The Old Library

Edingburgh 1929

The lingering clouds and the anticipation of rainfall in the air. A common note on the sheet that makes for the ghastly undertone of this city.

A young woman’s steps echo slightly through the narrow alleyways. It is difficult to discern whether the city is cloaked in its usual fog or shrouded by the gloom of post-war depression – most likely, it's a combination of both.

The recent and untimely passing of the woman's late mother did nothing to lift the mood, already somber from a city in silent distress and its equally troubled people.

At the precise moment when the city's countless clocks would strike the hour, silence descends upon the city instead. The usual cold breezes that weave the fog through the city’s countless streets and alleyways seem to vanish. The fog, once settled deep down to the pavement, clears entirely. Not a sound can be heard, neither from humans nor animals. The thick layer of clouds that typically shrouds these lands in a dark, oppressive manner also dissipates, leaving nothing but silence.

Above the city's horizon, there is a shift in the tone of the sky. Despite the clarity, neither stars nor moon are visible. The sky has transformed into what appears to be a void. There are no dark tones or variations, only what seems to be the very essence of nothingness.

But what might be perceived as the depth of the unknown could also represent something beyond the comprehension of the mortal mind, such as the enigma of pure nothingness that seems to bend our very realm by its mere presence. This force, far older than the city and the entire history of its inhabitants down to their very roots, exerts an overwhelming influence, poised to engulf this plane entirely.

The city begins to tremble down to its very foundations. Enshrouded in the haunting absence of sound, pavement and walls start to crumble as cracks race through the streets and ascend the buildings, shattering glass along their destructive course. Entire buildings appear to burst asunder, the vicious network of spreading fissures hurling rubble in all directions, wreaking havoc upon everything in their path, both structural and living alike. The stark contrast between the ferocity of the destruction and the deafening silence that accompanies it only intensifies the sensation of witnessing one's own demise in an even more despairingly final manner.

As the city is rendered in eerie silence by an incomprehensible force, time itself seems to decelerate, savoring each moment and every violent rupture that tears wood, stone, metal, and flesh from existence.

By the time the very landmass beneath the city crumbles and collapses into itself, everything that was once alive or had been touched by living hands and feet has perished, leaving no trace behind. An entire city and its very essence have vanished from existence. Neither its name nor the memories of its inhabitants remain in our realm. It is as if this city never existed.

With weary eyes, Elaine looks upward again, only to be greeted by the relentless rain drenching Edinburgh today. God knows how long her gaze has been vacant and her thoughts adrift. However, given the state of the common folk around the city, she is far from the only one marked by a troubled mind contributing to the mood of the inhabitants. At the bus stop where she passes by, she finds only gazes absorbed in themselves. The recent years have weighed heavily on everyone alike.

For Elaine specifically, it has been mostly recurring dreams and visions that have burdened her since her late mother's passing. Her days are marred by frequent visions, and her nights by dreams of a haunting future, a future that feels too real and oppressive for it to be merely a figment of human imagination. Each moment of this grim future seen and witnessed takes a toll on her mind and being, without her having any choice in the matter of seeing these visions or not. The fact that these haunting mental images began to besiege Elaine's days and nights precisely on the day of her mother's passing did little to ease her mind. Her mother had always been a woman living in seclusion, frequently away on travels. She consistently urged Elaine to focus on her studies in historical academics during her absences, which were often due to work. She never spoke of her work or the places she visited; indeed, she preferred to avoid the subject entirely. Each journey seemed to sap more of her vitality, rendering her increasingly distant. Elaine thought little of this, as it was quite customary at that time for people to ward off a pervasive depression, deeply rooted in the city, by becoming more distant in mind.

An old library card and a broken pocket watch were all her mother had bequeathed to her. These two seemingly random items, alongside the haunting visions of a grim future, were the sole legacies left by Elaine’s immediate family. Yet for Elaine, there was always her academic pursuit and her innate passion for history. While attending the University of Edinburgh, she often immersed herself in her studies to escape the pervasive layer of hardships. Her mother had insisted on Elaine studying in this city, although Elaine was uncertain how her mother had managed to finance her enrollment at such a prestigious institution.

Elaine pulls out the old library card, glancing at the address before turning into one of the alleyways leading away from the crossroad where she got off the bus. Rain seeped from the closely built stone facades lining the alley. Elaine spots a cat calmly sitting on a fence in one of the few forecourts – it doesn’t seem to mind the rain. The rain felt less like weather and more like a given. A few turns later with the library's address memorized Elaine checks the number on the building she’s standing before. She has visited many libraries throughout the city during her studies, but the presence of her mother's name on this library card suggests that this must be one her mother frequented – oddly, she never mentioned it.

The edifice before which Elaine stands seems unremarkable, melding seamlessly into a row of distinctly aged buildings. It matches the address, though its unassuming exterior and location might suggest it rarely welcomes visitors. Gripping the cold door handle, she pushes open the library's entrance.

