I jerked awake at my desk, knocking a stack of files to the floor. The scattered papers didn't bother me half as much as the realization I'd fallen asleep at work. Again. For the third time this week.

  Remember who you are.

  The voice lingered like woodsmoke, fading but never quite gone. Sleep had become a battleground since finding that pendant—a space where I was no longer alone in my own head.

  I gathered the fallen papers with shaky hands. My watch showed 8:47 AM. The weekly staff meeting started at nine. I splashed cold water on my face in the bathroom, avoiding my reflection. The man in the mirror looked increasingly like a stranger—hollow-eyed, unkempt, with that silver streak in his dark hair that seemed to catch the light differently than it used to.

  The conference room buzzed with pre-meeting chatter when I slipped in. Dr. Chen stood at the head of the table, sorting through presentation materials. James Okafor positioned himself in the corner, ostensibly providing security but watching the proceedings with that peculiar intensity I'd noticed more frequently.

  "You look like shit," said Tara from Anthropological Studies, pulling out the chair beside her.

  "Thanks. It's my new aesthetic," I mumbled, sliding into the seat.

  "Hot date last night?"

  "Just work."

  "All work and no play makes Marcus a dull boy," she sang under her breath.

  I forced a smile, my attention drawn to the stack of photographs on the table. The top image showed the pendant—my pendant—photographed under specialized lighting. I hadn't authorized those photos.

  Dr. Chen cleared her throat, silencing the room. "Let's begin. First item: the Santorini acquisition. Initial dating confirms pre-Minoan origin for most artifacts, consistent with the 1650 BCE eruption timeframe."

  The fluorescent lights overhead suddenly seemed too bright, their hum escalating from background noise to an invasive buzz that drilled into my skull.

  "Of particular interest is a jade artifact showing non-standard symbolic patterns that may indicate cultural exchange with mainland—"

  The buzzing intensified with each emphasized word, drowning out Chen's voice. I gripped the edge of the table, my knuckles whitening.

  "—potential resonance with similar findings from—"

  Pain lanced through my head. I pressed the heel of my hand against my temple, trying to focus on Chen's words, but the lights pulsed in time with the buzz, creating a nauseating strobe effect only I seemed to notice.

  "Marcus?"

  I blinked, realizing everyone was staring at me.

  "Sorry," I mumbled. "Headache."

  Dr. Chen's expression revealed nothing, but her eyes lingered on me a beat longer than comfortable. "As I was saying, preliminary analysis suggests..."

  She continued, but I caught James watching me from his corner. His face remained professionally impassive, but something in his posture had changed—a subtle alertness, like a predator scenting prey.

  The meeting dragged on for another forty minutes. I nodded at appropriate intervals, jotted meaningless notes, and tried to ignore the persistent buzz that flared whenever certain words were spoken. By the time Chen dismissed us, my shirt stuck to my back with cold sweat.

  "Hey," Tara caught up with me in the hallway. "That's new, isn't it?" She reached toward my temple, where the silver streak cut through my dark hair.

  I flinched back instinctively. "Not really. Had it since I was nineteen."

  "Really? I could've sworn..." She tilted her head. "It looks deliberate, like those silver highlight dye jobs that are trending."

  "Nope. Showed up after a high fever. Doctor said it was some kind of pigmentation shock." The lie came easily, practiced.

  "Weird. It's... striking." She studied it a moment longer. "Anyway, lunch later?"

  "Can't. Research project." Another lie.

  She shrugged, already moving on. "Your loss."

  I watched her walk away, breathing through the knot of anxiety in my chest. The silver streak. Always back to the silver streak.

  The woman's fingers brushed my forehead, cool as water. "Remember," she whispered, her amber eyes—my eyes—holding mine. Where she touched, heat bloomed, a thread of silver light spreading from her fingertips into my hair, my skin, my blood.

  But that wasn't how it happened. That was the dream. The reality was both more mundane and more terrifying.

