The heavy iron door of the carriage hissed shut with a sound that echoed like a final judgment. Outside, the world of 2026—the neon lights of Chittagong, the buzzing of the city, and the very concept of a digital life—was being swallowed by an expanding sea of blue pixels. It was as if a giant eraser was moving across the landscape, deleting everything in its path.
Kashem stood frozen, his fingers still tingling from the frost on the iron rail. The air inside the train was impossibly cold, carrying a sharp metallic tang of ozone and old, burning coal. He took a shaky breath, watching the mist of his own breath coil in the dim light of the swaying oil lamps.
"Is... is anyone there?" he called out, his voice trembling.
The woman in the black veil, standing at the far end of the aisle, did not move. She looked like a statue carved from shadow. In her hand, the blue envelope pulsed with a faint, rhythmic light that seemed to match the heartbeat thumping in Kashem's ears.
"You are early, Analyst," she said, her voice sounding like a thousand whispers layered over one another. "The schedule predicted your arrival at the 1884 station, but the 'deletion' moved faster than we anticipated."
Kashem stumbled forward, his legs feeling like lead. He looked at the passengers seated in the rows around him. They were perfectly still. A man in a top hat sat with his hands resting on a silver-tipped cane, his eyes wide and vacant. A woman next to him held a porcelain doll, but her fingers were as white as the doll's face. None of them breathed. None of them blinked.
"Who are they?" Kashem whispered, terror rising in his throat. "Are they... dead?"
"They are the Saved," the veiled woman replied, stepping forward. The floorboards groaned under her weight, though she seemed to glide. "They are the fragments of histories that have already been deleted. This train, the Dead Express, is the only vessel that can sail through the void between what was and what will never be."
Kashem looked at the mark on his arm. The lighthouse brand was glowing brighter now, its blue light illuminating the dark mahogany wood of the carriage. "Why did this happen to me? Why am I seeing a lighthouse on my skin?"
The woman reached out a gloved hand, pointing toward the window. "Because you are not just a data analyst, Kashem. You were born with the 'Link.' Your ancestors were the keepers of the 1884 Signal. When the world glitches, when time begins to unravel, someone must hold the lantern. You are the Lantern-Bearer for this cycle."
Suddenly, the train gave a violent lurch. A horrific, screeching sound tore through the air—not from the wheels, but from outside the windows. Kashem looked out and gasped. The blue static was gone. They were now moving through a tunnel of swirling grey fog, and within that fog, massive, shadow-like creatures with dozens of glowing eyes were clawing at the glass.
"What are those things?" Kashem screamed, recoiling from the window.
"The Erasers," the woman said calmly, though she gripped her blue envelope tighter. "The guardians of the void. They want the souls on this train. They want to ensure that nothing survives the deletion. If they break through, your history dies with you."
One of the creatures slammed its weight against the carriage door. The wood began to crack, and a freezing wind started to pour in. The passengers remained motionless, but Kashem felt his soul being pulled toward the crack.
"Open the envelope, Kashem!" the woman commanded, her voice turning sharp. "Use the mark! Only the Analyst can authorize the 'Protection Protocol'!"
Kashem didn't understand, but the survival instinct took over. He lunged toward the woman, grabbing the blue envelope from her hand. The moment his skin touched the paper, the mark on his arm flared with a blinding white light. A surge of data—millions of lines of code, historical dates, and names of the dead—flooded his brain.
He didn't think; he simply roared, "Authorization: Zero-One! Activate the Signal!"
A dome of brilliant blue energy exploded from the envelope, slamming into the carriage walls and pushing the shadow-creatures back into the fog. The train accelerated, the steam engine let out a defiant roar, and they shot forward into the unknown.
Kashem fell to the floor, exhausted, the envelope still clutched in his hand. He looked up at the veiled woman.
"Where are we going?"
"To the year 1884," she replied, her veil fluttering in the artificial wind. "To the point where the first glitch began. You have to stop the disaster, Kashem. Or there will be no 2026 to return to."