Every thread holds a secret—some unravel only when we dare to pull.
And some threads, once tugged, can never be rewoven.
The record room was just a storage space to those in charge—raw records, old backups, data that nobody wanted to bother with, so they'd get locked away in their drawers down here.
The air was cool and metallic, faintly bitter with the scent of aging circuits and dust. Overhead strips hummed softly, throwing pale light that barely reached the corners.
Everything was stored down here for many years without a second thought because they deemed it irrelevant to our society. I hated how easily they dismissed the past. People only saw useless clutter, but to me, every drawer might hold a fragment of truth we weren't supposed to forget. I never agreed with it. But I didn't know what was here, and… I trusted the system that raised me.
I flashed my band at the login panel, then moved through the room.
It required level A clearance.
Most people never requested it, especially since they thought it was a bunch of junk and there were much more rewarding departments to work in, like the exhibition designer turning history into a living mural of glowing holograms, or the floral conservator who coaxed fragile seedlings into lush replicas of plants long extinct—blooms that only survived now as ghosts beneath the glass domes of the museum. Thanks to their highly qualified skills and the equipment they designed, which was brought to life by the engineers.
Still, this place down here fascinated me the most. I get to judge artifacts now before they get sent here and are deemed useless. And I vowed to be thorough and extremely careful in what I store away to never be seen again.
I had only recently been approved for it, which allowed me to log and retrieve misplaced entries like this one.
My inexplicable fascination with history motivated me to request access to these archives. It's something most Thesirans wouldn't understand, given my family tree.
The museum's systems detected a mismatched inventory entry—File L-1074—missing its analog source. Usually, a drone would take care of minor tasks like these, but the one assigned to that room malfunctioned. So now, I suppose that was my job as well, to report the downed drone to an engineer.
We never usually have this problem down here. But, honestly, it was a refreshing change, and I've been itching for a reason to be here.
I'd been stuck alone in my office for so long. Even though I don't have company now, getting out and doing something different today, surrounded by the physical history of both the old and new worlds, made silence feel less like loneliness and more like being present. For once, it didn't ache. It wrapped around me like a soft thread, connecting me to voices that had been gone for centuries but somehow still lingered.
Like standing in a room still echoing with lives once lived.
The thought settled in, Familiar. I didn't question it.
I'd been carrying something heavy lately, and I could feel it crushing me more every day.
I brushed the side of my face and kept walking.
The distraction was a welcome one. I could forget, even just for a little while.
After navigating through shelves filled with hidden archives, which took all my willpower not to explore, I noticed that a lot of the drawers had a six-digit code requirement that was never mentioned, and I had no idea about the code requirement. The holographic code pad glowed faintly red, like a warning. Whatever was in those drawers wasn't meant for ordinary eyes. My clearance suddenly felt paper-thin. This made me even more intrigued to see what was inside those ones and whether I needed to request another level of clearance for them.
I passed several more shelves before turning down the aisle with the flag error. I found a drawer halfway open, as if something had tried to escape. My heart gave a sharp, startled thud. The sight was wrong, too deliberate, like someone—or something—had left it that way on purpose. A drawer that required a code, and one that had already been entered before I arrived. The metal creaked as I touched it, the sound painfully loud in the stillness.
Holographic tags were usually displayed front and center once a drawer was open to let you know everything about the artifact, including the name, but this one had no tag at all.
I hesitated, breath held, before curling my fingers around the handle and opening it the rest of the way.
Some part of me whispered that whatever was inside wouldn't stay locked away again. Once opened, some invisible thread might unravel everything I thought I knew.
Maybe the city wasn't haunted by what was lost, but by what it refused to let go.
I brushed that thought away because I knew it was something Thayer would have said if he were here. And how I desperately wished he were here. But I didn't want to hope because I didn't want to be let down.
I reached for what was in the drawer. An old leather-bound journal lay tucked beneath a faded cloth, embroidered with the gold-threaded nightshade seal of Atropa Innovations.
The leather was ice-cold against my fingertips. It was so cold it almost burned.
The Quiet Collapse had come like a slow unraveling, not an explosion. Governments dissolved one by one as resources dwindled and riots tore through the old cities. When the last flame guttered out, Atropa stepped into the void, weaving the New Era from threads of desperation and promise. They chose not to call themselves a government, but they held everything together. The saviours of humanity.
Atropa had risen to guide the New Era forward.
They saved us—and our history—after the fall of the Old World.
That's why I took this job, to be near the artifacts.
To understand what came before. Because it really hadn't been all that long ago, and we still shared some of what they had. And we still remember them, even if Atropa calls us a separate civilization built on their remnants, made better and more durable.
Atropa handles everything now. But for me, it's more than duty—it's a legacy. It's my family's heritage.
I looked closer at the unregistered book, my breath catching.
Etched faintly across the cover, looping cursive:
Hasley Liora
A strange scent moved in the air, metallic and sharp, like something burned long ago. I shook it off as nerves.
The world tilted. My fingers trembled so badly that the letters blurred, as if the name itself was alive, breathing beneath the leather.
I'd grown up hearing bedtime stories about her—the woman who changed the world. My mother's voice would soften, reverent, as if she were speaking of a saint. But those stories always felt distant, like fairy tales.
Until now.
It shouldn't have been here. It shouldn't have existed at all. Or at the very least, someone should have told me about it.
My heart skipped. Liora. My family name.
Everyone in Solence knew Hasley Liora's story. She wasn't just any Liora—she was my blood, the woman who changed everything.
I stared at her name. Afraid it might vanish if I blinked.
My hands didn't feel like my own anymore.
My vision blurred for just a second, like I'd forgotten how to breathe.
A strange pressure gathered behind my eyes—soft and suddenly, it didn't feel like a memory, more like someone waiting, just beyond the edge of thought.
Like love, it was something I hadn't finished feeling yet.
I blinked it away.
Probably, the dust is getting to me. Or maybe… something inside me is whispering, finally.
Part of me wanted to run upstairs and report the discovery.
But the other—stronger—wanted to read until the ink wore away beneath my fingers.
The ceiling strip switched from white to blinking amber patrol. I slammed the drawer closed and shoved the journal beneath my shirt, its edges digging into my ribs, and pressed myself into the narrow space between two shelves.
The hum of a new hover-drone grew louder, rattling through my bones. The engineer had perfect timing on fixing that problem, just my luck. The air vibrated as the drone glided into the aisle. Its white searchlight sliced the darkness into sharp, unnatural angles. My breath locked in my throat as the beam skimmed past the edge of my cheek, close enough to feel the faint heat of its scan.
A bead of sweat trickled down my temple.
Don't move. Don't breathe.
It halted midair, silent, before the AI voice chimed:
'Level A Access required, clear for access, proceed'
The hum lingered for one eternal heartbeat before fading back into silence. My pulse thundered louder than the drone ever had, every instinct screaming at me to run, but my body stayed frozen between the shelves, lungs burning to breathe, until I was sure the patrol had passed. Summoned here to fix a simple error, yet every instinct screamed that I shouldn't be here— that I was trespassing into a piece of history meant to stay hidden. Yet I was the only one feeling that, because even the drone didn't mind me here.
I wondered if it would have thought differently if it had known I had just stolen an artifact.
My hands trembled as I opened the journal to the first page.
The pages crackled like brittle leaves, and the scent of ancient ink filled the air. Somewhere deep inside, a thread stirred—one that had been waiting centuries for someone reckless enough to pull it. And now it had found me.
The first tug had been made—and I wasn't sure I'd survive what unraveled next.