The mark didn't fade. Lena woke three times in the night, each time half-convinced that the symbol would be gone—washed away by sweat, smudged into the ghost of an impression, reduced to nothing more than a trick of light. But it remained there on her palm, thin and intricate, the lines so delicate they seemed like veins of silver beneath the skin.
She covered it with a bandage before she left for the café the next morning, not because she was ashamed, but because the thought of showing it to anyone terrified her. She didn't want to see the look on Sarah's face. She didn't want to hear the neat explanations, the gentle insistence that there must be a rational reason: an ink transfer, a rash, a hallucination brought on by stress. She didn't want this to be something it wasn't.
She wanted it to mean something. She wanted it to be proof that she wasn't losing her mind.
The café was nearly empty when she arrived. The barista behind the counter wore a bored expression and a beanie that looked like it had been knitted by someone who loved him very much. The smell of espresso and sugar hung in the air. Lena ordered a black coffee and took a seat by the window, the same table she and Sarah always claimed.
Sarah arrived five minutes later, bringing with her a gust of cold air and the energy of someone who had already had two cups of coffee and three conversations before 10 a.m. She shrugged off her coat, dropped into the chair opposite Lena, and leaned forward without preamble.
"Okay," she said. "What's wrong?"
Lena had rehearsed lies on the way over. She'd chosen from a respectable menu of excuses: work stress, insomnia, a stomach thing, the vague suggestion of a romantic entanglement that could not be discussed in detail. But when she looked at Sarah—at the sharp concern in her eyes, at the way she was trying to mask it with humor—Lena found she couldn't do it.
"Something weird is happening to me," she said softly.
Sarah's expression shifted minutely, her humor folding itself away. "Okay," she said again, but this time her voice was different. Grounded. "How weird are we talking?"
Lena told her everything. Not the whole truth—not Marcus's name, not the exact words he'd said—but enough. The dreams, the sense of knowing, the way she woke up feeling like she'd been somewhere else entirely. The library. The ballroom. The mark.
At that last part, she hesitated. Then, slowly, she peeled the bandage off and placed her hand on the table between them.
Sarah stared. The symbol wasn't large—no bigger than a thumbnail—but it drew the eye. It was a circle broken into three perfect arcs, a triangle superimposed over it, and at the center, a tiny dot that seemed to pulse when you looked at it too long.
"Huh," Sarah said.
"That's it?" Lena asked. "Huh?"
"Well, I'm trying not to go full conspiracy theorist on you in public." Sarah looked up, her eyes flicking to Lena's face. "Does it hurt?"
"Not exactly. It... buzzes sometimes. Like static."
"You need to see a doctor."
Lena grimaced. "I knew you were going to say that."
"Because I'm predictable and pragmatic," Sarah said, smiling in a way that took the sting out of it. Then she sobered. "But also because I'm worried. And because I'm not qualified to assess faintly glowing symbols that appear on my best friend's hand after she dreams of the 19th century."
Lena swallowed. "It's not just the symbol. There's something else. He—someone—told me that remembering would destroy me. That we destroyed each other."
"He?" Sarah asked, pouncing on the word with the precision of a cat. "Who's he?"
Lena looked away. "It doesn't matter. He's not real."
Sarah was quiet for a long moment. When she spoke again, her voice was careful. "Okay. Then humor me. If he were real—if any of this were real—what would you do?"
Lena didn't answer right away. Outside the window, the world moved in its ordinary way. A woman pushed a stroller. A man in a suit yelled into a phone. The barista sighed as the espresso machine hissed.
"I'd find him," she said at last. "I'd ask him what he meant. I'd ask him who I was to him, in that other life."
Sarah nodded slowly. "Okay. Then—again, hypothetically—how would you find him?"
It was a ridiculous question. She'd met him in dreams. He probably didn't exist in the waking world. And yet, even as she started to say as much, another thought crept in.
The symbol on her palm. The way it felt familiar even before she realized she'd seen it on his wrist. The way it seemed to pulse, a faint hum that aligned with her heartbeat.
"I think it's a key," she said, the words surprising her as they left her mouth. "I don't know what it unlocks, but I think—no, I feel like—it's meant to lead me somewhere."
Sarah looked at the symbol again. "Then we start with the obvious. We Google it."
Lena laughed, a short, almost hysterical sound. "I already tried. Nothing."
"What about image search?"
Lena hesitated. She hadn't tried that. She'd been too afraid of what she might find—or not find.
"We can try," she said.
They spent the next hour hunched over Sarah's laptop, taking photos of the symbol in different lighting, uploading them to various reverse image search engines, and scrolling through pages of results. Most were irrelevant. Alchemical symbols. Logos for obscure tech startups. Spiritual iconography that vaguely resembled the shape but wasn't quite it.
"Wait," Sarah said, her finger pausing above the trackpad. She clicked a link to a forum thread on an old, barely active website. The title of the thread was: Has anyone seen this symbol before?
The post was from five years ago. The image attached to it was blurry, but unmistakable. The same broken circle. The same triangle. The same dot in the center.
Lena's heart picked up speed. She scrolled down to the comments. Most were dismissive. A couple suggested it was a sigil used by a fringe cult. One user claimed it was an esoteric shorthand used by "dreamers"—a group who believed that some dreams connected to alternate timelines.
And one comment, near the bottom, contained an address.