What greets her inside is an expanse of aged dark oak, the sparse daylight barely filtering through the ancient, translucent windows. Shelves brimming with books reach toward the high ceilings, spanning the breadth of this deceptively spacious library. Despite its modest outer appearance, the interior feels surprisingly expansive. Yet, every conceivable space is meticulously utilized, with volumes densely packed into every nook. The dim glow from a few chandeliers hanging overhead struggles to illuminate the library's every corner, casting long shadows that lend an air of eerie solitude to the silent, book-lined halls.

The first detail that captured one's attention upon entering the library is the information desk, situated slightly further from the entrance, nestled in a building indentation. An aged wooden desk adorned with brass ornaments renders the setup more reminiscent of an office workspace than a conventional information desk. Behind it, large windows rise to the ceiling, their aged glass tinted with layers of dust and weathering. The diffused light that manages to penetrate these windows casts directly toward Elaine as she enters, outlining the silhouette of a man seated at the desk. Elaine moves closer, the wooden floor creaking beneath her steps, drawing nearer to the desk and the librarian behind it. As Elaine steps closer, slowly the man looks up from his desk.

The man who appeared to be somewhere in his late fifties studied Elaine briefly before glancing down at a small clock set into his desk. His eyes direct back to her. The librarian sat at his desk, observing her approach with a patient demeanor, though his gaze seemed slightly detached from the present moment. As Elaine stood before the librarian's desk, she nodded silently – a greeting customary among those who value the quality gestures far above the quantity of idle chatter. Elaine reaches into her pockets for her mother’s library card. Elaine’s hand paused in her pocket as her eyes met the man’s. She hesitated briefly before withdrawing her mother’s library card and extending it towards him. He glances at the card for a moment, a moment slightly longer than needed to read a name. The librarian spoke up for the first time, “She must have passed then.” Elaine now regarded the enigmatic librarian with increased suspicion. “You knew my mother?” she inquired, her voice tinged with hesitation. The librarian opens one of his desk’s many drawers and places a pen he was holding into it. He then opens another drawer, producing another, seemingly newer pen. He inspects the pen sunken in his own thoughts for a quick moment before using the pen’s end to adjust his glasses and then look back at her. “Indeed, I knew your mother.” Elaine’s eyes kept mustering the librarian, kind of having already anticipated that the man isn't pausing but is already finished with his response. “Can you tell me what subject my mother was researching here?” Elaine follows up. The librarian's eyes wandered over the many bookshelves in the library. The librarian stays silent. He opens another one of the many drawers in his desk and takes out a card similar to Elaine’s Mother’s old library card. Unexpectedly the librarian looks up straight at Elaine for a moment, as if he was to confirm something for himself. His eyes then wander down again to the card laying flat in front of his desk and starts writing Elaine’s name on it. Elaine watched as the librarian wrote her full name on the card. Mother must have mentioned me to him in the past, Elaine thought for herself. Without further remarks the librarian looks at Elaine again and holds the new library card towards her. She hasn’t even asked for one yet she felt like accepting it is the only right thing to do. Elaine takes the card and holds it next to her Mother’s. The Design of their library cards must have changed since my mother frequented this library. 

“There remains one further matter, Miss Ainsworth.” the librarian adds. Elaine felt a faint shudder at the words – Miss Ainsworth had never meant her, only her mother.

The librarian produced a small key and held it out to her. “A small number of items were entrusted to us under your mother’s name,” the librarian said, indicating a distant section of the library. With her new library card and her mother’s locker key, Elaine turned and headed toward the lockers. She felt the librarian’s gaze at her back, yet the sound of his pen continued without hesitation – no pause, no correction, no change in pressure. Indented into the wall were several rows of small lockers, no larger than to hold a handful of books. Elaine could barely imagine anything about the content of items her mother would have stored here, since her studies as well as work have never really been clear or revealed to her. A turn of the key later, Elaine found not books but a bundled stack of documents, its weight demanding both hands. Elaine paused only a moment before deciding to take the documents back to her apartment, curiosity outweighing any hesitation.

“Mind the door on your way out,” the librarian said, his attention already back on the page. “The strays in the alley do not take well to sudden sounds.”

Elaine spread the documents across her apartment desk, realizing only then how many there were. She was no stranger to extensive paperwork – her academic studies had seen to that. Her mother had always been sparing in what she shared of her studies, her travels, and her work. Taking advantage of a rare moment untroubled by visions or headaches, she began to go through the documents.
Since her mother had arranged her enrollment at the university, Elaine had quietly wondered about her family’s financial means. The documents now offered limited clarity. Land ownership across Scotland, contracts, and coordinated shipments – all in her mother’s name. The wealth itself was not inexplicable. Its origin, however, remained entirely so.