  I'd been nineteen, halfway through my first semester at college. The dreams had started the week before—symbols, patterns, geometric configurations that felt like a language I should understand. I'd drawn them compulsively, covering pages with their intricate forms, feeling a rightness to their arrangement I couldn't explain.

  That night, unable to sleep, I'd traced one particular pattern onto my dorm room wall. Not with pen or pencil, but with my fingertips, feeling the plaster grow warm beneath my touch. The lines had appeared anyway, glowing faintly in the darkness. And as I completed the final curve, pain had exploded behind my eyes.

  This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  I'd woken on the floor hours later, a streak of silver in my hair where my hand had pressed against my head, the pattern gone from the wall as if it had never existed.

  I shook off the memory and retreated to my office, a glorified storage closet with a desk crammed between boxes of uncataloged artifacts. The pendant photographs from the meeting haunted me. Someone had taken special interest in it—special enough to order advanced imaging techniques beyond standard cataloging procedures.

  My phone buzzed with a text from Chen: Finish Santorini documentation by 5.

  Perfect. The pendant would be back in Research Room C, providing an opportunity to examine it again under the guise of completing paperwork. But first, I needed answers.

  The university library stood like a fortress of knowledge across from the museum campus, its stone facade weathered by a century of Seattle rain. Inside, the main reading room soared three stories high, ringed by balconies of bookshelves. The scent of paper and binding glue enveloped me, comforting in its normalcy.

  I headed for the reference desk, where an elderly librarian with silver-white hair arranged books on a cart. She had a name tag with "Ms Keller" written on it. Something about her profile tickled my memory—the sharp angle of her jaw, perhaps, or the precise way she squared the books' edges.

  "Excuse me," I began. "I'm looking for resources on ancient symbolism, particularly geometric patterns from Mediterranean cultures."

  She turned, and for a disorienting moment, I could have sworn I saw recognition in her eyes. "Of course, Marcus. Section 733.4, third floor." She pointed toward the spiral staircase. "The Harrington volume might be particularly helpful—blue cover, gold lettering."

  I froze. "How do you know my name?"

  The librarian blinked, confusion passing over her features. "I don't believe I used your name, young man."

  Had I imagined it? "You said 'Marcus.'"

  "I said 'mark this'—as in, mark this section." She tapped the reference card in front of her. "733.4. Third floor."

  Heat crept up my neck. "Right. Sorry."

  "The Harrington volume," she repeated, turning back to her cart. "Blue cover, gold lettering."

  I climbed the spiral staircase, unsettled. I'd heard her clearly—hadn't I? The third floor was quiet, just a few students hunched over laptops or browsing shelves. Section 733.4 occupied a shadowy corner near a window overlooking the quad.

  Blue cover, gold lettering.

  The book sat on an eye-level shelf, displayed face-out rather than spine-out like its neighbors. "Symbolic Languages of Ancient Cultures" by Elizabeth Harrington. Published 1967, its cover worn at the edges from decades of handling.

  I reached for it, hesitating as a strange sensation crawled up my arm—anticipation or warning, I couldn't tell which. The moment my fingers touched the spine, the window beside me rattled in a sudden gust of wind, and somewhere in the stacks, books tumbled to the floor.

  No one else seemed to notice.

  I pulled the book free, its weight substantial in my hands. The table of contents listed chapters on Egyptian hieroglyphics, Sumerian cuneiform, Linear A and B, and other recognized ancient writing systems. But it was the final chapter that caught my attention: "Proto-symbolic Geometric Communication."

  The pages fell open naturally to this section, as if the book had been repeatedly read at this spot. My breath caught. There, on page 412, were my symbols. Not similar. Identical. The precise angles, the specific intersections, the particular curve of each line—exactly as I'd drawn them in my journal, exactly as they appeared on the pendant.

  The caption read: "Recurring geometric patterns found in disparate archaeological contexts, suggesting potential cultural transmission or independent development of universal symbolic language."

  My heart hammered against my ribs. Here was proof I wasn't imagining things, wasn't going insane. These symbols existed outside my dreams.

