Ezra's fingertips brushed the spine of the book, and the past stirred.
It was subtle at first, like a whisper just beyond the edge of hearing, a presence half-formed in the dark. He exhaled slowly, centering himself, letting the sensation pull him deeper.
Then—resistance.
It slammed into him like hitting a locked door at full force. Not the usual static of faded memories or the fragility of time-worn echoes, but something deliberate. Constructed.
The sensation was wrong—too sharp, too jagged. A fractured signal, spliced and distorted, trying to play a message that had been cut to pieces. Ezra gritted his teeth, steadying himself, trying to work around the interference. This wasn't how memory was supposed to behave. The past wasn't sentient, wasn't willful—it didn't fight back.
But this one did.
The pressure in his skull deepened, a tight, clawing sensation as he reached further, pushing past the interference, forcing his way into what remained. It felt like trying to read a burned page—fragments of words left behind, edges curling into nothing.
A flicker.
A voice.
Muffled. Warped. Distant, as though it were calling from the bottom of a deep well.
"…Mara… don't… trust…"
The words fractured, breaking apart before they could fully form. The static grew worse, hissing in his mind, trying to drown out what little remained. Ezra tightened his grip on the book, his breath sharp. He had to push deeper.
A blur of movement. A shape forming in the memory's periphery. A figure in the dim glow of the apartment—its edges unstable, flickering like a candle guttering in the wind.
Ezra focused, trying to pull the image into clarity, but it slipped from his grasp, dissolving before it could fully take shape.
Then, something shifted.
The pressure in his skull turned to pain.
A sudden, violent force lashed out—cold, sharp, like fingers pressing against the inside of his mind, shoving him back. Not a natural collapse. A defense.
The past was fighting him.
Ezra barely had time to react before the connection snapped.
He reeled back, gasping as if surfacing from deep water. The book flew from his hands, the force of the rejection sending it tumbling to the floor. A dull thud echoed through the silent apartment.
His head throbbed, his vision swimming. The interference still clung to him, a ghostly afterimage in his senses—something foreign, something wrong. It was as if something had reached inside his mind and slammed the door shut.
He had encountered fading echoes before—memories that had been eroded by time, reduced to flickers and faint impressions. But this wasn't natural decay. This was something else.
This wasn't just broken.
This had been sabotaged.
Mara dropped to her knees, snatching up the book, her hands trembling as she clutched it close. "Did you see something? Did you hear him?"
Ezra swallowed hard, his heartbeat still uneven.
"Yes," he said, voice tight. "But not enough."
Mara's grip on the book tightened, her knuckles white. "Then try again."
Ezra hesitated. He wanted to. Every instinct told him to tear through the interference, to rip the memory open and drag the truth out of the void. But something had pushed back.
And that meant one thing.
Whoever had erased Daniel Finch wasn't just covering their tracks.
They were still watching.
A slow, cold dread curled in Ezra's gut.
They had felt him searching.
Which meant they now knew Mara still remembered.
His pulse quickened. If they were monitoring the memory—**if they had set traps within it—**then they wouldn't just sit back and wait.
His mind raced, assessing, recalculating.
They weren't safe here.
Ezra's eyes snapped to Mara, his voice suddenly sharp, urgent. "We need to leave. Now."
Mara blinked, startled. "What? Why?"
Ezra turned toward the door, every muscle coiled, senses alert. "Because whoever did this…" He exhaled slowly, jaw tightening. "They know we're looking."
Mara's face paled, fear flickering in her wide, searching eyes. Realization hit her all at once.
Ezra clenched his fists, his entire body taut with the certainty pressing against his ribs.
They had erased Daniel Finch.
Now they would come for her