The bell kept ringing.
Soft at first, then clearer, like a silver line drawn through the air. It did not sound like an alarm. It sounded old. It sounded like something that remembered when the city was a handful of streets and a promise.
People on the deck turned their heads to listen. Some pressed palms to their chests. Some bowed their faces. A few whispered words they had learned as children and forgotten as adults, until this moment brought them back.
Beyond the far tower, the skyline was still wrong.
Where the westward towers had stood, there was only a bright emptiness that made my eyes ache when I tried to look straight at it. The streets below were smooth and unmarked, as if no foundation had ever been poured. A plane of light and air where history should have held.
The book warmed in my hands. Letters rose on the glass as if a finger wrote from inside the page.
Do not answer the bell.
Return to the door.
Close your ears.
Walk.
Lio touched my sleeve. Her fingers were steady. Her eyes were not. They held a thin, hard light that comes when someone understands how close a thing came, and how close it still is.
"What did you see," she asked softly. "Not the break. The other thing."
"The dust," I said. "The ribbon. The part that was not a gap. It was nothing. Like it had never been built."
She nodded once, as if I had said the only answer she expected.
Iven stepped beside us, eyes on the span. His voice was a quiet stone dropped into shallow water.
"We will close both ends," he said. "We will send crews to brace the neighbors. We will count who was there, and we will write their names where we can see them. The city will want a reason. It will ask for a cause."
"It will want a story," Lio said. "True or not."
I tightened my grip on the book. The bell rang again. It was closer now. Or perhaps it had always been this near, and the shock had built a wall in my ears that was only now beginning to fall.
"I have to go," I said.
Lio looked at the book. "To where."
"To the door," I said. "The one I opened to come here."
She studied my face the way she had studied the crown before it fell, slow and exact.
"Will you come back," she asked.
The truth sat in my mouth. It did not feel heavy. It felt precise.
"I will try," I said.
She reached into her pocket and drew out a thin length of clear ribbon. The light ran along it, catching in small waves. She tied it around my wrist with quick fingers.
"So I will know you when I see you again," she said. "And so you will remember there is a city that still sings when you are far from it."
Iven gave one short nod, as if the knot itself had been a decision he agreed with. He lifted his hand to the guards.
"Clear the deck," he called. "Close the span. Walk, do not run."
The crowd began to move. People did not shove. They did not push. They flowed in small currents, like streams that met and parted without muddying each other.
The bell rang as I turned down the inner corridor. The sound slid along the stone and into my bones. It did not ask anything. It did not command. It simply was.
The paper door waited at the end of the quiet hall. The green light along its edge was dimmer now, like breath saved for later. The book's page showed a new line.
Count seven breaths.
Open when the bell dips.
Do not look back.
I stood with my hand over the paper circle. The next peal rose, held, and fell. I counted.
One breath.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Five.
Six.
Seven.
The bell dipped. I pressed my palm to the circle. The paper warmed. The door opened.
The stair beyond was lit by a very soft green that pulsed like a slow heart. The air smelled like stone dust and apples again, but fainter. The sound of the city's bell followed me down until the first turn took it away.
On the seventh step, a small shape sat waiting.
The child from before. The dress the color of chalk dust. Bare feet that were not dirty. Eyes that were bright and empty at the same time.
She looked at my wrist, at the ribbon, then at my face.
"You came back," she said.
"Yes," I said.
"Did the bridges fall," she asked.
"One did," I said.
"Did you try to save it," she asked.
"I did," I said.
"Did you save a person," she asked.
"Yes," I said. "Two."
She nodded as if counting beads on a string. One, two. She did not smile. She did not frown.
"The bell is hungry today," she said. "You should not stand where the shelves can hear you."
"Can the shelves hear," I asked.
"Yes," she said. "When the bell rings, they listen. When the bell stops, they speak."
"What do they say," I asked.
"They say please," she said. "And then they say now."
The green light along the stair brightened, then dimmed, like a patient breath saved in a cold room. I looked up toward the door that led back to the library proper. The wood around it was old. The grain looked like water that had decided to be still forever.