The majority of the holdings were warehouses at major trade junctions, with a smaller number of remote estates that Elaine assumed to be investments. What unsettled her was how disconnected they were from any apparent business activity. As she continued through the documents, an increasing number of acquisitions emerged that made little practical sense.

Sustained by tea in an effort to keep the inevitable headaches and visions at bay, Elaine stepped back from her desk for a moment. The documents remained spread across its surface. Outside, the rain continued without interruption, just as she had expected. The sight offered no clarity. Whatever her mother had left behind felt less like a blessing than the quiet assumption of responsibilities she did not yet understand. The contents of the shipments were described only vaguely. An impressive volume of documentation produced very little of substance, bureaucracy in its purest form. Elaine recognized that she would soon have to visit some of the properties in person.
Elaine returned to the recent shipping records. While most consignments moved between major trade junctions, a recurring number were diverted to the remote properties she had taken for passive investments. The pattern unsettled her. There was little practical reason to direct goods to such locations. 

Her attention caught on the most recent shipping record, dated roughly a week before her mother’s death. It concerned a single, unusually large item.

The document itself was incomplete. No point of origin was listed – only a destination, one of the more remote properties. The consignment was marked as date-specific, yet its recorded stopovers formed a route that made little logistical sense. The required delivery date had already passed. She lingered over the entry. A shipment bound to a fixed date should not have been routed this way.

A sudden sting disrupts her thoughts. There is only so much tea and shallow light can do to keep the inevitable headaches at bay, those that follow her like a natural constant. She glances at the clock on the wall, its hands marking hours already too deep into the night. A collected mind would have turned in by now. I suppose I should too, Elaine thinks. Her hand hovers over the desk lamp’s switch. She hesitates. Instead of following through, her hand withdraws and reaches for the shipping document once more. Standing there, she stares at it in silence. For the first time tonight, the ticking of the clock feels audible to her. Usually she manages to push it out of her thoughts while working or studying here. She cannot quite say why, but a pressure settles in her chest, an insistence to decide. Holding the document in one hand, she reaches for a pen with the other. With a swift, determined motion, Elaine circles the destination address of the final shipment. She looks over the document one last time for the night. The soft sound of paper and pen meeting the desk is followed by the clock striking another hour. Elaine exhales, as if someone had finally told her to go to bed. She switches off the desk lamp.

The trees outside the window merged into an indistinct rhythm. Elaine found herself counting them until the numbers lost coherence. Hundreds. Thousands. Enough that the exercise collapsed under its own weight. She looked away from the glass, focusing instead on the steady presence of other passengers in the compartment. Ordinary things. Sleeping, breathing, existing. It was enough to keep her thoughts from drifting where they tended to go lately.

She had imagined traveling during her study breaks, but not like this: as the owner of a property she knew nothing about. She found herself wondering whether learning more about her mother’s recent activities would bring answers, even if she did not yet know what questions to ask.
She took the shipping document from her luggage and read through it again. There was enough time before the train reached its destination.
Her mother must have had her reasons for leaving the documents in the library. She was a woman who valued efficiency and order, and would not have entrusted something this important to a small library locker without purpose.
Especially the last shipping record raised more questions than it answered. The absence of an origin entry was notable, as were the irregular reroutes and what appeared to be pre-planned delays. The contents were described only as a wooden container of considerable size, with a recorded weight that stood out against similar entries.

Once again, her thoughts were interrupted by a familiar surge of pain. Headaches came in waves, followed by the same images: an incomprehensible force overtaking the city in mute violence. The city where her mother had sent her to study. The city where she had uncovered the first traces of her mother’s recent activities.
These visions of Edinburgh meeting an unspeakable end had persisted ever since. No other dreams, no other images had intruded upon her sleep or her waking thoughts.

She lowered the documents, exhaled softly, and closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them again, her gaze returned to the window. The train was passing through a forest. A forest – an arrangement she found quietly curious. An economy unto itself, sustained not by any single tree, but by the slow perseverance of countless individuals across years and generations.
The thought steadied her. Her mind drifted back toward safer waters.

