The Archive always knew when he was coming. Shelves breathed. Dust arranged itself like foggy handwriting in the beams overhead. The floor, usually indifferent, seemed to steady under his steps.
The Archivist waited beside a small, unmarked drawer built into the desk. He looked older than he had in any loop—tired not in the eyes but in the posture, as if the weight he carried had finally learned where to sit.
"You opened it," he said, not quite asking.
"Yes."
"Did it change anything?"
"It made everything hurt correctly," the boy said.
The Archivist nodded once, a motion so plain it felt ceremonial. He slid the drawer open and took out a book so thin it seemed unfinished. No title, no embossing, just a scuffed cover that looked older than the shelves.
"This is yours," he said. "The part that lasted."
The boy opened it.
Pages gone. Pages torn. Pages blank where a hand had hovered and then pulled away. What remained was clean and brutal: a stack of bright childhood moments, a single night of earth and fear, and then a stretch of white that looked less like paper than snow after the last footprint.
On the final page, a sentence waited in a hand he knew down to the pressure of the pen:
You were here.
He swallowed. "Why didn't you give me this the first time?"
"Because endings aren't safe," the Archivist said. "A story knows how to survive its middle. It's the ending that breaks it."
The boy ran his thumb along the book's frayed edge. "And what happens if I finish this?"
"You stop needing the rest," the Archivist said. "Which means the rest stops existing."
He closed the book and set it gently on the desk, next to the key.
For the first time, the Archivist looked at the key with open fear. "Don't use it on everything," he said. "Not every lock wants to be opened."
"Neither did I," the boy said, and left.