Chapter Two: The Archive of Almosts

The Municipal Archive sat between a closed cinema and a shop that sold only locks. Inside, the air smelled of dust and lemon oil, a careful cleanliness applied to decay. Mara nodded to the security guard—Emil, who had once been a sailor—and climbed the stairs two at a time. Her office was a narrow room with a window that refused to open and a desk that had been mended with different woods, each repair a darker shade. She set the map out and waited for it to behave. It did not. Lines shifted when she blinked. Names blurred, then sharpened into unfamiliar syllables. A new district appeared where the archive itself should have been, a triangle labeled ASHWARD. Mara laughed once, a sound like tearing cloth. She fetched the magnifier, the reference atlases, the ledger of amendments. None mentioned Ashward. She checked the date printed on the map’s margin. It read: ALWAYS. Her father’s handwriting lived in the margins—notes about elevation, water tables, a recipe for soup he claimed could cure grief. In a cramped script near the harbor he had written: When it moves, follow. Mara sat back. The archive hummed around her, a choir of fluorescent lights and distant footsteps. She folded the map again and, for the first time in years, took the stairs down instead of the elevator.