Ezra Vance walked the length of Hollow Row with his hands deep in the pockets of his coat, the damp night air pressing against his skin. The street should have been alive with echoes—the layered imprints of past conversations, the ghostly murmurs of footsteps on cobblestone, the whispers of a city that never truly let go.
But tonight, there was nothing.
The silence stretched wide and gaping, swallowing every trace of what had come before. Ezra's boots scuffed against the pavement, and even that sound felt wrong—thin, hollow, as if the world had been muffled beneath an unseen weight. The lamps flickered overhead, their glow casting long, uncertain shadows across storefronts that had stood for generations.
He slowed beside one, running his fingers along the rough brickwork. He expected the usual flood of sensation: laughter spilling from the café next door, the rustle of newspapers from the stand that had closed a decade ago, the quiet, steady heartbeat of a city that always remembered.
Nothing.
A slow, creeping unease tightened in his chest. Ezra pulled off his glove and pressed his bare palm flat against the wall, reaching deeper, calling on the gift that set memory-keepers apart.
For him, memory was more than recollection—it was something tangible, something that lived beneath his fingertips. The city spoke through its past, whispering its stories to those who knew how to listen. A touch was all it took.
Yet now, the silence remained.
Ezra's breath clouded in the cold air as he pulled back sharply. This wasn't a normal fade. Memory traces could weaken over decades, buried beneath layers of time, but they never vanished entirely. Even the most eroded echoes left shadows, a lingering presence.
This was different. This was unnatural.
His gaze swept the street with sharp, searching eyes. Echo City had always been a vast, living archive—its stones and structures imprinted with the weight of every moment they had witnessed. But now, it was as if someone had reached into its depths and pulled threads loose, unraveling time itself.
For the first time in his life, Echo City had forgotten.
And that should have been impossible.
Ezra exhaled slowly, steadying himself. He needed proof—something tangible to confirm what his instincts were already screaming. He stepped toward the nearest lamppost, a slender thing of black iron that had stood on Hollow Row for at least a century. His fingers traced the grooves where thousands of hands had once rested.
A lamppost like this should have been a well of memory. Lovers meeting beneath its glow, fingers brushing together in nervous anticipation. A brawl breaking out just beyond its reach, a bottle shattering on the curb. A lonely figure lighting a cigarette, lost in thought as the city moved around them.
But when Ezra reached, the past did not answer.
No voices. No laughter. No echoes at all.
The silence was deafening.
Ezra wrenched his hand back as if burned, his pulse quickening. He turned in a slow circle, scanning the street again, this time with a hunter's focus. It wasn't just this lamppost. The entire block was wrong.
Hollow Row had always been layered with history. It was one of the oldest districts in Echo City, its foundation laid long before Ezra had been born. It should have been loud with the weight of time. Yet everything—the buildings, the sidewalk, even the very air—felt scrubbed clean.
This wasn't decay. This was deliberate.
A chill licked up his spine. Who could do this?
Only a handful of people in Echo City had the power to manipulate memory like this, and even then, a full-scale erasure was something he had never encountered. Memory-keepers could retrieve echoes, refine them, even guide them into something clearer—but they couldn't erase.
At least, they weren't supposed to.
His hand twitched toward the small leather-bound book at his hip—his ledger, where he recorded fragments of lost stories, details that could restore broken memories. He flipped it open with practiced ease, sliding a piece of charcoal from his pocket.
If the city was forgetting, he would remember for it.
Hollow Row—Echo Silence. First recorded instance of full memory void. Possible cause: unnatural intervention. Further investigation required.
The scratch of charcoal against paper steadied him, but it did nothing to shake the deep, gnawing dread in his gut.
Because if Hollow Row had lost its past, then this wasn't just an anomaly.
It was a warning.
Ezra shut his ledger with a quiet snap, his pulse still uneven. The silence pressed in around him, thick and deliberate, as if the city itself was holding its breath.-
He needed more proof. He needed to be certain this wasn't just Hollow Row losing its echoes—but something else entirely.
His gaze flicked to a weathered wooden bench near the street corner. He had seen it a hundred times before, nestled beneath the soft glow of the streetlamp. It had been there for decades, a place where tired shopkeepers sat after closing, where weary travelers paused to rub the ache from their feet, where lovers whispered confessions they couldn't say aloud in the daylight.
At least, that's what should have been there.
Ezra approached slowly, rolling his sleeves back before placing his palm against the worn surface.
Stillness.
His throat tightened. A bench like this should have been bursting with layers of history—muffled laughter, sighs of exhaustion, the scrape of shoes against stone. Instead, there was nothing. Not even the faintest impression of a moment lived.
It wasn't just that no one had touched it.
It was as if no one ever had.
Impossible.
His pulse quickened as he tested another object—an old storefront sign hanging crookedly above a tailor's shop, its paint faded and chipped. A relic of a bygone era, untouched by modernization. His fingertips brushed the wood, expecting at least some lingering trace—an echo of someone nailing it into place, of hands running over its carved letters.
Nothing.
A creeping sense of dread curled around his ribs. The memories hadn't faded—they had been erased. And not just from one object. The entire street was silent.
Ezra took a step back, heart hammering, the cold seeping deeper into his skin.
This wasn't a freak occurrence. This was deliberate.
He could almost feel it—a presence that lurked in the absence. Something unseen, watching from the void where the past had once been. Someone had scrubbed Hollow Row clean of its history.
And worse—no one else seemed to notice.
Ezra turned, scanning the people walking at the far end of the street, unaware, unbothered.
A pair of young men leaned against a brick wall, laughing over something on a crumpled flyer. A woman passed by with a shopping bag tucked under one arm, her gaze distant, lost in thought.
To them, nothing had changed.
Ezra's stomach twisted. His entire life had been spent chasing echoes, weaving together the fragments of the past that others let slip through their fingers. But now, those fragments were gone. Not faded, not buried beneath newer memories—gone.
As if they had never existed.
His hand clenched into a fist. The past doesn't just disappear—not like this.
And if something was erasing the memories of the city he had to get to the bottom of it