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When I rose to leave, she pulled me into a hug that lasted a heartbeat too long—fierce and final, like she was trying to pour a lifetime of love into that single embrace.

“Be good, my girl,” she whispered, her tone softer than usual, as if tucking something unspoken into my skin.

I almost turned back. Almost asked if something was wrong. But she smiled and waved me off, and I convinced myself it was nothing.

The next morning began like all my others, too early, and fueled by bad coffee. I'd been awake since five, my tiny flat illuminated only by the glow of my laptop as I cross-referenced census with parish records. The silence was the kind of heavy quiet that settles over a space meant for one person who spends most of her time elsewhere. My flat was less a home and more a place to sleep between library sessions. Bare walls except for bookshelves. A kitchen I barely used. A bed I collapsed into when exhaustion finally won.

And one photograph on my nightstand. The only photo I kept out. Mum and Dad smiling, Dad's arm around Mum's shoulders. Me at eight, gap-toothed and grinning, squinting against the sun. And Maya.

Maya, who'd been six in the photo, her blonde curls wild around her face, her small hand clutching my arm, certain I could keep the world steady. She'd followed me everywhere that summer, chattering endlessly about fairies and magic and whether clouds tasted like cotton candy.

Three months later, they were gone and I became the girl who survived while her family didn't.

I turned away from the photo, the familiar ache settling in my chest. Some mornings it was worse than others. Today, for some reason, it pressed down like stone.

That's why I threw myself into work. Easier to chase the ghosts in historical records than confront the ones that lived in my own memory.

By seven a.m., I was walking through Oxford's waking streets, my breath fogging in the October chill. The city was beautiful at this hour—all golden stone and morning mist, ancient and impossible, like something out of a fairy tale. Tourists would flood the streets by nine, snapping photos of the Bodleian and the Bridge of Sighs. But right now, Oxford belonged to the students and the ghosts.

I preferred the ghosts. They didn't expect conversation or explanations. They didn't ask why I spent every waking hour buried in research or why I had no real friends beyond polite acquaintances in the library. They didn't look at me with that mixture of pity and concern that people wore when they learned about my family.

The university library smelled of dust and old paper—knowledge and decay in equal measure. Most people found it oppressive. To me, it smelled like home.

I claimed my usual corner beneath the stained-glass window. Morning light turned to rivers of color across the old wooden table. My research materials spread before me like an offering: laptop humming, books stacked in precarious towers, my battered notebook covered in handwriting and Post-it notes in three different colors.

Organization was not my strong suit. Obsession was.

My screen displayed a digitized census from 1867, the handwriting cramped and faded. I’d been comparing it to one from 1861, and the gaps were impossible to ignore—twelve names present then, gone six years later.

A parish register from the same village told the same story. Twelve people, baptized and married, living full lives. Then, between 1865 and 1867, they simply stopped existing.

Rutherford’s words echoed in my head—clerical error, not conspiracy. But the evidence said otherwise.

But it wasn't just one village. I'd found seventy-three so far, scattered across England. All showing the same pattern. All between 1865 and 1892.

Hundreds of people, gone.

Families torn apart. Children who suddenly had no parents in the records. Spouses who became unmarried retroactively. Lives simply. . . deleted.

I thought of Maya sometimes, when I found children's names in the registers. Young girls who'd been six, nine, twelve when they disappeared from history. Had they been scared? Had they understood what was happening? Had anyone tried to find or save them?

I rubbed my eyes, exhaustion making them burn. I tried to shake the sense that I wasn't just researching a mystery—I was circling it. That these places and names weren't lost by accident, but erased deliberately. I'd been at this for four hours already, and my third coffee was going cold beside me. The library was filling up now. Graduate students claimed their territories, undergrads shuffled in with hangovers and regret.

I kept my head down and worked in silence; people learned not to interrupt the girl buried in dust and half-mad theories.

I pulled up another document, this one covered in symbols I'd been trying to decode for weeks. A letter dated 1869, found in an estate archive. It appeared to be like all the rest of the letters from that time period. The difference was the symbols. I was convinced it was a secret language, but why?

My phone buzzed, a text from the library cafe reminding me I'd pre-ordered a sandwich for lunch two hours ago. I'd completely forgotten. Again.

I was about to get up when I noticed something in the letter I'd missed before. A symbol in the margin, partially obscured by a water stain. I zoomed in, tilting my screen, trying to make out the shape.

It looked almost like. . . an hourglass? Surrounded by circular lines, like rings or⁠—

My phone rang. A sharp trill that shattered my concentration.

Unknown number. My stomach dropped before I even answered, some primal instinct already knowing something was wrong.

“Hello?”