He didn't remember how he got to the door.
Only that he wanted to be there.
That somehow, the act of wanting was enough.
The mirror hadn't spoken, hadn't changed, hadn't cracked. It had just watched. And when he finally turned from it, the world folded inward and built a corridor where there wasn't one before. As if the Archive had been waiting.
Not for him, maybe.
But for the moment he would choose to come back.
And now he had.
The moment he stepped into the Archive, the air tightened. It always smelled the same—of dust and deep thought—but this time, something was different. The shelves were less still. They seemed… to be breathing. Papers fluttered gently even though there was no breeze. Light came from nowhere and everywhere.
He walked past scattered pages. Some he recognized. Some he didn't. Some seemed to change when he blinked.
The Archivist stood where he always did: beside the desk, hands folded behind his back, long coat trailing the floor like shadow stitched to bone.
"You're early," the Archivist said, without turning.
"Early?" the boy asked. "Early for what?"
"For the conversation you were never supposed to initiate."
The boy stepped closer. "What do you mean?"
The Archivist finally turned, his face calm, but not distant. He studied the boy like one would study a candle nearing the end of its wick.
"You've begun remembering the wrong way," the Archivist said.
"There's a right way?"
"There was," he said. "Once. The narrative was more structured then. Cleaner. You woke up. You forgot. You wandered. You wrote letters you wouldn't remember writing. But you stayed on the rails. You stayed within the tone."
The boy frowned. "What tone?"
The Archivist moved to the nearest shelf, his hand brushing over several titles with blank spines. "It's not just memory that breaks when someone forgets this much," he said. "It's the shape of the story. Its rhythm. Its logic. Your forgetfulness has begun to… smudge the ink."
He gestured around them. "Can't you feel it? The way time hiccups? The way scenes repeat but not quite? Paragraphs don't align like they used to. You speak like you've been here before. Sometimes you remember fragments you shouldn't. You dream from the inside out."
The boy took a step back. "So I'm… corrupting the story?"
"You're changing it," the Archivist said. "Change is not inherently bad. But it is messy. And mess is difficult to translate."
He returned to the desk and pulled out a single page, pinching it at the corner like it might bite. "This was your story once. Neat. Tragic. Contained. But the more you've forgotten—willfully or otherwise—the more the structure has bent to accommodate your unraveling."
He slid the page toward the boy. The writing on it was warped. Lines melted together. The letters rearranged themselves even as the boy looked at them.
"You aren't just forgetting events," the Archivist said softly. "You're forgetting sequence. Cause and effect. Setup and payoff. You're forgetting how to be a character in your own narrative."
The boy looked down at the page. His name was there. Almost legible. Then it wasn't.
"But why?" he asked. "Why is this happening to me?"
The Archivist gave a slow breath. "Because someone locked something too painful for you to remember. And the longer it stays buried, the harder the world has to work to pretend it was never written."
He leaned forward, voice quieter now.
"And the world is tired."