CHAPTER SEVEN
495 Words
Oxford looked different after that.
Its beauty felt deliberate now — as though the city wore elegance not merely for admiration, but for concealment.
Amelia walked through the High Street with Edward beside her, yet she felt oddly alone, as if an invisible boundary had formed around her thoughts.
“You’re saying there are others like me,” she said.
“Yes,” Edward replied.
They stopped near an old iron gate leading into a quiet college garden. Ivy coiled around the bars, its leaves trembling in the breeze.
“Students whose records vanished,” Amelia continued. “People who were erased.”
Edward nodded.
“But no one talks about them,” she said.
“No,” he agreed. “Because acknowledging them would mean admitting something Oxford has spent centuries denying.”
She folded her arms.
“What exactly?”
“That some stories are too dangerous to be remembered.”
That evening, Edward led her to a part of Oxford she had never seen before.
They crossed narrow alleys and silent courtyards until they reached a small, forgotten building tucked behind a chapel. Its wooden door was worn and cracked, as though few people remembered it existed.
“This used to be an auxiliary archive,” Edward said quietly. “It was closed years ago.”
“Closed officially?” Amelia asked.
He hesitated.
“Not entirely.”
He produced a key.
Her pulse quickened.
“How do you have that?”
He met her gaze.
“You gave it to me.”
The words struck her like thunder.
Inside, the air was stale and heavy with dust.
Shelves lined the walls, filled with boxes and brittle folders marked with faded labels. A single lamp flickered overhead, casting uncertain light across the room.
Amelia ran her fingers along the spines of old files.
“These are student records,” she said.
“Yes,” Edward replied.
He pulled out a box and opened it.
Inside were folders — dozens of them — each labelled with a name.
Amelia picked one at random.
Daniel Hargreaves — 1998 — Status: Removed.
Her stomach tightened.
“Removed,” she whispered.
Edward opened another folder.
Lydia Moreau — 2007 — Status: Redacted.
Then another.
Amelia Hart — 2021 — Status: Unresolved.
Her hands trembled.
“That’s me,” she said.
Edward nodded.
“You weren’t erased completely,” he said. “You interrupted the process.”
“Process?” she echoed.
“Yes,” he said softly. “Oxford has a way of correcting anomalies.”
Amelia felt a chill.
“What kind of anomalies?”
Edward looked at her with an expression she could not read.
“People who discover truths they were never meant to see.”
Silence fell.
Somewhere in the building, a floorboard creaked.
Amelia turned sharply.
“Did you hear that?”
Edward did not answer immediately.
His eyes were fixed on the doorway.
Slowly, deliberately, the door began to close
- Writer
