She came for me in my dreams again. Not with words this time, but with light.

  I stood in a vast, empty space—not darkness, but absence—while she traced patterns in the air between us. Her fingers left trails of crystalline frost, geometric forms that hung suspended like constellations. The silver streak in her hair caught non-existent light, a perfect mirror to my own.

  "What are you showing me?" My voice echoed strangely, as if traveling great distances before returning.

  She didn't answer. Instead, she took my hand in hers—cool and solid, not dreamlike at all—and guided my fingertips through the air. Where we traced, frost patterns bloomed, more intricate than anything I could have consciously created. The symbols matched those from the book, from the pendant, from my dreams—but arranged in new configurations that pulsed with meaning just beyond my comprehension.

  As we worked, the emptiness around us began to fill with a subtle luminescence, as if our actions were somehow generating light. The woman's amber eyes—my eyes—watched me with an expectation that bordered on desperation. When our pattern was complete, she pressed our joined hands to the center of the design.

  The frost ignited, lines of cold fire spreading outward through the symbols. The woman's lips formed words I couldn't hear, but somehow understood: This is just the beginning.

  I woke with a gasp, the book still open beside me, the illustration of the woman staring up from the page. Gray dawn light filtered through my bedroom window. Something about the quality of that light seemed wrong—too diffuse, somehow filtered.

  I rolled over and froze.

  My bedroom window was covered in frost. Not the random crystalline patterns of normal ice formation, but the exact geometric configurations from my dream—precise angles, specific intersections, mathematical in their perfection. They glowed faintly in the early light, as if illuminated from within.

  I scrambled out of bed, heart hammering against my ribs. This wasn't possible. Seattle was deep into spring, temperatures nowhere near freezing. I pressed my hand to the glass—it was cool but not cold, the room itself comfortably warm.

  Yet the frost remained, etched onto the interior surface of the window.

  "What the hell is happening to me?" I whispered, tracing one of the patterns with my fingertip. The frost didn't melt at my touch. Instead, it seemed to respond, the lines brightening slightly where I made contact.

  Vesper jumped onto the windowsill, her one good eye fixed on the patterns. She extended a paw, touching the frost delicately. Then she looked at me with an expression that seemed far too knowing for a cat.

  I grabbed my phone, hands shaking, and took several photos of the window before the patterns could disappear. Evidence that I wasn't losing my mind—or perhaps evidence that I was, but in a documentable way.

  As the sun rose higher, the frost began to fade, not melting into droplets as natural ice would, but simply diminishing, the lines growing fainter until they disappeared altogether.

  By the time I finished showering, the window looked completely normal, as if the frost had never existed. Only my photos remained as proof, and even those seemed less clear than the actual patterns had been, the intricate details blurred and indistinct.

  I knew what I needed to do. The pendant—everything had started with the pendant. If I returned it to its display case, locked it away, perhaps these... incidents would stop.

  I dressed quickly, the Harrington book tucked securely into my messenger bag along with my journal. I couldn't bear to leave either behind, despite what returning the pendant was meant to symbolize. Part of me—a growing part—didn't want this to stop, didn't want to return to normal. That part wanted answers more than it wanted peace.

  The museum was quiet when I arrived, most staff not due for another hour. I used my keycard to access the research lab where the pendant was being kept between examinations. The small jade artifact sat on a cushioned tray, its markings seeming to shift subtly in the fluorescent lighting.

  "This stops now," I muttered, lifting the pendant carefully with gloved hands. I carried it to its designated display case in the Mediterranean artifact room, a small glass cube atop a pedestal.

  As I positioned the pendant on its stand, my elbow bumped a neighboring display case—a glass cube containing fragments of ancient pottery. I watched in horrified slow motion as the case teetered on its pedestal, then toppled toward the stone floor.

  I lunged for it, knowing I'd be too late.

  The case never hit the ground.

  Instead, it hung suspended in midair for a fraction of a second—long enough for me to register the impossibility, but not long enough to question it—before gravity reasserted itself and the case crashed to the floor, glass shattering around the thankfully intact pottery fragments.

  I stood frozen, heart pounding in my throat. Had anyone else been in the room, they would have seen nothing unusual—just a clumsy researcher breaking an exhibit. But I had seen it. That moment of suspension, of the world pausing as if catching its breath.

  "Marcus? Everything alright?"

  I jumped at James Okafor's voice. The security guard stood in the doorway, his usual impassive expression in place.

  "Sorry," I managed, gesturing to the broken glass. "Accident."

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  James nodded once and moved to the wall phone. "I'll call maintenance."

  I knelt to carefully gather the pottery fragments, my hands trembling. First the frost patterns, now this. What was happening to me?

  Remember who you are.

  The voice echoed in my mind, no longer confined to dreams. I squeezed my eyes shut, willing it away, but it persisted, soft yet insistent.

  James returned with a broom and dustpan. "Dr. Chen wants you in her office when you're done here."

  "Great," I muttered, imagining her lecture about carelessness with priceless artifacts.

  But when I reported to her office thirty minutes later, she barely mentioned the broken case.

  "These things happen," she said, her attention focused on a file on her desk. "The artifacts weren't damaged. I'm more concerned about your cataloging progress."

  I blinked, surprised by her leniency. "It's... coming along. I should finish by tomorrow."

  "Good. That will be all."

  I hesitated at the door. "Dr. Chen?"

  She looked up, her expression unreadable behind her stylish glasses. "Yes?"

  I wanted to ask about the pendant. About the restricted files that had opened for me. About the dreams and the frost and the suspended glass case. The words crowded my throat, fighting to get out.

  "Nothing," I said finally. "Sorry about the case."

  She studied me for a long moment, then nodded dismissively.

