Mara blinked.
Her eyes burned. When she wiped them, a wave of nausea followed — like wiping condensation from glass and realizing the reflection lagged behind her hand.
She looked back.
The substation wall was wrong.
Its surface wavered, the paint a shade too uniform, too obedient. A doorway rested there, colour-matched to its surroundings so precisely it hurt to focus on, as if the world itself was trying not to acknowledge it.
"…What just happened?" Mara murmured. "Am I still in the city?"
She stepped closer, disoriented.
Her reflection in the metal distorted — not stretched, but miscounted. Too many angles. Too many possible positions collapsing into one.
Her heartbeat stuttered. Don'trush,she thought. The thought echoed.
She did not remember thinking it twice. The staircase waited.
It did not call with sound. It called with intent.
Something surged up from below — not a memory, not a thought — a pressure that carried weight without form. Emotion without narrative. It slammed into her all at once.
Mara gasped.
Pain flared sharp behind her eyes. Tears spilled before she understood why, streaking her face, soaking her sleeves. Her breath hitched, uneven and unfamiliar.
She was crying.
Not from fear.
Not from grief she could name.
It felt as though something had reached inside her and removed the future, leaving the present suddenly unbearable.
"Why—" Her voice broke. "Why am I—"
The words failed.
Mara remained still.
Not frozen — listening.
Her knees hit the floor. She covered her face as if that might contain whatever was leaking out of her. Her senses blurred, layered over each other — sound pressing against sight, weight against thought.
Her breathing had changed. Slower. Shallower. Each inhale measured, as if air were now something that needed to be rationed.
Then suddenly —
It was all gone. All the overwhelming sensations she had experienced ceased abruptly.
She touched her face. Dry. Cool. No ache behind the eyes. The intensity she'd felt moments
ago already felt distant, unreal — like something borrowed and returned without explanation. The crying left no residue.
That scared her more than the tears themselves.
Mara had always trusted her reactions. Fear meant danger. Discomfort meant attention. Pain meant something had gone wrong.
This—
This had meant nothing, apparently.
She straightened, rolling her shoulders once, testing her body. Everything responded. Muscles obeyed. Balance held. No tremor. No aftershock.
Only a hollow awareness, settling into place.
So this is possible, she thought. Acceptance came easily. Too easily.
That frightened her more than panic ever had.
Mara pressed her thumb into the pad of her index finger, grounding herself in pressure. The sensation registered, dulled but present. She nodded once, as if confirming an internal checklist.
I am still here.
The keepsong rested warm against her chest — not comforting, not urgent. Simply present.
She didn't cling to it. She didn't check it.
She trusted it the way one trusts gravity: not because it was kind, but because it was consistent.
Mara felt something settle behind her ribs — not resolve, not courage. A smaller thing.
A rule which she had followed for long as she can remember till Sene had entered her life.
Do not offer more of yourself than the world requires.
She exhaled, slow and deliberate.
Mara stayed kneeling for a moment longer, breathing shallow, cataloguing herself by sensation alone: floor, breath, weight, pulse.
"I have to continue," she said quietly.
She stood, collecting herself back up and descended. The stairwell did not behave like stairs.
The steps repeated unevenly. She lost count almost immediately. More troubling than that,
she wasn't sure the count mattered. At one point she was certain she had reached the bottom
— only to realize she was still moving downward.
The delay between her movements and their sounds stretched further. Footfalls arrived late. Too late.
Time thinned. Sequence loosened. Images intruded without permission: a child's hand gripping fabric, a woman counting under her breath, the word stay, spoken too softly to be command.
The lamps along the stairwell were old — wrong for the era above. Their light pooled unevenly, yellowed with age, barely holding back the dark. She was glad she hadn't brought a torch. She suspected it wouldn't have helped.
Writing scarred the walls. Not graffiti.
Messages.
Layered, scratched, half-sanded away — as if someone had tried to tell a story they weren't
allowed to finish.
Mara shook her head hard enough to hurt.
"No," Focus." she whispered.
The word returned altered. Flattened. As though it had passed through water. At last, the stairs ended.
A sign hung ahead.
--------
THE NURSERY
--------
Mara stared.
"…Nursery?" she whispered. "As in— children?"
This place had been cleaned without being erased.
The walls held pale outlines where murals had once lived. Child-height marks stopped abruptly, interrupted by gaps that felt intentional. A height chart ended mid-measure, the name beneath it sanded down until the surface refused to remember it had ever held one.
Mara's vision swam.
For a moment — just a moment — she felt small. Not physically.
Conceptually.
As if the space around her had recalibrated to a version of herself that was younger, quieter, easier to direct. The sensation crawled beneath her skin, trying to settle.
She clenched her fists until her nails bit.
The keepsong hummed — not loud, but dense. The pressure in her skull eased. The walls steadied. The nursery withdrew its claim.
Mara inhaled slowly and took a step forward.