From instinct.
Something was wrong with the city tonight.
He turned toward Mara again. "When did you first realize he was… disappearing?"
She blinked. "I think it started yesterday. I called his phone—it went straight to voicemail. Then the apartment felt off. Like I was living around a shape that wasn't there anymore."
Ezra watched her. "And the people around you? Friends? Coworkers?"
"They said I was confused." Her voice cracked a little. "That I was grieving someone I made up."
Ezra exhaled through his nose. The erasure was spreading faster than he'd feared.
"You held on because you remembered him in your body," he said quietly. "That's the only reason you didn't forget. It wasn't just a thought—it was everything. How you move through your space. The way you breathe when someone else is supposed to be in the room."
Mara looked at him with wide, glistening eyes. "You sound like you've been through this before."
Ezra's jaw shifted slightly. "Not like this," he said. "Never like this."
He didn't add the truth: that this was worse than anything he'd seen in all his years as a memory-keeper. That even he, trained to navigate the labyrinth of lost moments, felt one step away from falling through the cracks himself.
He turned, gesturing for her to follow. "Let's keep moving. We're not safe until we find a thread to pull."
Mara fell in beside him again.
They walked.
Ezra glanced sideways at her, watching the way she clutched the book like a relic. Something she could anchor herself to. He remembered doing the same with his ledger once, when he was a novice, afraid of losing himself in the memory of a dying man who had forgotten his own name.
It didn't matter how skilled you were.
Some memories fought back harder than others.
And this one? This one felt like it didn't want to be found at all