It had been nearly a year since Olivia had started working there. At the time, she had been relieved to secure a position at a firm that dealt in coordination and oversight across several sectors. The work was administrative in nature, removed from day-to-day operations, and largely invisible to the public. Most days, that suited her just fine.
Lately, paperwork had been piling up throughout the office, not just on Olivia’s desk. The entire office seemed to register subtle shifts since her supervisor began reorganizing internal procedures. As his direct assistant, she noticed details others overlooked, such as the quiet removal of most mirrors from the office spaces.
Balancing a stack of papers in her arms, Olivia knocked softly and stepped into her supervisor’s office. A man of healthy stature sat behind the large desk, watching her as she entered. The accumulation of paperwork had not spared his workspace either. Yet, unlike the disorder elsewhere in the office, everything on his desk appeared finished, neatly arranged, signed, and already concluded.
She supposed most people would consider him attractive, not only in appearance, but in the composed confidence of someone well established in his position. If anything, he seemed younger now than he had on Olivia’s first day at the office.
“Good morning,” Olivia said. He looked up at her, acknowledging her presence without comment. After a brief pause, his gaze settled in a way that invited explanation rather than conversation. She proceeded to summarize the administrative matters at hand: requests for clarification regarding delays, provisional holds, and dispute notices tied to several affected localities and infrastructure junctions.
The list of inquiries had been growing steadily in recent weeks. Still, he listened without interruption as Olivia finished reading through them, his attention fixed on the documents rather than on her. When she reached the end, a brief silence followed. By now, she no longer expected a response directed at her personally, nor for him to acknowledge her by name.
He gestured toward an empty space on the desk.
“Leave them with me. They will be resolved.”
Olivia stepped forward and placed the stack of papers where he had indicated. At this distance, she found herself avoiding his gaze without quite knowing why. She gave a small nod in his direction and turned to leave, exiting the office with more haste than the situation warranted, careful not to linger longer than necessary.

She returned to her desk and resumed her work, making a note to request replacement mirrors for her section later that week, then crossed it out, uncertain why she had written it in the first place. Within the hour, the inquiries would be logged, redistributed, and marked for review. That was the process. Olivia had learned not to follow matters beyond that point.

Elaine stepped off the bus at what appeared to be the final stop on the route. The surrounding area was sparse enough that remote felt like an insufficient description. One by one, the other passengers had departed until she was the only one left to disembark.

This was the destination listed on her late mother’s final shipping record.

Whatever had once been managed under her mother’s name now rested with Elaine. Whether this place would offer clarity was uncertain. Leaving the bus stop behind, she followed the address until she stood before the property in question. The building did not correspond to any functional description she had expected.
It appeared to be the remnants of a former chop shop.

This was clearly not one of the properties held as an investment, Elaine thought, as the front door nearly came loose from its rusted hinges when she pushed it open. She moved through the interior, what remained of a workshop, followed by a handful of small offices. The place appeared to have been closed in haste, with redundant equipment and furniture left behind. Several broken windows bore the marks of time and, likely, occasional vandalism. It was a location no one seemed to care about anymore.
Still, Elaine was not discouraged. She remembered the recorded dimensions of the shipment in question. Trusting that her mother would not have chosen a place without purpose, Elaine ignored most of the debris and headed straight for the garage compartments at the rear of the complex, the only place where a container of the registered size would have been stored.

It took Elaine a moment to realize she was smiling. It had been some time since her mouth had last formed the shape. The corner lifted not out of amusement, but at the quiet absurdity of the wooden container’s dimensions as it stood before her.

The container before her nearly reached the height of the already tall garage. It was a standard wooden shipping crate, mounted on pallets, its proportions close to square. Even so, its sheer volume was difficult to ignore. Elaine judged it to be roughly twice her height.
If nothing else, the location had served its purpose. Using a crowbar she found nearby, she began prying loose the nails securing one of the side panels, working methodically until the wood creaked in protest. When the panel finally gave way, Elaine stepped back just in time as it tipped outward and struck the floor.
What followed was not a dramatic reveal, but a sudden burst of dust that filled the garage as the panel hit flat. Elaine raised her coat to cover her mouth and nose, blinking through the haze.

It was held in place by additional wooden bracing inside the container, but its nature was immediately apparent. What Elaine was looking at answered some questions—though only the more trivial ones, such as the container’s dimensions and weight.
She stood still as the dust continued to settle around her. The surface beneath it carried the muted, familiar tone of aged bronze. Elaine knew, in theory, the scale a city bell could reach. Confronting one of this size in person, however, was something else entirely.

Elaine stepped closer, careful not to disturb the bracing that held the bell in place. She traced the curve of its surface with her eyes, noting proportions, casting marks, the way the light settled unevenly across the bronze.
The object itself did not trouble her. Its origin did. A city bell of this size had no practical reason to be displaced to a location like this. The thought forced Elaine to reconsider not just the bell, but the assumptions she had been carrying with her. She wondered how long she would continue tracing her mother’s reasoning even after her passing.

Elaine pauses, her teacup hovering above the desk, as if waiting for permission to exist among the notes and photographs that had quietly overtaken her apartment. She turns away from the desk and steps toward the window, seeking a brief pause from her work. The sight of Edinburgh’s rooftops lingering in the night offers none. Instead, it sharpens the presence of the visions that have grown steadily more insistent in her thoughts.

An entire city meeting an unspeakable end. Her late mother leaving behind a structural network Elaine does not yet understand. And the bell – an object so out of place that even her academic training fails to offer a credible origin, let alone an explanation for her mother’s fixation on it.
Elaine returns to her chair and exhales deliberately, grounding herself for a moment. The ticking of the clock on the wall asserts itself again, louder now than her own thoughts.

