When Elian awoke, the lamps above him were still dim. That was strange. They were supposed to brighten automatically when he opened his eyes.
He blinked, waiting for them to respond, but they only flickered weakly — as if unsure whether it was morning.
The Library had no day or night, but it had rhythm, and today that rhythm was wrong.
He dressed quickly, trying to ignore the unease that clung to him like damp air. The book was still on his desk, the same one that shouldn't have been there. He turned it over, half-expecting the words to have changed again.
They hadn't.
"Tomorrow, the shelves will move."
He closed it carefully and placed it inside a drawer. The metal felt warmer than usual, pulsing faintly, like a heartbeat.
When he stepped outside his quarters, the Library greeted him with its usual silence — except it wasn't usual anymore. It was thicker. The air seemed to resist his breath, and the light from the lamps stretched unnaturally long shadows across the floor.
He began his route anyway.
Every day, he followed the same pattern:Section 3 first, where the children's records were kept — bright little volumes that giggled faintly when touched. Then Section 7, where the voices grew quieter, more solemn. Finally, Section 12, where the names had no sound at all.
He always started with Section 3 because it reminded him what life had sounded like once.
The books there were small, bound in colors that gleamed faintly when the light hit them. When he passed, they fluttered open of their own accord, showing snippets of playgrounds, rain puddles, chalk drawings, songs hummed under breath.
But today, they didn't.
Their pages stayed still.
"System maintenance, perhaps," he muttered, though he knew there was no such thing.
He touched one cover — a yellow book labeled Rina Vale. The leather was cold. When he opened it, he expected to hear laughter or see colors. Instead, there was only static.
The image formed, broke apart, formed again — each time less clear. The child's figure shimmered, her outline collapsing into fragments of light.
Elian shut it quickly, clutching the book to his chest.
"What's happening to you?" he whispered.
The lamps above flickered again, answering with silence.
He set the book aside, trying to steady his breathing. Maybe it was his imagination. Maybe the data streams were decaying. That had happened before — though never on this scale.
He made his way through the next aisles, noting similar anomalies: fading names, blank spines, books that refused to open. The Library's perfect order was unraveling.
And then he saw it.
A gap.
One shelf — completely empty.
He knelt beside it, running his hand along the wood. The dust line was uneven, like something had been there only hours ago. The record cards above it were also missing.
Every instinct in him screamed that this wasn't possible. Books didn't just disappear.
He straightened slowly, glancing around as if someone might be watching. "Central Index," he said aloud, his voice echoing softly, "report anomaly in Section 7-C."
Silence.
He repeated it louder. "Central Index, respond."
Nothing.
The intercom embedded in the far wall was dark. The usual faint hum of machinery was gone.
The Library had gone quiet.
Not peaceful quiet — wrong quiet.
He walked faster, then broke into a run, his footsteps thudding against the marble floor. The corridors felt different — longer, their angles subtly shifted. When he reached the Central Index dome, the glass was fogged from the inside.
He wiped it with his sleeve.
The mechanism beneath was still moving, but slower. The rings rotated unevenly, gears grinding faintly. Sparks of light flickered along the brass lines — erratic, fading.
He tapped the glass. "Central Index, confirm system status."
A faint tone answered, followed by a distorted voice:
"Archivist Elian… section… unrecognized… memory corruption—"
Static drowned the rest.
Elian stepped back, pulse racing. "Memory corruption? But that's impossible. The archives are self-correcting."
He waited for the voice to continue, but only static filled the chamber.
A low rumble passed through the floor — not mechanical, but organic. Like the Library had shuddered.
He turned, searching for the source. The shelves along the far wall trembled, books sliding forward as though pushed from behind. One fell open at his feet.
The page showed a landscape he'd never seen — mountains under an orange sky. The air above them shimmered like heat, and in the distance, a shadow moved. A human shape.
It turned its head.
And though the figure was far away, he felt it look directly at him.
Elian stumbled back, slamming the book shut. The image vanished, but the afterimage burned behind his eyes.
He whispered to himself, "There's no outside world. There can't be."
But the doubt lingered.
He had never questioned it before — what lay beyond these walls. There were no doors, no windows, no sky. Only corridors and books and endless light. Yet what if that was wrong? What if the Library wasn't infinite, but a cage?
He sat down against the nearest pillar, trying to calm his breathing. The air felt thin.
Time passed — though he couldn't tell how much. He might have sat there minutes or hours. At some point, the lights dimmed completely, plunging the hall into darkness.
That was new. The lamps never went out.
He waited, straining to hear something, anything — a click, a hum, a whisper. Instead, the only thing he heard was the faint, almost imperceptible sound of pages turning.
Slow. Deliberate.
He rose carefully, following the sound through the dark. His fingers brushed the edges of books and shelves, using touch to guide his way. The noise grew louder, clearer, until it stopped abruptly.
He froze.
A breath — soft and close — exhaled beside his ear.
"Elian."
He spun around, heart pounding.
Nothing.
The lights flickered back on, washing the hall in pale gold. No one was there. The shelves were perfectly still.
He touched his ear, half expecting to find warmth there. It was cold.
He whispered, "Who said that?"
No response.
But when he turned back toward the Central Index, he saw a line of ink running across the marble floor — a thin trail leading away from the dome, snaking between shelves toward the northern corridor.
Cautiously, he followed. The ink glistened, fresh, still wet. It led him past familiar sections — names he'd read hundreds of times before — until it stopped abruptly at an old door he didn't remember existing.
Its surface was made of black glass, smooth and reflective. No handle. No hinges. Only a small mark at eye level: a circle crossed by a single line.
He reached out. The moment his fingertips touched it, the ink on the floor flared bright blue. The door pulsed once, then faded back to black.
The mark now glowed faintly, like a heartbeat.
He stepped back, uncertain. "Is this… new?"
A faint vibration traveled through the floor — a hum that resonated in his bones. The door seemed to breathe.
He waited, half-expecting it to open. It didn't.
Finally, he whispered, "I'll come back tomorrow."
The hum stopped instantly, like it had been holding its breath.
When Elian returned to his quarters, the lamps above his desk were already on. The drawer where he had hidden The Archivist Who Forgets was open. The book lay outside, as if placed there gently.
He stared at it, his pulse hammering in his throat.
The page had changed again.
"The shelves have moved."
He looked around. His quarters felt… wrong. Smaller somehow. The angles different.
He backed against the wall, the book still open in his hand. The ink on the page shimmered, forming new words beneath the first:
"You are not alone."
The lamps flickered violently, then steadied.
And in that perfect silence, Elian realized he could hear something new — faint, almost too soft to notice.
Breathing.
Not his own.
Somewhere, just beyond the shelves.