  I flipped through the pages rapidly, finding more familiar patterns. One diagram particularly caught my eye—a complex arrangement of intersecting lines labeled "Hypothesized energy circuit configuration (Levin, 1963)." In my dreams, this exact pattern glowed with inner light, pulsing like a heartbeat.

  "Finding what you need?"

  I startled. The silver-haired librarian stood at my elbow, though I hadn't heard her approach.

  "Yes," I managed. "This book—how long has it been in the collection?"

  "Since publication. 1967."

  "And it's been on display? Face-out like that?"

  She nodded. "For months now. Part of our 'Forgotten Classics' series."

  "But these symbols—" I turned the book toward her. "Have you noticed how unusual they are?"

  Something flickered across her face—caution, perhaps. "Every culture develops its own visual language, Mr.—?"

  "Reeves," I supplied. "Marcus Reeves."

  "Mr. Reeves." She inclined her head slightly. "Will you be checking out the book?"

  "Can I?"

  "Of course. Your museum ID grants borrowing privileges."

  ms keller seems suspicious. all knowing. As Marcus leaves, she says something that he barely hears that sounded like "finaly"

  I checked out the Harrington volume, clutching it against my chest like a shield. The book felt heavier than its actual weight, as if the knowledge inside exerted its own gravitational pull. Ms. Keller processed my loan with methodical precision, her fingers moving across the keyboard with practiced efficiency.

  "Two weeks," she said, stamping the due date card. "Though I suspect you'll be back before then."

  Something in her tone made me look up. Her eyes—gray and penetrating—studied me with an intensity that seemed inappropriate for a routine library transaction.

  "You've been waiting for this, haven't you?" I asked, the words tumbling out before I could stop them.

  Her expression remained neutral, but her fingers stilled momentarily on the desk. "Many scholars find this volume... illuminating."

  "That's not what I meant."

  "Isn't it?" She slid the book toward me. "The symbols have always been there, Mr. Reeves. Whether you noticed them or not."

  I shoved the book into my messenger bag, suddenly eager to escape her scrutiny. The weight of her gaze followed me across the reading room, between the towering shelves, and toward the exit.

  As I pushed through the heavy oak doors, a whisper of sound caught my ear—so faint I almost missed it.

  "Finally," she said, or seemed to say.

  I froze, hand still on the door, but when I turned back, Ms. Keller had already disappeared among the stacks.

  I clutched the book to my chest on the walk home, irrationally afraid it might disappear if I loosened my grip. The wind had picked up, carrying the scent of rain and something else—something metallic and sharp, like ozone before a lightning strike.

  My apartment welcomed me with Vesper's demanding meow and the lingering silence of an empty space. I placed the book on my nightstand and stood in the shower until the hot water ran cold, trying to wash away the day's strangeness. It didn't work.

  Later, I lay in bed with the Harrington volume open beside me, making notes on connections between the symbols in the book, my dreams, and the pendant. Patterns emerged—not just in the symbols themselves, but in their occurrences, their contexts, their relationships to one another. Like a language waiting to be deciphered.

  My eyelids grew heavy. I set my notes aside, switched off the lamp, and surrendered to exhaustion.

  Sometime in the darkness, I woke to the sound of turning pages.

  The book lay open on my nightstand, though I'd closed it before sleeping. Moonlight streamed through the window, illuminating its pages with silver light. As I watched, frozen between sleep and wakefulness, a page turned on its own—slowly, deliberately, as if guided by an invisible hand.

  Another page turned. And another. Until the book stopped at an illustration I hadn't noticed before.

  A woman with high cheekbones and proud bearing, her hair flowing around her like dark water, a streak of silver at her temple mirroring my own. Her eyes—amber flecked with gold, identical to mine—gazed directly at the viewer, knowing and ancient. Her lips parted slightly, as if caught in the moment of speaking.

  And though no sound disturbed the night's silence, I heard her voice clearly in my mind as her lips formed the word I'd come to dread and desire:

  Remember.