She still cannot define the task before her. Yet she is certain of one thing: the nature of her visions demands more than passive endurance, more than attention alone. Whatever they signify, they require interpretation.

Elaine reaches for the desk lamp and switches it off. For tonight, there is only one place left where answers might exist.

She pushed the door open carefully.
Only then did Elaine notice what she had missed on her first visit: there was no doorbell. No cord, no button, no mechanism by which to announce oneself. The omission felt deliberate rather than neglectful.

She stepped inside. The librarian did not look up. His pen continued its steady movement across the page, untroubled by her presence. Only his eyes shifted – barely – glancing over the rim of his glasses toward the entrance as Elaine crossed the threshold.
She stopped a few paces from the desk. Up close, the exhaustion she had carried with her was harder to ignore. Whatever resolve had brought her back had not come cheaply.
The librarian’s expression did not change. There was no surprise in it, nor curiosity.  If anything, it suggested familiarity – not with Elaine herself, but with the inevitability of her standing there.

“You have many questions for someone who has already been given answers, Miss Ainsworth.” The librarian spoke up before Elaine could say anything.
Elaine resisted the urge to rub her temples.
“My findings have left me with nothing but more questions,” she said. “Yet you suggest I’ve already been granted clarity. If so, I have failed to perceive it.”
The librarian paused. He adjusted his glasses with the pen, then set it down on the desk.

“Failed to perceive,” he repeated.
A moment passed.
“Or failed to accept?”

Accept – the world lingered longer than it should have.
A sharp pressure flared behind her eyes. For a fraction of a second, the library receded – replaced by stone splitting without sound, a sky emptied of stars. She inhaled sharply and steadied herself against the edge of the desk.

The librarian did not look at her. His hands, no longer occupied with pen or paper, rested around a porcelain cup she had not noticed before.
“Certain herbal teas are known to ease the temples,” he said, his gaze still fixed on the cup. “They are difficult to source. Scarcity tends to drive the price accordingly.”

“Most people drink them to make the pain go away,” he said.
A moment passed.
“That is rarely their intended purpose.”

Elaine inhaled slowly, counting the seconds until the library settled back into focus. The discomfort lingered. She let it.
Whatever the visions were, they were not intrusions. They were present whether she wished it or not. Suppression, she realized, had only ever been a delay.

She straightened, stepping back from the desk and turning toward the entrance. The librarian glanced over the rim of his glasses at her, saying nothing.

“I know,” Elaine said quietly.
She turned, opened the door with care, and closed it just as carefully behind her.

Elaine walked without urgency, letting the damp air settle against her skin. The city offered no resistance to wandering thought. She welcomed that.

She ground her teeth subtly. At the very least, she would not have to wait for it to arrive. The visions had visited her often enough by now that their contents were fixed in her memory.

She closed her eyes as she walked. If she collided with something solid, she would accept that as well.
The sequence returned intact. There was no effort required to summon it. Yet with each additional detail she allowed herself to consider, the pressure behind her eyes grew—physical and insistent.

A city arrested in silence. Soundless collapse. Structures tearing apart while something deeper was being removed—not merely buildings or lives, but the very trace that they had ever belonged to the world at all.

Not destroyed.

Unwritten.

Elaine’s eyes open abruptly.
“It wouldn’t leave behind a name,” she said quietly.

She fastened her coat. This time, she did not take the long way back to her apartment.

A tense Elaine crosses the threshold into her modest workspace. She lays out an image of the bell alongside its shipping documents, her eyes scanning the items with an accusatory focus.
In one hand rests the shipping document of the bell. Its departure location was not registered. The space on the form was simply left empty.
Elaine digs through the pile of papers on her desk, setting most of it aside until a map surfaces. It was the map where she had once marked the shipping locations and reroutes of the bronze city bell. A certain area around the bell’s initial movements was absent on the map.

At first, she does not know what to make of it. But the absence – where a major transport junction would logically be expected – begins to press on her. When she compares it to the routing pattern of her mother’s network, the bell’s movements no longer appear irregular. They appear deliberate. The implication settles heavily.

Elaine considered the possibility of deliberate erasure – a city struck from record by policy or catastrophe. But even the most thorough removals left seams. There was no correction. No replacement. Just absence.

Though her body is too exhausted to react visibly, her expression darkens as her finger glides slowly across the map, coming to rest on the empty space – surrounded by markers that had made no sense before this moment.
The ticking of the clock on the wall grows intrusive, each second landing with weight.
“This is where your voice once marked the hours,” she said quietly.
Elaine pauses.
“Which would mean,” she continues quietly, “that you should not exist.”

She had circled the thought before, skirting its edges. Now that it had taken shape, she found herself clinging to the hope that it was wrong – as horrifying in what it implied about the past as in what it suggested about what was still to come. She straightens, her gaze dropping to the photographs of the bell spread across her desk.

