The last train had already gone.
The station should have been silent, but the air hummed as though it remembered the roar of engines, the footsteps of the countless people who had passed through. Flickering lights buzzed overhead, casting long shadows across the tiled floor.
Mara pulled her coat tighter and glanced at the stairwell. It was too late for anyone to be here—except her. She had missed her stop, drifted past where she should have gotten off. It was only when the train doors shut behind her that she realized she didn't recognize this station at all.
No signs. No maps. No announcements.
Just her.
And a door.
It shouldn't have been there. Set between two cracked tiles at the far end of the platform, it looked impossibly ordinary—wooden, painted the dull green of old hospital walls, with a brass handle dulled by fingerprints. But Mara was certain it hadn't been there when she arrived.
Her pulse quickened. Every instinct screamed to leave, but something stronger pulled her forward. Curiosity—or maybe fate.
When she pushed it open, the smell hit her first. Old paper, ink, and something metallic—like blood dried years ago.
Inside stretched a corridor lined with shelves. No, not shelves—stacks. Row upon row upon row, vanishing into darkness. The corridor breathed with the rustle of countless pages, as if the words themselves whispered secrets to one another.
Mara stepped in, the door clicking shut behind her.
"You're late."
The voice came from a figure hunched at a desk just a few steps inside. A man, or perhaps a woman—it was impossible to tell. Their face was thin, skin pale, eyes hidden behind round glasses that reflected the faint glow of a lantern. Their voice was calm, measured, as though they had been waiting for her.
"Where… where am I?" Mara asked, her words catching in her throat.
"The Archive," the figure replied, scribbling something into a massive ledger. "Every life ever unlived. Every choice abandoned. Every version of you that might have been."
Mara laughed nervously, though it came out brittle. "That's ridiculous."
"Is it?" The figure gestured, and a book slid free from a shelf, gliding through the air before landing gently in front of her. "Go on. Open it."
Her fingers hesitated before she touched it. The cover was black leather, worn soft, her name etched in fading gold across the spine: Mara Ellis.
Her chest tightened.
When she opened it, the words spilled like memories she didn't own. Pages filled with a life that wasn't hers: Mara Ellis, the acclaimed pianist, who played for sold-out halls across the world. She saw flashes—cheers of the crowd, the feel of ivory keys beneath her hands, the weight of roses pressed into her palms.
Her throat went dry. She hadn't touched a piano since she was a child. She'd quit after failing her first recital, humiliated in front of her family.
But here… here she was brilliant.
"This—this isn't real." She forced the book shut, but her hands shook. "This can't be real."
The figure tilted their head. "Every choice creates a fracture. The you who kept playing… she was erased when you walked away. But nothing is ever truly gone. We keep what the world forgets."
Mara stumbled back, hitting the edge of the desk. "Why show me this?"
The figure's smile was slow, knowing. "Because you've been looking for her all your life. Haven't you?"
Before Mara could reply, she felt it. A shift in the air. A presence.
Her gaze slid past the rows of shelves, into the shadowed corridor.
Someone was standing there.
At first, she thought it was a trick of the dim light—but no. Her breath froze.
The figure in the dark had her face.
Not a reflection, not an illusion. Her. But different. The other Mara was dressed in black, posture elegant, confident, her lips curved in the faintest smile. And her eyes—her eyes glittered like someone who had already lived a thousand more lives than Mara ever could.
The lantern flickered.
And when the light steadied again, the other Mara was gone.
But the whisper she left behind curled through the archive like smoke, brushing against Mara's ear:
"You should have been me."