It wasn't obvious that it was an address, just a cryptic set of numbers and letters that could have been coordinates. But Sarah copied them and pasted them into a map, and the screen resolved into a location marker on a neighborhood Lena had only ever driven past: The Old Quarter, a part of the city where the streets were still cobblestone and the buildings had survived a century of progress by refusing to participate.
"You're not seriously thinking—" Sarah began.
"I have to go," Lena said.
"Then I'm coming with you."
Lena wanted to argue, but she didn't have the energy. She nodded instead. "Fine. Tomorrow. After work."
They parted with a hug that lingered longer than usual. As Lena walked home, she couldn't shake the feeling that she'd set something in motion that couldn't be undone.
That night, she dreamed again.
The library was gone. She stood at the edge of a cliff overlooking a sea that shattered itself against black rocks. The sky was a bruised purple, clouds hanging low and swollen. Marcus stood beside her, his hair whipped by the wind.
"You shouldn't come," he said. "Not there. Not yet."
"What happens if I do?"
He looked at her with such sorrow that her knees felt weak. "You won't come back the same."
"Is that a threat?"
"It's a promise."
When Lena woke, the symbol on her hand pulsed like a heartbeat.
The Old Quarter felt like a different city. As Lena and Sarah stepped off the bus the following evening, the air seemed thicker, the sounds older. Horseshoes on cobblestones. Distant music that couldn't possibly exist in this century. The buildings loomed like sentinels with too many memories.
"This is charming," Sarah said, but her voice held a note of unease.
They followed the map to a narrow alley that smelled of rain and damp stone. A faded sign hung above a door: The Somnarium. The letters were gilt, the kind of gold that had lost its shine and retained only its arrogance.
"Great," Sarah muttered. "A sleep shop."
Lena pushed the door open. A bell chimed, and the scent of lavender and something metallic drifted out to greet them.
The shop was a long, narrow space filled with glass cases. Inside them were objects that looked like they belonged to a magician who had retired but refused to admit it. Brass instruments with too many dials. Vials of something that glowed faintly. Books with titles embossed in languages Lena couldn't read.
An older woman stood behind the counter, her hair a silver braid that nearly reached her waist. Her eyes were so pale they seemed almost translucent.
"Welcome," she said, her voice low and scratchy, like paper. "You're late."
Lena blinked. "Late?"
"For remembering."
Sarah shot Lena a look that said, If this turns into a cult, I'm dragging you out by your hair.
Lena swallowed. "We were told to come here. In a forum."
"Of course you were," the woman said. She gestured toward Lena's hand. "May I?"
Lena hesitated, then placed her palm on the counter, turning it up. The woman leaned down to examine the symbol. She didn't touch it, but Lena felt as if she had.
"This mark," the woman said, "is a compass. It points not north, but inward."
Sarah rolled her eyes so hard Lena thought they might get stuck. "What does that even mean?"
"It means," the woman said, unfazed, "that it will lead her where she needs to go. But compasses are useless if you don't know how to read them."
"And you do?" Lena asked.
"I do." The woman straightened. "But I'm not sure you want me to."
Lena met the woman's gaze. "I do."
"Very well." The woman reached beneath the counter and brought out a small black box. She placed it between them and lifted the lid. Inside was a thin, silver needle attached to a disk no bigger than a coin. The disk was engraved with the same symbol as Lena's hand.
"This is a Dreamwright's needle," the woman said. "It tunes the mind to specific frequencies. It will not work unless the mark has chosen you."
"Chosen?" Sarah echoed. "Great. We love consent when it comes from mysterious glowing tattoos."
The woman ignored her. "Place your hand over the needle," she instructed Lena. "Do not touch it. Just hover."
Lena did as she was told. The symbol on her palm began to warm. The silver needle quivered, then spun, wobbling, before finally pointing to the left.
"There," the woman said. "It wants you to go there."
Lena turned. The needle pointed not at a door or a window, but at a mirror hanging on the wall. It was old, its silvering clouded, the frame carved with vines.
"Nope," Sarah said. "We are not doing mirror portals."
"It isn't a portal," the woman said softly. "It's a door that shows you the lock."
Lena approached the mirror. Her reflection stared back at her, pale and wide-eyed. She lifted her marked hand, and as she did, the symbol on her palm began to glow, brighter and brighter, until the mirror surface rippled like water.
"Lena," Sarah whispered. "Please don't."
Lena touched the glass.
Cold shot up her arm. Her breath caught. For an instant she felt as if she was being pulled inside out. And then—
She was standing in a room she recognized, though she'd never been there before.
The library. Not the dream version, but its echo. The air was colder here, the light thinner. The shelves were the same, but the books were blank. The lamps flickered.
She heard footsteps. She turned.
Marcus stood at the far end of the aisle, his expression unreadable.
"You came," he said.
"You knew I would," Lena replied.
"I hoped you wouldn't," he said.
Lena's heart hammered. "Tell me the truth."
He took a breath. "We were not lovers in that life. We were something worse. We were co-conspirators. We built something that should never have existed. And the cost—"
The lights in the library went out.
Darkness like a living thing rushed at her. In the last sliver of dimming light, Lena saw Marcus's face, and it wasn't sorrow she saw there anymore.
It was fear.
A voice that was not his whispered in her ear, from nowhere and everywhere at once: "Do you remember whose dream this really is?"