They reached it at the moment Riley realized she could no longer remember her own middle name.
The building stood upright (the first thing they had seen that obeyed gravity in hours).
Six stories of black stone, no windows, a single set of double doors made of polished obsidian.
Above the doors, letters shifted like fish behind dark glass:
**MUNICIPAL REFERENCE LIBRARY**
**CURRENT PATRONS: 0**
**CURRENT BOOKS: ALL OF THEM**
**CURRENT SILENCE: MANDATORY**
The doors were already open a crack. A thin slice of warm yellow light spilled out, the color of a childhood you can't prove happened.
Elias stopped the group ten meters away.
"This is the heart," he said. "Abyss-00's memory. Everything the city ever knew is shelved inside, catalogued by the order in which it was forgotten.
If we can find the card that says 'Exit' or 'Name of This Place' or even 'How to Leave,' we can drag it out and burn it. The city dies with its last reference."
The boy with the late shadow (his name was Kite, someone remembered) raised a hand.
"And if we can't find it?"
"Then we become overdue books," Elias answered. "Eventually they stamp us and shelve us by the Dewey Decimal System for causes of death."
Mara, the clockwork-eyed woman, clicked her lens back into place.
"How do we even search if we forget why we're searching the second we walk in?"
Elias produced seven library cards from his coat (blank white plastic, no names, no barcodes).
"Rule number six," he said, handing one to each of them. "Never check out a book using the name you walked in with."
He turned his own card over. Someone had already written on it in neat librarian handwriting:
**DO NOT TRUST THE MAN WHO BROUGHT YOU HERE**
He smiled faintly, pocketed it, and walked toward the doors.
The others followed.
Inside smelled of dust, vanilla, and the particular sadness of pages that have never been read aloud.
The lobby was infinite.
Rows of shelves stretched in every direction until perspective gave up and admitted it was lying. Ladders on rails climbed into darkness that had ceilings only when you weren't looking directly at it.
At the central desk sat a librarian.
She looked exactly like every librarian anyone had ever been afraid to disappoint.
Gray cardigan, hair in a bun held together by a sharpened pencil, half-moon glasses reflecting whatever you felt guiltiest about.
She did not look up from the book she was stamping.
*THUMP.*
*THUMP.*
*THUMP.*
Each stamp erased another minor memory from the group. Riley felt the color of her first bicycle drain away. Kite lost the sound his mother's laugh used to make.
The librarian finally spoke without raising her eyes.
"Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhh," she said, and the sound kept going long after her mouth closed, circling the room like a shark.
Elias stepped forward and placed all seven blank library cards on the desk.
"We're here for a book," he said.
The librarian looked up.
Her eyes were card-catalog drawers. Tiny labels slid out and back in as she focused.
"Title?" she asked.
"We don't know it yet," Elias replied. "That's why we need to find it."
The librarian smiled the way a returned book smiles when it realizes it's being reshelved forever.
"Very good," she whispered. "The forgetting aisle is the one that forgets you're in it. Third hall on the left, past Regret, between Longing and Mild Inconvenience. You have until the next time someone says your name aloud. After that you belong to the collection."
She stamped the air seven times.
Seven tiny red DUE DATE slips fluttered down and stuck to their shoes.
Each one was blank except for a slowly ticking countdown.
06:66
06:65
06:64…
Elias was already moving.
The team ran.
Behind them the librarian resumed stamping, faster now.
*THUMP-THUMP-THUMP.*
Every impact erased another shelf label. Subjects became ???. Authors became [redacted]. Whole wings of the library went dark.
Riley glanced back once and saw the lobby folding itself up like a pop-up book in reverse.
They plunged into the forgetting aisle.
Books flew open as they passed, pages blank, screaming in white.
One book lunged off the shelf and wrapped itself around the priest's face. He tore it off, but when he did half his beard came with it and the book now had a title in gold leaf:
**FATHER MICHAEL CASSIDY – FINAL CONFESSION, OVERDUE SINCE 1994**
He dropped it like it was on fire.
Kite's shadow finally caught up to him, slipped past, and kept running without him.
The countdown on their due slips hit 03:11.
Elias skidded to a stop in front of a single wooden card catalog the size of a coffin.
Every drawer was labeled with a different kind of exit:
**FIRE**
**WINDOW**
**DEATH**
**BIRTH**
**TRAIN**
**KISS**
He yanked open the drawer marked **DOOR**.
Inside: thousands of index cards, each one with a handwritten description of a door that no longer existed.
He started flipping.
Riley joined him, hands shaking.
Mara read over their shoulders, gears whirring.
The priest stood guard, swinging his rosary like a flail at any book that got too curious.
Kite tried to chase his shadow and ran straight into a shelf labeled **CHILDHOOD**.
He did not come out.
02:02 on the countdown.
Elias's fingers stopped on a card.
It was blank except for a single charcoal smudge shaped like an inverted sword inside a circle.
He turned it over.
On the back, in pencil:
**Property of E. Vark. Do not remove from premises.
Penalty: becoming the new exit.**
Elias stared at it for one full second.
Then he smiled the way winter smiles at matches.
He took the card.
The entire library screamed (a sound made of every late fee ever charged).
Shelves toppled. Lights exploded into moths made of punched due-date holes.
The librarian's voice echoed from everywhere and nowhere:
**THAT BOOK IS NOT FOR CIRCULATION.**
Elias held the blank card up like a badge.
"Too late," he said. "I just checked myself out."
He pressed the card against the nearest shelf.
A door appeared (matte black, no handle, exactly like the one from the vacant lot).
On it, glowing letters burned into existence:
**EXIT – DO NOT OPEN UNTIL YOU REMEMBER WHY YOU WANT TO LEAVE**
The countdown hit 00:01.
Riley looked at Elias.
He met her eyes.
"Run," he said, and kicked the door open.
Beyond was pure white.
They jumped through, all six of them (Kite's shadow came last, dragging something that might once have been a little boy).
The library folded in on itself with a sound like a book slamming shut on a finger.
Silence.
They were standing in the vacant lot again.
Dawn (real dawn) was breaking over a city that still remembered its own name.
The matte-black door stood closed7 behind them, now just a freestanding slab of wood.
On it, someone had crossed out the old help-wanted sign and written in chalk:
**POSITIONS FILLED.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR APPLICATION.**
Elias looked at the blank library card in his hand.
The charcoal smudge was gone.
In its place, seven names had appeared (one for every survivor).
Underneath, in fresh ink:
**Debt paid.
The city will starve tonight.**
He tucked the card away.
Riley finally found her voice.
"What the hell just happened?"
Elias lit a cigarette he hadn't had a minute ago.
"We just stole the concept of leaving from a city that had forgotten how to let anything go," he said, exhaling smoke that spelled temporary words in the air. "It'll die before sunset. And something else just got promoted to take its place."
He glanced at the horizon.
Far away, a train that should not exist whistled once (a sound like a name being forgiven).
Elias dropped the cigarette and crushed it under his heel.
"Welcome to the job," he told the six shaking survivors. "First day's always the worst."
He started walking.
After a moment, they followed.
Behind them, the black door dissolved into morning light, taking the last of the chalk words with it.
Only one line remained for a single heartbeat, visible only to those who had already lost a name:
**See you at closing time.**