Elian didn't sleep that night.He couldn't.
Every time he closed his eyes, he heard the sound again — the faint breathing beyond the shelves. Not loud, not close, just there, like a thought that refused to leave.
He told himself it was just the ventilation system malfunctioning. Maybe a pressure leak in the ducts. But the lie didn't convince even him.
By the time the lamps brightened, his hands were trembling from exhaustion. The book — The Archivist Who Forgets — lay on his desk, its pages open to the same haunting words:
"You are not alone."
He ran a hand through his hair and muttered, "Not alone… but with who?"
He almost laughed. Talking to himself was the first sign of archive fatigue — a condition older Archivists used to warn about. Too many years in the silence, and you started to imagine things had voices.
He'd always thought he was immune.Until now.
He began his routine again.The Library seemed quieter than ever — though the silence was no longer empty. It listened.
In Section 3, the child records still refused to open. In Section 7, the missing shelf gaped like a wound. And when he passed Section 12, he noticed something new: the floor was marked with faint scuffs, as though something heavy had been dragged through during the night.
He knelt to inspect them. The lines curved slightly, like a trail — but not one made by books. These were wider. Uneven. Almost like… footprints?
No. That was impossible.
Still, he followed them. They led past three aisles, then ended abruptly in front of a reading table. On top of it was a book he'd never seen before — one that hadn't been there yesterday.
Its cover was plain gray, unmarked, yet the air around it felt charged. He reached out slowly. The moment his fingertips brushed the surface, the temperature dropped. His breath fogged the air.
The title appeared in thin black script as if written by invisible ink.
"The Book That Spoke."
Elian's throat went dry. "You have got to be joking."
He hesitated, glancing around. The aisles were still empty. No one was watching.
He opened the book.
At first, the pages were blank. Then, letters began to bleed through — one by one, forming words.
"Good morning, Elian."
He froze. His eyes darted around the room again. "Who—who's writing this?"
Another line appeared.
"You are."
He frowned, flipping the page. More text formed, following his movements like a conversation.
"You wrote me long ago. Then you forgot.""You made the Library to remember what you could not.""Now the Library is forgetting too."
Elian felt his stomach twist. "That's not true," he whispered. "I didn't make the Library. I was born here."
The ink trembled, as if laughing silently.
"Born here? Then tell me — what's outside these walls?"
He opened his mouth, but no sound came out.
He'd never asked that question. No one had. There wasn't supposed to be an outside. The Library was all there was — eternal, endless, self-sustaining.
Except… that wasn't what the book had shown him yesterday. That mountain, that orange sky…
Elian snapped the book shut and took a shaky breath. "No. This is some kind of anomaly. Data contamination from a corrupted archive. That's all."
He tucked it under his arm and hurried back toward the Central Index. The glass dome was darker now, almost opaque, like smoke trapped inside.
"Central Index, initiate manual diagnostics."
The voice that answered was broken, glitching through bursts of static.
"System integrity… 62%… memory decay accelerating…"
Elian's pulse quickened. "Accelerating? How fast?"
"Unknown. Records… rewriting themselves…"
"Rewriting?"
He thought back to the book in his hand. The ink forming on its own. The message that seemed to know his name.
"What if the Library isn't just decaying," he murmured, "but… changing?"
He looked up at the massive rings above him — the memory orbits that tracked every record ever written. Some of them were now dark. Dead zones of history, vanishing like extinguished stars.
He felt the floor vibrate faintly again — that same pulse from before. It wasn't random. It was rhythmic.
A pattern.
He pressed a hand to the marble and closed his eyes. The vibration came in intervals — short, short, long, short. Repeating.
Almost like… a code.
His heart began to race. "You're trying to talk to me, aren't you?"
But who — or what — was trying to communicate? The Library itself? The missing books? Or the something that had whispered his name?
He opened his eyes again. The pulse had stopped.
Only silence.
By the time Elian returned to his quarters, the light was dimmer than usual. He sat at his desk, staring at The Book That Spoke.
Maybe he should destroy it. Erase it from the system, delete the corrupted data, and pretend this never happened.
But his fingers wouldn't move.
Instead, he opened it again.
New words had appeared.
"If you destroy me, the Library will die."
He froze. "Why?"
"Because I am its memory."
"That's not possible."
"Then why can I answer you?"
He swallowed. "What do you want?"
"To remember."
There was a pause. Then, slowly, new letters bled through:
"Elian… do you remember your sister?"
He stopped breathing.
His hand trembled over the page. "I… don't have a sister."
But the words on the paper seemed to stare back at him.
"You did."
He slammed the book shut again, heart hammering. "No. That's not real. That's not—"
Then he saw it. On the far wall of his quarters — faint outlines of something carved into the plaster. He hadn't noticed it before.
He walked closer.
It was a name.
Faded, half-erased by time, but still legible.
"Lyra."
His breath caught. The name felt heavy, familiar in a way that hurt.
He pressed his hand against the letters. The surface pulsed faintly beneath his palm.
A sudden rush of sound filled his ears — laughter, echoing faintly through water. A child's laughter.
And then, a whisper.
"You promised you'd remember me."
Elian staggered back, clutching his head. The world tilted — the shelves around him shuddered, blurring like a reflection in disturbed water.
For a moment, he saw another image overlaid on the Library — a place with sunlight and dust and broken towers stretching into the sky.
Then it was gone.
He was on the floor, gasping.
The lamps flickered back to full brightness, washing everything in sterile light. The name "Lyra" had vanished.
The only thing left was the book, lying open again — its pages fluttering on their own, as if turned by invisible hands.
The new words were written in neat, steady lines:
"She is still here.""But the Library is forgetting her.""If it forgets everything, it will forget you too."
Elian closed his eyes. The weight of the silence pressed down on him.
"What do I do?" he whispered.
"Find the room beyond the black door."
The message ended there.
He remembered the door from before — smooth, glassy, marked with a circle and a line. The one that had pulsed like a heartbeat.
And suddenly, the hum began again. Low and deep, vibrating through the floor beneath his feet.
It was calling him.
He stood, staring down at the book one last time. The ink on the page shimmered faintly before fading completely, leaving the surface blank again — as if the conversation had never happened.
Elian took a deep breath, pocketed the book, and stepped into the hall.
The lamps along the corridor flickered to life one by one, leading him forward like stars aligning in the dark.
At the far end, the black glass door waited.
The mark on its surface glowed faint blue, pulsing in time with his heartbeat.
He reached out, his reflection trembling on the glass.
Behind him, the Library whispered with the soft rustle of turning pages.
Ahead of him, something whispered back.
And for the first time in his life, Elian felt truly afraid.
He touched the door.