Elaine steps to the window and lets her gaze drift over the rooftops of Edinburgh. The city lies beneath the low sky, unchanged, unaware. Tonight, the clouds part unevenly, allowing a few stars through.
She reaches into a drawer and removes her mother’s pocket watch. The casing is scratched, the glass cracked. The crown turns, but the watch refuses to agree on time.

She turns it once in her palm, then closes her fingers around it. Whatever understanding had come to her had come slowly. Enough, for now.

This was no longer a matter of knowing more. It was time to use what had already been left behind.

She couldn’t remember when it started – only that it hadn’t eased. A steady tension crept in whenever she stood in her supervisor’s presence, without any clear reason. She stood in his office, arms occupied by a large stack of papers. His desk showed no such burden – only finished documents, signed and ordered. He appeared entirely unaffected by the strain that had settled over the office in recent weeks.

“They report delays to routine logistics, with hold-ups now reaching multiple major junctions around Edinburgh.” Olivia said, glancing up from the page.
For a moment, Olivia failed to interpret his expression – not from any lack of social skill, but because she could not perceive his eyes at all.

“The necessary procedures cannot be omitted,” he said. “Anything left unresolved tends to persist.”
He gestured toward a section of his desk he had cleared in advance. “I will handle the inquiries.”

“There is one remaining matter,” Olivia said. “A number of reports list no originating address. The documentation itself is otherwise complete.”

He did not look up.
“Then the reports are complete as filed.”

Olivia hesitated only long enough to confirm there was nothing further required, then left the office.
The door settled into its hinges behind her. There was no ticking to mark the moment.

He remained seated. His attention returned to the documents Olivia had placed before him.
One page was adjusted.
Another was set aside.

The rest required no action.

Elaine replaced the receiver and immediately reached for the forms. Phone calls, signatures, routing numbers. The process had become a constant over the past few days. 

She did not yet understand the full scale of it. Still, she found herself forced to make use of what had been left behind, a network of logistics and contingencies. Something that had been dormant since her mother’s passing began to move again under Elaine’s hand.
Her gaze drifted to the map pinned to the wall. Pencil lines traced routes already set in motion, converging slowly toward Edinburgh. The bell was moving.

Elaine leaned back into her chair. Planning and overseeing the shipment had proven far more demanding than anticipated. Permits stalled without explanation. Carriers withdrew after confirming availability. Routes that had been viable weeks earlier required constant revision. Recent inter-regional administrative realignments had introduced delays that could not be contested – only navigated.

Elaine stepped away from the desk.

Her eyes settled on the clock mounted on the wall, deliberately avoiding the documents behind her. Forms, routes, delays, she set them aside.
The pocket watch rested in her hand, its crown loose beneath her fingers.

One problem remained unresolved. If a place could vanish without trace, then it must have done so at a precise moment. There had been a final instance where it still applied – and one immediately after where it did not.

Elaine closed her eyes briefly.
She did not know the moment yet. But she knew she had to find it. She had already witnessed it – again and again – without ever knowing how close it was. Nothing indicated it could not be the next full hour, or the one after. Beyond those hours, the city would no longer be reachable – by the bell or otherwise.

Elaine rearranged the documents once more, this time focusing solely on the dates. It was not the first time she had examined them. If her mother had hidden a specific moment here, it had not revealed itself. The delays, revisions, and late approvals produced too much noise to sustain anything but coincidence.

She paused. Then, without quite deciding to, she began sorting the papers again – discarding every amended entry and keeping only the original due dates as her mother had first recorded them. The change was immediate.
The dates no longer scattered. They formed a sequence. One that held when traced backward, and only began to make sense when extended forward. The pocket watch moved absently in her hand. The pattern closed. What lay before her was not a date to be read, but a method.
You hid it in the continuation.

The pocket watch shifted restlessly in her hand as she tried again. She had the method now, but it would not resolve. Every attempt to carry it forward broke at the same point. The pattern itself wasn’t wrong – it was incomplete.

She had stopped expecting it to be given plainly.

At some point, the ticking became noticeable. Not the steady marking of seconds from the clock on the wall, but something closer, uneven. Elaine’s gaze dropped to her hand. She had been turning the pocket watch’s crown without thinking, keeping her fingers occupied as she worked. It was the watch she heard.
She slowed, watching the hands as she continued to wind it. Their movement did not settle into the rhythm she expected. It never had.
She tried again. Then once more.
This wasn’t the kind of fault that worsened with use. It was too stable for that. Whatever rule the watch followed, it followed it faithfully.

Elaine let the watch rest in her palms, suddenly careful with it.

She turned the watch once more, deliberately now.  The hands responded – not smoothly, not evenly. Their movement resisted familiar ratios. Seconds did not divide cleanly into minutes. Revolutions accumulated without resolving.

It wasn’t broken.

She turned the crown again, slower this time, counting under her breath. The watch did not measure time. It segmented it. Each rotation imposed a limit – not a duration, but a boundary. The pattern had been complete all along, just not on its own.

