He was walking down the corridor when the girl took his hand and said, "Don't let go."
—but they were already outside, the wind carrying a smell like wet stone. The street bent in ways streets shouldn't bend, and the buildings leaned closer with every step.
He blinked, and the swing was swaying ahead of them, though neither of them had touched it.
"You said you found something," she reminded him, but her voice wasn't hers.
"I…" He looked down. The book was in his hand again, but it was closed, its spine wet with something dark. He didn't remember holding it. He didn't remember where it came from.
He turned a page—
—and the floor gave way.
The Archive swallowed him. Pages spiraled around, some blank, some bleeding with words that rearranged themselves too fast to read.
"Stop moving," the Archivist called from somewhere far away. "You'll lose more if you—"
The sentence fractured into static.
He was at the desk again.The envelope was there.
The paper inside said only: Not yet.
The girl's laughter pulled him into another street. Her dress was singed again, edges curling like paper too close to fire. He reached out to touch the hem—
—but his hand came away with dirt, packed under every nail.
"Why do I keep—"
"You don't," the Archivist said. His voice was closer now. "The story does."
"What does that mean?"
"It means," the Archivist said, meeting his eyes, "you're no longer the only one forgetting."
The swing was swaying again.He couldn't remember walking here.Or why the girl's eyes looked like she'd been crying.
"Tell me," he said, but the words were already slipping from him, the meaning dissolving even as he spoke.
Somewhere in the fragments, he thought he heard himself whisper, I remember.
And somewhere else, just as clearly: I don't.