Dawn was his favorite time to read.
There was just enough light to make out the words, and the city had not yet remembered to be cruel. The drunkards had finally collapsed into silence. The gangs had not begun their morning disputes. For a brief hour, the world belonged to him.
Soft light filtered through the cracked dome overhead and spilled across the marble floor in pale sheets. Dust drifted through the beams, turning the ruined hall into something almost sacred. He lay on his stomach between two fallen shelves, chin in his hands, boots discarded somewhere behind him, completely absorbed in a story about two travelers who crossed the continent guided only by a woman who claimed to know the old paths.
Outside, someone screamed. A body struck stone.
He did not flinch.
He turned the page.
"I've read about this tribe," he murmured to himself, grinning.
The Empire still claimed this city. Its banners flew from distant towers. Its tax collectors arrived twice a year with soldiers whose footsteps cracked pavement and whose bodies carried the altered strength born in Year One of the Calendar of Garris. But they did not descend into these streets often. Down here, strength ruled without uniforms. Strength in the fist. Strength in the blood. Strength that had flooded the world one hundred and seventy-six years ago and never receded.
He cared for none of it.
He cared for books.
This ruin had once been the largest library in the world. Though the battle that reshaped civilization had burned entire wings and crushed thousands of volumes beneath stone, what remained was still vast beyond measure. He had read histories and fantasies, textbooks and travelogues, newspapers from nations that no longer existed. Each page answered one question and birthed three more.
He had finished the western wing years ago. He was halfway through the eastern stacks.
By any measure, it should have been impossible.
Paper should have molded. Ink should have faded. A boy should not survive alone for sixteen years beneath a broken dome with no steady food, no flowing water, and no protection from the rot of time.
And yet none of it decayed.
The air below the dome held a stillness that did not belong to nature. A faint shimmer lingered along the edges of the shelves when the light struck just right. Something from the old battlefield had remained here, unseen and patient, preserving ink, paper, and the boy who refused to leave them.
He did not question it.
He simply turned another page.
Until he once again reached the ending of his story
The expedition had nearly failed three times before they ever reached the mountains. Hunger. Weather. Men who wanted to turn back. Still, they pressed west, guided by a woman who knew the rivers better than any map ever drawn. They charted what no one in their capital believed could be crossed.
He closed the book slowly.
They had not set out to conquer anything.
They had only wanted to see what was there.
He rolled onto his back and stared at the cracked dome above him. Light filtered through fractures in the stone, turning dust into drifting stars.
He had read about oceans he had never smelled. Rivers he had never touched. Territories so wide they swallowed entire lifetimes. The Empire of Garris claimed continents now, but even its maps had blank spaces at the edges.
He knew that because he had studied them.
The men in the story had left civilization not because they were strong, but because they were curious.
He smiled faintly.
He was not strong.
But he was curious.
Outside, the slums began to stir. Voices rose. Metal scraped against stone. Someone laughed too loudly.
He sat up.
He had read about frontiers long enough.
Perhaps it was time to see one.
He had tried to leave once.
He was younger then. Smaller. Certain that stepping beyond the dome would be as simple as closing a book and opening another.
He remembered the stairs.
He remembered the light growing brighter as he climbed.
He remembered the pressure.
Not pain. Not exactly. Just a weight in his chest. A tightening behind his ribs. As if the air above the dome rejected him. As if something unseen had placed a hand against his sternum and gently, firmly, pushed him back.
He had laughed at first. Thought it fear.
He tried again the next day.
The pressure returned sooner.
By the third attempt, he did not reach the stairs.
He stopped trying after that.
He told himself he preferred the quiet.
Told himself the world above was loud and inelegant and full of people who mistook strength for intelligence.
But sometimes, when he lay awake beneath the cracked dome, he wondered.
Was it fear?
Or was it something else?
The air down here never rotted. Paper never decayed. He had not starved. He had not thirsted.
He had never truly questioned why.
Until now.
He closed the L and C diary and ran his thumb along the spine.
They had crossed mountains.
He could not cross a staircase.
That, more than anything, offended him.
He stood and looked toward the stairwell that led upward into the slums.
Part of him was afraid.
Part of him was lost.
But a larger part of him wanted to know.
And curiosity, he had learned, was stronger than comfort