I'm alone in the house again.

It's dark, too dark, like the walls themselves are swallowing the light. My footsteps echo as I move down the hallway. I don't remember where I'm going, but I know I need to keep moving. There's something I need to find. I just don't know what it is.

The walls are getting closer, tighter, until they're brushing against my shoulders, closing in. My breathing quickens. I turn a corner and the hallway stretches endlessly ahead of me—empty and cold.

I try to run, but my feet feel heavy, like they're sinking into the floor with each step. No matter how fast I try to go, I'm not getting anywhere. I can feel it—this suffocating sense of dread building in my chest. There's something waiting for me at the end of the hall. Something I'm not ready to face.

But I have to keep going.

The floorboards creak beneath me. I stop. Everything is too quiet. And then I hear it—a door opening somewhere behind me. Slowly. Creaking like it hasn't been touched in years. I don't turn around. I don't need to. I know it's there, waiting.

I keep walking, my hands brushing against the walls for balance, but they're cold, rough, like stone. My fingers leave trails of dust behind, and I realize I'm in a place I don't recognize. The walls are crumbling, the ceiling sagging. The house is decaying around me, falling apart as I move through it.

Then I see the mirror, standing at the end of the hall. It's cracked and dirty, barely reflecting anything. But as I get closer, something changes. I freeze, my breath catching in my throat. It's not my reflection staring back at me.

There's nothing in the mirror.

Just the glass, shimmering in the dark. But slowly, a grin begins to spread across the surface. It stretches wide, too wide, splitting the glass like a jagged tear.

The mirror is smiling.

I wake with a start, gasping for breath. My heart is racing, pounding so hard I can feel it in my throat. I sit up, the blankets tangled around me, my skin cold with sweat. It was just a dream. It's always just a dream.

But the weight in my chest lingers, like something is pressing down on me. The clock blinks in the darkness. 3:47 AM.

I wipe my face, trying to shake the lingering feeling of dread. My apartment is quiet, too quiet, the kind of silence that makes every shadow feel like it's hiding something. I pull the blanket tighter around my shoulders, but it doesn't help. The cold isn't going away.

Campus isn't too far—a ten-minute stroll through streets lined with coffee shops and sleepy students shuffling toward their morning lectures. I blend right in.

I cross the quad, nodding at a few familiar faces, clutching my bag like it's armor. The campus is alive, bustling with chatter and the rustle of papers and laptop keys clicking. But none of it touches me. I could be standing in the middle of it, and still, I feel like I'm watching from a distance.

The lecture hall looms ahead, tall and cold, like the walls are closing in even before I step through the door. I take a breath, square my shoulders, and push inside.

Class begins the same as always. I stand in front of a group of students who are barely awake, eyes glazed over, their minds already somewhere else. I could be speaking to a room full of ghosts for all it matters. Maybe I am. It used to bug me more, the way they drift through the semester, barely present. But I've learned to let it go.

I'm not allowed to fail any of them, anyway. The dean made that pretty clear when she dropped the memo about "maintaining retention rates." So, I stamp the papers, tick the boxes, and shuffle them through the system. Whatever. It pays the bills.

"Gooooood morning," I say, met with a half-hearted murmur of a reply. Shitheads could at least pretend.

I flick through my notes. Nazi-era relics, World War II research expeditions. It's routine. I've given this lecture a dozen times. But today, the words feel heavier, like I'm pulling them out of quicksand. I glance at the slides projected on the screen—a map of Europe, dotted with sites where history and myth collide, where fact blurs into something more uncomfortable.

Class starts the way it always does. I shuffle my notes into place, watching the students file in, half of them still tethered to their phones, the other half barely present. I let them settle before I start, offering a polite smile that screams 'I don't want to be here at 8:30 on a Monday morning and neither do you, so let's do this as painlessly as possible'.

"So," I begin, clicking through to the first slide, "Nazis and magic. Not words you'd expect in the same sentence necessarily... But good old Adolf had some interesting hobbies." I watch the room for reaction, there's usually one or two that perk up at this point, but alas, I am met again with the bleary stares of the few polite enough to wrench their eyes from their phones. I continue. "Some of you may know about the whole Atlantis thing, or maybe just have an inkling into the sort of... Occult side of Hitler and the Third Reich. Though there's not much evidence to support it, some divisions under the Reich may have even believed they could harness ancient power through relics they thought held special significance. Magic stones, sacred artifacts, the usual stuff."

I pace slowly across the front of the room, gesturing toward the slide, a grainy photo of a stone tablet. "Some of these sites are still being explored today—layers of history buried beneath the ground, waiting to be uncovered. We've all heard of Nazi gold, the curses that are said to have dragged any unknowing benefactors to an early grave."

My voice echoes off the walls, but I barely hear it. I've given this lecture more times than I can count. The material hasn't changed, even if the faces in the room do.

"The idea was simple: find something old enough, sacred enough, and it might hold the key to, well… something. Power. Control. Maybe immortality, if they were feeling ambitious that day."

I flick to the next slide, the class silent except for the occasional scribble of a pen or the dull clack of a keyboard. "But, like most things, what they hoped to find and what they actually found weren't always the same thing."