Elaine’s gaze flicked back to the papers. The dates, the sequence, the failure point – all of it snapped into place at once. It only held once things were already in motion.

The ticking resumed.

She wrote a date down once. Then set the pen aside.
For a moment she stared at the date before her.
She was too tired to be afraid anymore.

A sound like glass shattering all at once rang through Olivia’s ears. She covered them on instinct and rose abruptly from her desk. Her gaze fixed on the door to her supervisor’s office.
She rushed over and pushed open his door.

His office was exactly as it always was – neat, ordered, complete.
He sat in his chair with his elbows resting on the desk, hands folded. She could not make out his expression. His attention was elsewhere, and his eyes offered nothing in return.
She left his office as abruptly as she had entered it, the door closing harder than she intended. She leaned back against it, breath unsteady. The office beyond continued. Papers moved. Chairs scraped. No one looked up. She wondered, briefly, whether she had lost her footing – mentally.

Olivia sank back into her chair. She stared at her hand, unsure what she had been checking for. The days had grown longer. The work did not lessen.
A growing number of inquiries never reached resolution. They did not escalate, nor were they answered. They were withdrawn. Revoked. Rendered unnecessary. Issues that escalated lingered for weeks, while those formally concluded ceased to exist by the following morning. It wasn’t that matters were being resolved. It was that the individuals responsible for them were no longer listed. Roles changed. Oversight shifted. In several cases, no successor was assigned.
Opposition from the offices that used to push back thinned. The errors did not. Certain junctions remained blocked, routes misaligned in ways no revision fully corrected.

A shipment authorization returned to her desk stamped COMPLETE – filed without the required entry, and accepted anyway.

There was no time left to search for anything further. The clarity of her visions had sharpened as she stopped resisting them. The cost had been steady and familiar – headaches, fractured sleep, the quiet erosion of days – but the sequence itself no longer shifted. It returned intact, unchanged.

On the strike of the hour, Edinburgh’s bell did not ring.
Motion failed. Sound followed it into absence.
Structures came apart in silence until nothing remained – not stone, not memory, not even a name.

Elaine tore her eyes open. Rain struck her face immediately, cold and insistent. She stood beneath an open sky, breath unsteady, vision blurred at the edges. She did not look away. Her eyes burned, stretched wide as if daring them to close again.
The clouds hung low and uneven. The stars were wrong.
She lifted her head fully, rain running down her face as she stared into the firmament.

“I would recognize this sky anywhere,” she said, voice hoarse.
“This is the hour.”

Among her mother’s acquisition records, one location stood apart – an excommunicated church near the center of Edinburgh. Moderately sized. No clocktower. Its main hall would suffice.
The church’s windows were all nailed shut with wooden planks. Only a few rays of daylight broke through the cracks, casting just enough light to outline the silhouette of what hung in the center of the sermon hall. Above the benches where sermons had once been held, improvised wooden structures and beams supported a bronze bell large enough to fill the space – not only in size, but in presence. A city bell that would normally have no place here. A bell that should not exist at all – and yet, it had found its way.

Elaine stood on the roof directly above the bell. The building rose only marginally above the surrounding streets, high enough to clear the neighboring roofs without asserting itself. From there, the city remained visible – present and uninterrupted.

Her hands rested behind her back. The calm that held her now had not come easily. Bringing the bell here had not been straightforward. Routes had collapsed without notice. Permits had been withdrawn, then reinstated, then rendered unnecessary. Several delays had resolved themselves only by ceasing to exist at all.
These were not attempts to stop the bell. They were attempts to finish the matter before it could resolve.

Yet it waited beneath her feet all the same.

Elaine turned her gaze toward the part of the city where the great bells marked the hours. She could not see them from here. She did not need to. Rain framed the rooftops below, striking stone and slate in steady descent. As the hour drew closer, the rhythm faltered. Drops lingered in the air before falling, as if the distance between moments had begun to stretch.
She raised her hands. Water arrived, delayed, then unevenly against her skin. Not slower – out of sequence. She thought she might have been nervous. Instead, a quiet certainty settled in its place. She did not mistake the calm for safety. She knew what awaited the city if this went unanswered.
A small, unwelcome spark of anticipation surfaced within her, fleeting, quickly restrained. Above, the sky had begun to disagree with itself. Below her, the city had begun to lose its shared pace. A handful of silhouettes moved through the streets, their steps arriving too early or too late to belong together. Some hurried without urgency. Others slowed as if resistance had found them mid-stride. Birds faltered. One vanished briefly against the sky before resuming its flight several lengths ahead, as though continuity had been revised without consultation. No one reacted. The city persisted – not yet aware of the disagreement. Elaine watched, noticing without judgment.

