Maya's POV
The fire alarm screams, but I can't reach the door.
My hands slam against the metal handle again and again. Locked. From the outside.
"DEREK! LISA!" My voice cracks as smoke fills my lungs. "PLEASE! LET ME OUT!"
No answer. Just the roar of flames eating through my lab—my beautiful lab where I spent three years creating something that could change the world.
The heat bites at my skin. Orange flames dance across my research tables, turning five years of work into ash. My prototype—the clean energy reactor that could power entire cities without pollution—melts before my eyes.
But that's not why I'm crying.
I'm crying because thirty minutes ago, I trusted them.
Thirty minutes ago, my little sister Lisa hugged me tight. "I'm so proud of you, Maya. You're going to save the world." Her eyes sparkled with tears. Real tears. Or so I thought.
Twenty minutes ago, my fiancé Derek kissed my forehead. "Go get the champagne from storage. We're celebrating tonight. Just us three." His smile was warm. Loving. A perfect lie.
Ten minutes ago, I heard the click of the storage room door locking behind me. Heard their footsteps running away. Smelled the gasoline.
Five minutes ago, I watched through the small window as Derek uploaded MY research files to his laptop. As Lisa handed him MY prototype. As they high-fived like children stealing candy.
Then Lisa looked back at the storage room. Our eyes met through the glass.
She smiled.
Not a guilty smile. Not an apologetic smile.
A victory smile.
"Goodbye, Maya," she mouthed. "Thanks for everything."
Derek pulled her away, laughing. Actually laughing.
Now I'm going to die in here, and the world will think I'm a thief.
The news already broke an hour ago—someone leaked a story that I stole company secrets. My face is probably all over television right now: "Disgraced Engineer Maya Chen Accused of Corporate Espionage." The police were coming to arrest me tomorrow.
This was their plan all along.
Derek never loved me. We've been together for four years, engaged for six months, and it was all fake. He wanted my brain, not my heart.
And Lisa—sweet baby sister Lisa who I raised after Mom died. Who I put through college with my scholarship money. Who I trusted with everything.
She chose a check over her own sister.
The ceiling groans above me. Flames crawl across the metal beams like hungry snakes.
I should be angry. Screaming. Fighting.
But I just feel... tired.
Twenty-eight years old and I'm going to die alone in a burning building, betrayed by the only two people I loved.
No friends—I was too busy working to make any. No other family—just Lisa, and she locked the door. No one will miss me. No one will question the story.
"Brilliant engineer dies in tragic lab fire after stealing company secrets."
Perfect crime.
A beam crashes down three feet from me. Sparks explode everywhere. The smoke is so thick now I can barely see.
My legs give out. I collapse on the concrete floor, coughing, choking.
This is it.
This is how Maya Chen ends.
But as the darkness creeps in from the edges of my vision, something weird happens.
The air... shimmers.
Right in front of me, the smoke swirls into a pattern—like a door made of gray mist. It glows faintly blue, pulsing like a heartbeat.
I blink hard. I must be hallucinating from smoke inhalation.
The door opens.
No. That's impossible. There's no door there. Just wall and fire and death.
But I see it anyway. Through the shimmering doorway, I see... somewhere else. Dark sky. Stone buildings. People in strange old-fashioned clothes.
A woman's voice whispers in my head, speaking words I don't understand: "Elara... Elara... wake up..."
Who's Elara?
The ceiling cracks with a sound like thunder. The whole structure is coming down.
I have two choices: stay here and die for sure, or crawl toward the impossible glowing door that shouldn't exist.
My scientist brain screams that I'm insane.
My dying heart doesn't care anymore.
I drag myself forward. Every breath is fire. Every movement is agony.
The impossible door waits, shimmering, calling.
Three feet away.
Two feet.
One.
I reach out with my burned, bleeding hand.
My fingers touch the blue light.
The world EXPLODES.
Everything spins—fire and smoke and blue light mixing together like a tornado. My body feels like it's being ripped apart and put back together at the same time.
I'm falling.
No—I'm flying.
No—I'm dying.
I open my mouth to scream but no sound comes out.
The last thing I see before everything goes black is Derek's smiling face. That betrayer's smile that stole my life.
And I make a promise to the darkness swallowing me whole:
If I survive this—if there's any justice in this universe—I'll make them pay.
Both of them.
I'll make them regret the day they ever heard the name Maya Chen.
Then the darkness takes me, and Maya Chen dies.
But somewhere else, in a dirty alley eight hundred years in the past, a girl with silver-blonde hair and violet eyes opens her mouth and screams.
And the scream that comes out sounds like someone who's been dying for a very, very long time.
Someone who was just waiting for a second chance.
Someone named Elara.