I flip the slide, showing an image of a cracked stone tablet, etched with symbols. "This tablet was discovered in 1942, part of an expedition to recover what was believed to be a key to ancient knowledge. Or at least, that's what the legends say."

Something prickles at the back of my neck, a familiar chill that's been creeping up on me lately. I shake it off. It's nothing. Just the usual discomfort that comes with talking about the past. But the dream from this morning lingers, tugging at the edges of my thoughts, cold under my skin when I recall it. Why do I keep thinking about it? Why can't I let it go? It's been ages since I had my last one, and even then, it didn't bother me this far into the day.

A hand raises near the back—unexpected, but I nod toward it. "Do you think any of this stuff actually worked?" His voice is muffled, like he's half-asleep.

I smile, tight and practiced. "History tells us it didn't. But some mysteries are never fully solved." I try to leave an air of mystique around my words, raising my brows curiously, enunciating the last few words and wiggling my fingers expectedly.

I glance at the clock. Fifteen minutes left. I can make it fifteen minutes.

"And, of course, the Nazis weren't alone in their obsession. Their interest in ancient relics wasn't just about history—it was about control. They wanted something they believed could change the world. For better or for worse." I frown at that and consider my words with a pout. "No, no. Definitely worse." The last comment is more of a mumble to myself but nobody's listening anyway.

I stop, scanning the room briefly, taking a moment to let the students catch up on cramming as much of the slide's content into their notes. Not that they'll use the information anyway, it's like they don't even know that the slides are available on the online platform. But I digress.

A few students scribble notes, others shift in their seats. And then... There he is. Professor Eli Grayson, sitting casually near the back. Anthropology, or so he says. I only know him because we share a common room, and he's always so polite. When we ran out of milk last Wednesday, he was the first to get up and zip down to the grocery store. Ruthlessly efficient, mind you, he returned in less than ten minutes and tucked it into the fridge and gave it a pat with a very proud smile. So I suppose that earned him immediate kudos from me that morning.

Eli's been sitting in on a few of these lectures over the past week, something about familiarizing himself with how things are taught here. He's new to the university—an overseas academic visiting for the semester—but there's more to it than that. He mentioned his curiosity about the overlap between my Nazi archaeology courses and some of his history based units, wanting to see how our courses compare. There's something about him that stands out—maybe it's the way he carries himself, or the American accent that doesn't quite blend in with the rest of the room. But he's otherwise a pretty unremarkable fellow. But that's okay. Unremarkable is safe. Unremarkable is good.

I flick to the next slide, pushing the thought aside. "One such relic is this stone tablet, discovered in 1942, part of an expedition to recover what was believed to be a key to ancient knowledge. Or at least, that's what the legends say."

I pause, watching as a few students finally look up from their laptops or half-finished notes. This part always catches their attention. They like the idea of secret knowledge, hidden mysteries buried in the past. Makes the course feel like something out of a movie.

"Of course, like most legends, there's more fiction than fact," I continue, pacing slowly in front of the projector. "But that didn't stop entire expeditions from being funded, all in the hopes of finding something—anything—that could tip the scales in their favor. Relics like this were a mix of hope, desperation, and propaganda."

I flick through a few more slides—photos of various digs, some shots of researchers elbow-deep in trenches, carefully brushing away layers of dirt from crumbling stones. The students are barely awake, a few tapping idly on their phones as the hour progresses.

"This is where archaeology meets myth," I add, a little quieter, "where history isn't just a record of what happened, but of what people believed could happen. Sometimes, the stories they told themselves were just as important as the facts."

I catch a glance at Eli in the back of the room. He's watching me, but not like the others. There's something in the way he's listening—not too much, just enough to seem like he's genuinely engaged. A polite curiosity that, again, I've started to notice.

"Moving on," I say, snapping the moment back into focus as I pull up the next slide. "Today's reading covers the ways early 20th-century archaeology shifted from academic exploration to being used as a tool for political power. A reminder that what we dig up isn't always just about history—it's also about control."

The clock ticks in the corner of my eye, and I resist the urge to glance at it. Not long now.

I wrap up with the usual, "Be sure to read chapters four and five for next week. We'll cover more on how archaeology influenced political narratives during World War II, so come prepared to discuss. If you don't do the readings, I willembarrass you by asking you to summarise the section and provide citations where necessary. I'm pretty sure people who are full of themselves call it voluntelling, so come prepared if you don't want to be voluntold."

A few students stifle yawns, some giggle, others half-heartedly nod. The shuffle of bags zipping and notebooks closing begins before I even finish so my voice raises as I close out my finisher. Typical. I pack up my own things slowly, waiting for the room to clear out.

As the last of the students trickle out, I catch a glimpse of Eli still seated at the back. He hasn't moved yet, his posture relaxed as he watches the remaining students file out. I'm not sure why he sticks around for these lectures—anthropology and archaeology aren't exactly worlds apart, but it's unusual for someone from another department to show such regular interest in a first-year course. Especially one this basic. And surely he has better things to do, like... Oh I dunno... Teach?