"Will you ask me for another story," I asked the child.
"Not now," she said. "Now the library will ask."
She stood and walked up the steps past me. Her feet did not make a sound. When she reached the top, she did not open the door. She slipped into the thin space between the frame and the wall, and was gone, as if she had always been part of the seam.
The bell rang one more time. It sounded softer now, like a promise that had finally been said aloud.
I pushed the door open.
The library was not as I had left it.
The lights were still on. Dust hung in the bars of sunshine that fell through the high windows. The desk was still scratched and steady under the palm of my hand. But the air had weight. Not heat. Not cold. A heaviness, like a full room where nobody speaks.
A light blinked over the front desk.
Not the small pulse that asked for approval. A steady glow, faint and patient, like an eye that had opened but did not yet need to blink.
The shelves breathed.
It was very soft. The kind of motion you can only see if you stand very still and let the world move around you, until the thing that does not change is the thing that stands out. The rows lifted a little, then settled. The books shivered in their places and then were quiet.
The glass book warmed. New lines cut themselves into the page with tidy care.
Do not speak the bell's name.
Do not offer your blood.
Offer a story, or offer a book.
Choose quickly.
I looked at the nearest aisle. The shelf markers were simple wood plaques with neat letters. They did not say what I had expected. Not subjects. Not titles. They said ordinary things.
Houses.
Hills.
Rivers.
Bridges.
Names.
The plaque that said Bridges lifted a finger's width, as if touched by a slow wind that only cared for it. The books on that shelf slid back, then forward, all together, like a single breath.
A thin seam appeared between two spines.
It was not a crack in wood. It was a mouth. Not with teeth. Not with a tongue. Just a line where there had not been a line before, and then a little dark where there had not been dark, and then a space that was deeper than the length of a book.
The shelf exhaled.
A book in the middle slipped forward as if caught by the edge of a wave. Its title was not written on the spine, but I knew it the way I had known my own name when I had read it in glass.
The City of Glass Bridges.
I reached out before I could tell myself not to. The book felt cool. Not cold. Not warm. The kind of cool that lives in a room that has been in shade all day.
The glass book wrote again, quick now.
Offer a story, or offer a book.
Do not offer this one.
"Will you take something else," I asked the shelf.
It breathed. The seam widened. It was not an answer, but it was a reply.
I looked at the next plaque.
Names.
The books there were thin. Some were barely more than slivers with string for spines. Some were thick, as if a single name had been written a thousand times. I slid my fingers along them without pulling anything free.
An old feeling lifted in me, the one that crept up the back of my neck when the coastline had gone, and the map apps were still showing the old line, and I had walked into the library and pretended I could make tea until the kettle sang and everything was the same again. It was not the same. It was never the same.
Offer a story, or offer a book.
A story then.
I placed my palm on the wood of the shelf and spoke in a low voice, as if telling a child a thing that needed to be told soft.
"There is a city," I said. "It built bridges from light and glass. It trusted them. It sang to them so they would sing back and remember how to be strong. Today the song went wrong. A seam split. A crown fell. People did not push. They did not trample. They held one another and moved. We took two to safety. The span broke. The dust turned in the air as if someone were twisting a ribbon. Then the crown was not a gap. It was nothing. Beyond the far tower, the skyline was a clean place where towers used to be. It hurt to look at."
The seam did not close.
The shelf breathed in.
Offer a book, the page wrote.
Not the one you carry.
Something else.
"What do you want," I asked. "Tell me the spine."
The shelf did not speak. It breathed. The seam widened by the width of a finger.
The plaque marked Bridges moved again, a little bow, as if it would be polite if it were not hungry. The book with no letters in its spine slid forward another inch. If I let go, it would fall. If it fell, I did not know whether it would land. I did not know whether it would be gone before it touched the ground.
The green light from the stair under the back door reached the edge of the desk and held there like a boundary. It did not cross. The air between the light and the shelf felt like the space between two magnets.
The book in my hands warmed until it almost hurt.
Not this one, it wrote.
I looked to the left.
Houses.