  By lunchtime, I'd convinced myself that stress and sleep deprivation were responsible for what I'd seen—or thought I'd seen—that morning. The human brain was remarkably adept at creating explanations for the inexplicable, at smoothing over the cracks in our perception of reality.

  I took my sandwich to the staff break room, hoping the mundane surroundings would ground me. The room was empty except for an elderly docent reading the newspaper in the corner. I sat at the opposite end of the table, unwrapping my lunch with mechanical movements.

  That's when I saw it—or rather, saw myself.

  A decorative mirror hung on the wall opposite, part of a collection of antique furnishings that had been donated to the museum. In it, my reflection sat as expected, unwrapping a sandwich.

  Except it wasn't moving in sync with me.

  As I stared, sandwich frozen halfway to my mouth, my reflection continued its motion, setting the sandwich down and turning to look directly at me. Not as a normal reflection would, following my movements, but independently—a separate entity wearing my face.

  The reflection's expression shifted to one I wasn't making—an intensity, a focus, that transformed my features into something almost unrecognizable. Its lips moved, forming a single, familiar word:

  Remember.

  I recoiled, chair screeching against the floor. The sandwich fell from my numb fingers.

  "You alright, son?" The docent peered at me over his newspaper.

  I glanced back at the mirror. My reflection matched my movements perfectly now, showing my wide eyes and pale face exactly as they should be.

  "Fine," I managed. "Just... remembered something I forgot to do."

  I fled the break room, the docent's concerned gaze following me out. In the hallway, I leaned against the wall, breathing hard. This was beyond stress or sleep deprivation. This was something else entirely.

  The pendant. It had to be the pendant. I should never have touched it, should have left it sealed in its crate. But I'd returned it this morning, and still the strangeness continued.

  The rest of the day passed in a haze of paranoia. I avoided reflective surfaces, kept my head down during meetings, and left precisely at five, declining Tara's invitation for after-work drinks.

  My apartment building's elevator felt like a sanctuary when I stepped into it, the doors closing on the outside world with its mirrors and reflections and watching eyes. I pressed the button for the fifth floor and sagged against the back wall, exhaustion hitting me like a physical blow.

  The elevator lurched into motion, rising smoothly for several seconds before grinding to an abrupt halt between floors. The lights flickered once, twice, then stabilized at half their normal brightness.

  "Perfect," I muttered, pushing off the wall to jab at the emergency button. "Just perfect."

  That's when I saw him—not in a mirror this time, but reflected in the polished metal of the elevator doors. A man standing behind me where no one should be, where no one could be.

  He had my face. My build. My silver-streaked hair. But his eyes—amber flecked with gold like mine—held a knowledge, an ancientness, that mine did not.

  I spun around. The elevator was empty.

  When I turned back, he remained in the reflection, watching me with an expression of profound sadness.

  "Who are you?" My voice cracked on the words.

  His lips moved soundlessly: Remember who you are.

  The lights flickered again, more violently this time. Cold panic surged through me. I was trapped in a metal box with... what? A hallucination? A ghost?

  I punched the emergency button repeatedly, then began hammering on the doors themselves. "Help! Somebody help me!"

  The temperature in the elevator plummeted, my breath fogging in the suddenly frigid air. The reflection—the man—reached toward me, his hand extending as if to touch my shoulder.

  I scrambled backward, pressing myself against the opposite wall. "Stay away from me!"

  The lights went out completely, plunging the elevator into darkness. In that moment of blindness, I felt it—a presence beside me, the whisper of movement, the sensation of someone else's breath.

  When the emergency lights clicked on, casting the elevator in a dim red glow, I was alone again. But the metal walls around me had changed.

  Frost spread from my fingertips where they pressed against the wall, crystalline patterns matching those from my window, from my dream, from the book. They expanded outward, intricate geometric forms etching themselves into the metal, glowing faintly blue in the red emergency lighting.

  I stared, transfixed, as the patterns continued to grow, covering the entire elevator in their delicate complexity. They seemed to pulse with a life of their own, responding to my racing heartbeat.

  Voices filtered through the doors—maintenance staff, responding to the emergency signal. I heard the mechanical whir of the override system engaging, felt the elevator shudder as it was manually lowered to the nearest floor.

  The frost patterns began to fade as the elevator descended, melting away into nothingness despite the continued cold. I rubbed frantically at the walls, trying to preserve some evidence of what had happened, but my fingers passed through the vanishing patterns as if they'd never been solid.

  By the time the doors were forced open, the walls were bare metal again, showing no sign of the impossible frost. But the elevator remained unnaturally cold, my breath still visible in the air.

  "Sir? You okay?" A maintenance worker peered in at me, concern etched on his weathered face.

  I realized how I must look—pressed against the wall, wide-eyed, hyperventilating.

  "Stuck," I managed. "Claustrophobia."

  The worker nodded sympathetically, holding the doors open as I stumbled out. "Happens to the best of us. This old system gets temperamental sometimes."

  I nodded, not trusting myself to speak further. My fingertips tingled painfully, as if I'd pressed them against ice for too long. When I glanced down at them, I saw the faint outline of frost patterns on my skin, already fading like temporary tattoos.

  In the polished doors of the elevator, just before they closed, I caught a final glimpse of my reflection—or his. Our eyes met across whatever impossible divide separated us.

  Remember who you are, his lips formed one last time. Before it's too late.

  The doors slid shut, and I was left alone in the hallway, shaking with cold and fear, the phantom patterns still burning in my mind like afterimages from staring at the sun.

  Whatever was happening to me, whatever force had entered my life with that pendant and those dreams, it was escalating. And somehow, I knew with bone-deep certainty, it was only the beginning.