It started with the smell.

  Old bread. Dust. A little lavender oil.

  The kind of scent that didn't live in bottles or spells. The kind that belonged to one house, one kitchen. One life.

  Calen froze halfway down the subway stairs.

  The air shifted. It had weight now — like walking into a memory. The sigils on the stairwell walls pulsed faintly, as if reacting to something inside him rather than the other way around.

  Dessa stopped behind him, holding her mana light orb aloft.

  "You alright?" she asked, voice echoing softly.

  He nodded, too quickly.

  "Yeah. Just... tunnel rot."

  "Doesn't smell like rot," she muttered, glancing around. "Smells like someone's bakery exploded."

  He didn't respond. Couldn't.

  The South Conduit line had been decommissioned for over 30 years. Tovan's file mentioned leyline corrosion, structural instability, and the occasional mana bloom infestation, but nothing like this.

  The tunnels breathed old life.

  Moss clung to the ceiling like spiderwebs. Rusted rails hummed softly with leftover energy. Spell tags, long faded, hung in shredded strips from metal pipes overhead. Somewhere in the distance, a chime rang — a tone too perfect to be mechanical.

  Calen moved forward. Slowly. Every step echoed like a drumbeat in his head.

  They descended through a broken turnstile. Dessa paused to sketch a temporary ward glyph near the entrance — just a simple stability loop, to ground the area and mark their passage.

  "Never trust tunnels that breathe," she said absently. "And don't assume you're alone just because the registry says so."

  "You think someone's down here?" Calen asked.

  "I think there's something down here," she replied. "But not someone."

  The chamber opened into a wide terminal platform, partially collapsed. A cracked subway car rested at the far end, fused into the wall. Blue-green sigils flickered faintly near the ceiling, casting long, smeared shadows.

  The space hummed. Not with life — with memory.

  Calen stepped forward and felt a pull.

  Not physical.

  Emotional.

  He looked to the side and saw something resting in the rubble.

  A teacup. Chipped, but intact. Floral pattern. White ceramic with a faded violet band.

  He picked it up.

  Time stopped.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  FLASH.

  Suddenly he was twelve years old again, standing in his mother's shop. She was humming. A kettle whistled. The air smelled like rain on old metal. He reached for a cup from the shelf — this cup.

  "I said be careful, Cal!"

  He'd dropped it. It hit the floor and cracked — the same chip he was holding now.

  "Calen."

  Dessa's voice pulled him back. She was looking at him strangely.

  "You good?"

  He blinked. The cup in his hands was vibrating slightly — just enough to notice.

  "I think this... was mine."

  "That cup?"

  "No. The one from my house. It cracked. I—"

  She moved closer and scanned it with her reader.

  "No active enchantment. But there's a resonance reading off the charts. Could be a residual trigger."

  "What kind?"

  She frowned. "Yours."

  A breeze passed them.

  But there was no wind.

  From behind the far wall, light poured in — not like a spell. Like sunrise.

  It peeled the darkness back, revealing a room that should not exist here.

  Wooden walls. Soft carpet. A cluttered workbench. A window with morning light streaming in. A small table with mismatched chairs.

  Calen stared.

  His parents' salvage shop.

  Down to the tool hooks, the scratch on the floor near the threshold. The faint music from an old radio.

  He stepped forward, heartbeat hammering.

  Dessa held out a hand. "Wait."

  "I know this place," he whispered.

  "Yeah. That's the problem."

  He crossed the threshold.

  The temperature changed.

  The room became brighter. Softer. The world behind him fell quiet.

  His mother was humming at the stove.

  His father leaned over the workbench, cursing under his breath.

  Neither of them turned.

  It was like watching a memory from inside it.

  Dessa didn't follow — she waited just outside the shimmer.

  "Cal," she said. "Don't touch anything."

  He didn't.

  He just stood there. Watching.

  His mother turned.

  And this time, she saw him.

  "Calen," she said softly. "You're late again."

  The illusion rippled.

  The walls grew taller. The shadows deepened. The detail increased — his mother's chipped thumbnail, the steam rising from the kettle, the exact curve of the dent in his father's forehead.

  Too specific.

  Too real.

  "You missed dinner," she continued.

  "We waited. He always waits."

  Calen swallowed.

  "I didn't mean to. I was—"

  "You were gone," she said, still smiling, but her voice was changing.

  "You left us in the fire."

  His father turned now, slow and deliberate.

  "Never came back," he said.

  "We called. You didn't answer."

  Calen backed up.

  "I couldn't—"

  "You chose not to," they said in unison.

  The light turned blue.

  The image of his parents distorted — hair flickering, eyes hollowing. Their feet no longer touched the ground.

  Dessa shouted something — but it was muffled.

  The scene rippled outward — growing.

  The salvage shop became a house. The house became a street. A town.

  Everything he remembered began reconstructing itself.

  Suddenly, he was inside his old bedroom.

  The window rattled. His bed creaked behind him.

  He turned. The room looked exactly as it had when he left for the Combine orientation.

  On the desk was a letter — one he never wrote.

  "Don't you wish you had said goodbye?" said his mother's voice, from the hallway.

  He screamed.

  The illusion shattered.

  Light exploded. Shards of memory flared across the platform. Static flooded the air. Mana surged.

  He collapsed onto the cold subway floor, shaking.

  Dessa knelt beside him, slapping a stabilization charm onto his chest.

  The runes glowed, absorbing some of the psychic spill.

  "You idiot," she said, not unkindly.

  "I saw them," he gasped. "They were there."

  "They weren't," she said. "That was you."

  Silence.

  Just the slow drip of leaking leyline runoff.

  "I didn't cast anything," he whispered.

  "I know," she said. "That's why it's scary."

  She leaned against the wall, tossing him a ManaCaf.

  "Your brain's trying to process grief through spell memory. Problem is, you've got just enough training and just enough trauma to build an echo field — but no anchor to hold it down."

  "That's bad?"

  "It's how people go mad, Calen."

  He didn't drink the ManaCaf.

  He just stared into the shimmer.

  It was gone now — the salvage shop, the voices, the home.

  But part of him wanted to go back.

  Because in there... they hadn't died yet.