The library loomed at the far end, tall and silent, its wide glass doors reflecting the amber sky.
Inside, the usual quiet was amplified... just the soft tick of the wall clock, the faint hum of the air vents, and the distant rustle of a page being turned.
Most of the study tables were deserted now, chairs pushed in neatly, lamps already switched off.
Only a lone librarian sat at the front desk, half-hidden behind a stack of returns, more absorbed in her phone than the dwindling visitors.
Alex didn't stop at the main hall. He'd been here enough times to know exactly where he was headed.
It had been days since he'd last made his way down that back corridor, but the memory tugged him forward... left at the narrow aisle of reference volumes, past the shelf of journals nobody touched anymore.
This was the library's most secluded section, so quiet and removed that even if someone wandered nearby, they wouldn't hear a thing.
