Elias found Professor Malik Darwish waiting at the abandoned wing of the Natural History Museum. The place had been closed for renovations, long enough for the echoes of time to settle into the bones of the building.
Darwish wore a long coat, the kind that seemed stitched together from older centuries. His face was thinner than Elias remembered, more shadow than flesh. His cane clicked softly on the tiled floor as he walked toward the central hall.
"Elias," he said, smiling faintly. "You found the files."
Elias hesitated, hands in his coat pockets. The mirror pulsed against his ribs like a second heartbeat.
"You knew," Elias said. "About RELIC. About me."
"I knew enough."
"You knew my name was in that file before I was born."
Darwish turned, his silhouette framed by the moonlight streaming through the broken skylight.
"That name," he said softly, "was never yours to begin with."
Listen now. He offers answers, and that is where the danger lives.
They sat in the taxidermy room, among animals long frozen in expressions of artificial life. Darwish produced a flask of bitter coffee and poured two tin cups.
Elias didn't drink.
"You are what the file called a carrier," Darwish explained. "You don't just possess the relics, they possess you. The mirror, specifically. It's attuned to you. It follows you through time. Or perhaps... you follow it."
"And these 'traumas'? Why?"
"They're... echoes. Tears in the fabric of history. Each relic finds them, amplifies them, and someone like you becomes the thread that pulls them open."
Elias's voice dropped. "So what? I'm some time-traveling bloodhound?"
"Not quite. You're the vessel. You were made to remember what others are designed to forget."
He reached into his coat and drew out a small object, a fragment of obsidian, etched with runes. It vibrated when placed on the table.
Another relic.
Darwish tapped it gently. "This belonged to the one who leapt before you. The one whose story never finished."
Elias stared at it. "Where are they now?"
Darwish's eyes flickered. "Gone."
One must break to begin the journey. Two must break to end it.
Darwish leaned forward.
"I can help you," he said. "You're unraveling. You've seen the file. Your memory is going. But I can anchor you, stop the degradation."
"At what cost?"
"You stay. Here. With me. We study the relics. Learn how to fix the trauma before it consumes you. Before it consumes the world."
Elias stood. "You want to control this."
Darwish's expression sharpened. "I want to preserve you."
"No. You want to preserve control."
He says no. But the seed is planted. Doubt is a slow poison.
Rain poured as Elias exited the museum.
Rae waited across the street, her arms crossed, soaked to the bone. She didn't ask what happened inside.
Instead, she handed him a folder. "I went back to the archive. Found something buried in Roe's last upload."
Inside were sketches, crude drawings of seven objects. The mirror. The obsidian shard. A compass. A blade. A vial. A coin. A book.
At the center of the page: a symbol he'd seen in the mirror's reflections.
A wheel with seven spokes. Each spoke ending in flame.
"Seven relics," Rae said. "Seven keys to... something."
Elias stared at the sketches. "They're not just keys. They're doors."
"To what?"
He looked down the street, into the darkness.
"Something older than time."
Back in his room, he stared at the mirror.
He thought about Darwish's offer.
He thought about forgetting Rae's name, his own face, the smell of rain.
The degradation was real.
He felt it.
Not erasure.
Erosion.
And still, he touches the mirror. Always, he touches the mirror.
In the glass, he saw a flicker of a burning forest. He smelled smoke. Screams.
And then… silence.
He is still trying to solve the wrong mystery.