Some spines were painted with small pictures. A blue fence. A red door. A roof with three chimneys. I pulled one free and opened to the first page.
The handwriting was small, patient, precise. It spoke of a kitchen with a table that had a dent where someone had dropped a pot years ago, and how the dent made every bowl placed there tilt just a little, and how the person who lived there learned to tip the bowl back with one finger without looking.
I took a breath. I slid the book back.
Not that one.
I moved to the next plaque.
Rivers.
The spines were all the same color, the color of stones under shallow water. I touched three, one after the other. Each hummed a little under my fingers, like a bee that had been sleeping and did not want to wake.
"Tell me," I said to the shelf. "Tell me what you will take that will cost less than what you want."
The seam opened another fraction.
The child's voice came from somewhere I could not see.
"If you ask a river for less," she said, "it gives you stones. If you ask a house for less, it gives you windows. If you ask bridges for less, they tell you there is no less."
I turned in place. I could not find her. Her words were just truth put into a mouth for a moment, then let go.
Offer a book, the page wrote.
Choose.
Now.
The bell did not ring. The library held its breath.
I picked up a thin book from the plaque that said Hills. The spine had a single dot of green paint where the title should have been. When I opened it, the page smelled like grass and the clean part of sheep. The ink told a story about a slope that wanted to be a long place to sit and watch the sky, and how it had learned to be patient even when rain came fast.
I closed it. My hand did not want to let go. I put it back.
My fingers found a small book from the plaque that said Names. It was not thick. It was not thin. It felt like a name that had been said by a few people who would not stop saying it, even if nobody else did.
The seam in the Bridges shelf widened again, as if it could lean forward it would. The breath that came from the space was cool.
The ribbon on my wrist rested like a quiet line of light.
"Will you take a name," I asked.
The shelf exhaled. It was not a yes. It was not a no. It was a sound like a door that had been opened and was willing to stay open a little longer if asked nicely.
I held the small book from Names against my chest with the glass one. I was careful, so the spines did not touch. I stepped closer to the seam.
The space inside was not dark. It was the color you get when you close your eyes and turn your face toward the sun. A warm red that sat behind the lids like a gentle glow.
"Take this," I said. "Not the bridges. Not the hill. Not the house with the dented table. Take a name someone will write again."
The seam did not open further. It did not close. It held the exact shape of a choice.
The floor under my feet shifted.
It was not an earthquake. It was not a shake you could see on a glass of water. It was a very small tilt. The kind of tilt a table makes when someone leans on it with one hand.
The aisle lengthened. The shelf lifted a little.
The book in my hands wrote fast, each line like a tap on my wrist.
When the shelf opens, do not step back.
Do not hold your breath.
If you go, count nine steps down.
If you stay, brace the door.
I looked at the green light at the back door.
If I tried to brace it, with what. With a chair. With my body. Against what.
The floor tilted again. The seam widened, slow and patient, like a mouth that did not mind being a mouth.
The small book of Names felt very light now. Or my hands were very heavy. I could not tell.
I took a breath. I let it out. I took another. I did not count yet.
"I will come back," I said. I did not know to whom I said it. To the shelf. To the city. To myself.
I stepped forward.
The shelf swallowed the book of Names from my fingers as gently as a tide takes a leaf. The edge of the seam touched my wrist. The ribbon flashed once, then steadied. The floor tipped a little more, and the row of spines became a staircase.
The space inside the shelf was not a hole. It was a throat made of paper and light. The air smelled like dust and rain and apples and something like glass that had forgotten how to be sharp.
The book in my hand wrote one more line.
Nine steps.
Do not stop on the eighth.
I lifted my foot and set it on the first paper step.
One.
The shelf breathed in.
Two.
The aisle behind me narrowed, like a page being turned.
Three.
The green light at the back door held steady.
Four.
The bell did not ring.
Five.
The seam was warm on my skin.
Six.
The ribbon on my wrist cooled.
Seven.
The space ahead brightened, then dimmed.
Eight.
I did not stop.
Nine.
The shelf closed over my head like a book being shut with careful hands.
And the library swallowed me.