I busy myself with the final details of packing up, giving him a moment to leave. But when I sling my bag over my shoulder, he's still there, standing just inside the doorway now, hands casually in his pockets.

"Nice lecture," he says, his American accent cutting through the familiar Australian cadence that fills these halls.

"Thanks," I reply, keeping it casual. "Don't usually get many anthropologists sitting in on first-year archaeology lectures, though."

He smiles, easygoing and unbothered. "I wanted to get a feel for how things are taught here. Plus, history's always interesting—especially when it comes to relics and how we interpret them. I don't know much about the material side of history, but always found it interesting."

I nod, shifting the weight of my bag on my shoulder. "Fair enough. It's not every day we get someone from a different department sitting in," I ponder this with another pout, looking to the window next to him. "I wonder if I should sit in on a lecture some time. I've always wanted to learn Catalan."

His eyes flick briefly to the slides still displayed on the screen behind me, the worn image of the stone tablet. I've only now noticed that his eyes are green, and what a spectacular green they are. Shame he's chosen the most bug-ass ugly glasses to hide them behind though. The salesperson who served him at Specsavers must have been an angry ex. "Some of the stuff you're covering touches on my area of research. Cultural memory, how artifacts shape narratives, that kind of thing."

"Interesting," I say, glancing back at the screen. "Well, as long as you're not bored to death with the basics."

"Not at all," he says with a chuckle, his smile broad and eyes crinkling at the edges. I'm only really noticing now that I'm staring at his wrinkles, but he's got to be in his mid to late 40s. I resolve to stalk him on the intranet once I'm back at my office. He clears his throat and I snap out of my thoughts with raised brows. Seems it was my turn to be caught staring. "... It's refreshing to see it from a different perspective." He finishes.

I give a polite smile, making my way to the door, but something about him makes me pause just for a second longer than I intended. He seems at ease, sure of himself, but there's something quietly deliberate about how he moves—how he watches. I push the thought aside, chalking it up to the fact that he's new, unfamiliar. Americans.

"Well," I say, breaking the silence. "Enjoy the rest of your day, Eli. See you around."

"Likewise," he replies, his tone warm, but there's an edge to it. Just enough to make me wonder for a brief moment if we'll indeed be crossing paths again.

As I step into the hallway, I can feel the weight of his presence still lingering behind me.

The common room hums with its usual quiet, the coffee machine sputtering in the corner. I go through the motions—kettle, tea bag, hot water—feeling the familiar rhythm of the morning. Faculty drift in and out, offering nods or the occasional grunt of acknowledgment, and the day presses forward like it always does.

But today feels different. It's not much—just a subtle shift in the air. I don't know why, but it feels like something's changing, even if I can't quite put my finger on it.

As I wait for the water to boil, I spot Abbyat her usual spot by the window, red pen in hand, furiously scribbling over a stack of papers.

"Morning, Abby," I say, reaching for a mug.

She looks up briefly, her glasses slipping down her nose. "Hey, you. These reports are killing me. Plagiarism everywhere. I swear it's somehow gotten worse with AI."

I chuckle softly, stirring my tea. "Sounds like a rough start to the day."

"Tell me about it," she mutters, scratching another line through a paper. "Academia is doomed."

I take a seat across from her, my mind drifting as she goes on about the usual student issues. It's comfortable here—predictable. Nothing ever really changes.

Except him.

Before I realize it, I'm thinking about Eliagain. He's new—different. And somehow, even though I've barely spoken to him, I can't help but notice him more than I should. Not in a significant way, just... he stands out.

"Hey," I ask, glancing over at Abby. "Do you know much about that new professor, Eli Grayson?"

Abby pauses, raising an eyebrow. "Eli? Yeah, I've seen him around. New anthropology guy, right? What about him?"

I shrug, trying to sound casual. "He's been sitting in on my lectures. I was just curious."

Abby leans back, folding her arms. "Curious, huh?"

I laugh lightly. "Nothing like that. He just seems... I don't know. Polite. Different."

She nods, her smirk fading slightly. "He's here on some fellowship, I think. Getting a feel for things. He's been pretty quiet, though."

I sip my tea, my thoughts wandering. Quiet. Polite. Just... different.

Before I can lose myself in thought, the door creaks open, and Elisteps into the room. His presence feels different—not intrusive, just... noticeable. He moves with a quiet confidence, like he knows exactly where he belongs, but he's not in a rush to make himself known.

"Morning," he says with a nod, heading straight for the coffee machine. His voice cuts through the low murmur of the room.

"Morning," I reply, glancing up at him briefly before turning back to my tea. I don't know why, but there's something about his voice that lingers—something that feels out of place but familiar at the same time.

Eli pours his coffee and leans against the counter, his eyes scanning the room casually before landing on me. There's a moment of silence, and I wonder if he's going to say something else. But he doesn't. He just watches—subtly, as if he's gauging the room, reading it. Reading me.

I try to ignore the faint pull of curiosity, the way my thoughts keep drifting back to him. He's new, that's all. He's different. That's why I notice him.