She did not need to know the time to recognize the moment. The rain, already uncertain of its rhythm, hesitated. Drops held longer against the air before continuing, as though sequence itself had been set aside without comment. Elaine caught fragments of her reflection in them – distorted, incomplete, refusing to settle. The pressure behind her eyes intensified, not sharply, but steadily, each passing second registering without fully arriving.The sensation did not demand reaction. It simply accumulated.

When her balance finally shifted, it was without urgency. One knee met the wet stone of the roof, then her hands, palms splayed against the cold surface. She remained upright, breathing measured, eyes open.

The city waited.

The final seconds narrowed. The clocks across Edinburgh did not drift or argue.
One last second stretched thin over the rooftops. Elaine felt it pass without moving.
The Moment arrived.

All of the clocks marked the full hour.

The city’s bells did not answer.

Beneath Elaine’s feet, something shifted. Not with force, but with insistence. Wood strained against purpose. Rope tightened where it should have slackened. The structure below her did not fail – it complied.
From within the sealed hall, the bell that had no origin was struck.

The sound did not rise.
It sank.

It moved through arches and buried corridors, along forgotten supports and sealed stairwells, finding paths laid down long before the present arrangement of streets. The oldest stone received it first. The newer layers followed, reluctantly, as though reminded of something they had been built to forget.

The buildings did not reflect it. They remembered it – not only their own histories, but impressions left by something that had stood elsewhere, once.

The resonance found stone, then distance, then memory.

The vibration persisted. Not within her alone, but through the structure she stood on. She watched the rooftops below.

This was the moment the city usually failed.

None of the city’s clocks had resumed.
Elaine did not move. She did not blink. The hour had passed, yet nothing advanced beyond it. Motion, sound, and time remained held – not absent, but unpermitted.

Behind her, a sound reintroduced itself. With calm steps a cat walked toward Elaine. She might have seen it before somewhere in the city – or it might have been no different from any other stray. The cat stopped and sat down beside her.

“Of course,” it said, “an Ainsworth.”

Elaine registered the voice without reacting to it. At present, her assessment of the impossible had broadened considerably. Questions suggested themselves.

Elaine inhaled.

“Don’t,” the cat said.

It watched the city instead.

She blinked, for what felt like the first time since the moment passed.
“This was not your turn to intervene,” the cat said. Elaine absorbed the remark without visible reaction. “Is the city – ”
“No,” the cat replied, not unkindly. It did not clarify. It watched the rooftops as if waiting for something to resume. Nothing did. Elaine followed its gaze. The stillness held.
She exhaled once, slowly.
“What happens now?” Elaine asked.
The cat stretched lazily. “Now?” it said. “Now this hour belongs to you.”
Elaine frowned. “That doesn’t sound like an answer.”
“It isn’t,” the cat replied. “You have  interrupted more than one expectation.”

Elaine rubbed her eyes. They reflected weeks of borrowed sleep. She cleared her throat. “And you are?”
The cat sat down. “Not relevant,” it said.

Of course.

“You know my name,” she said.

“It is not the first time your family’s name has carried consequences into places that were never meant to be addressed,” The cat paused. “Do try not to mistake this for attention,”

“You are simply no longer ignorable.”

The cat leaped a few paces away from Elaine. It looked at her once more, then disappeared over the edge of the roof, already gone by the time she reached the spot.
Elaine kept her gaze fixed on the alley below for a moment longer than necessary.
A gust of wind drew a strand of hair across her vision. She turned back toward the city’s clocktowers. The scent of recent rain lingered in the stone. Water resumed its paths through gutters and cracks, as though nothing had delayed it. A flock of birds crossed the face of one tower.
Elaine sat down slowly.

The city resumed its motion.

Twenty. Twenty-four.
Elaine counted them as she walked, the trees arranged in even rows along the park path. She stopped and watched the people passing by. The familiar weight of the city lingered in their faces, in their pace.
For once, there was no rain. From where she stood, the city’s clocktower was clearly visible. She held her mother’s pocket watch in her hand. Its hands were idle, as they had always been. Her gaze shifted from the watch to the face of the clocktower. Elaine already knew the outcome. She counted anyway.

The city did not keep as many hours as the watch remembered.
She returned the watch to her pocket. A subtle pressure formed behind her eyes, drawing her attention back to the present. Elaine moved on through the alleyways of Prague, heading toward a library set away from the city center, near streets few people used.

Her feet crossed the threshold of the library. She did not guide the door as it closed. It struck the frame louder than it needed to.

She  has felt  less tired lately. Sleep came  by  more easily. Days had taken less from her than usual. Olivia inhaled consciously once. A gust of wind brushed along a row of trees, carrying leaves over the gravelway. Late afternoon strolls had helped calm her mind.
She bent down, holding the food out in her open palm, careful not to startle the dog. It took it quickly, then slipped back into the alleyways to roam the streets like the others.
In the near distance, a clock tower rose above the rooftops. Olivia did not look at it for long.