Haruto was already awoken before sunrise.
That alone should have worried somebody.
Or not..
"I'M AWAKE TOO"
The innkeeper certainly looked concerned when Haruto appeared downstairs while the lanterns were still lit.
"You're awake."
"I noticed."
"It's unnatural."
"Thank you."
The innkeeper slid a cup of tea across the counter.
"On the house."
Haruto accepted it.
The canyon beyond the windows remained quiet.
Most of Brighthollow still slept.
The mines hadn't opened.
The merchants hadn't started shouting.
The settlement felt strangely peaceful.
For a few minutes, neither spoke.
Then the innkeeper nodded toward the eastern road.
"The courier office opens soon."
Haruto sighed.
"I know."
The older man chuckled.
"You've been thinking about it all night."
Haruto didn't deny it.
Because he had.
The travel registry.
The records.
The possibility.
The hope.
All of it.
After months of searching, every lead felt important.
Some turned into dead ends.
Some vanished.
A few changed everything.
The difficult part was figuring out which was which.
By sunrise, the courier office finally opened.
The clerk from yesterday looked exactly as tired as before.
An impressive achievement.
Haruto sat with the registry and began reading.
Names.
Dates.
Routes.
Caravans.
Merchants.
Travelers.
Hundreds of entries.
The work was painfully slow.
An hour passed.
Then another.
Most of it proved useless.
Until he noticed a pattern.
Not a name.
A destination.
The same destination appeared repeatedly across several travel records.
Pilgrims.
Merchants.
Historians.
Messengers.
Different people.
Different routes.
Yet all eventually headed toward the same place.
The Sky Vault.
Haruto frowned.
He'd never heard of it.
The clerk noticed.
"First time?"
"Apparently."
The man laughed.
"Most people outside the mountains haven't."
That immediately made it more interesting.
"What is it?"
The clerk leaned back in his chair.
"A monastery."
Haruto blinked.
Not the answer he expected.
The clerk continued.
"Built on the cliffs east of Brighthollow."
"A place for mapmakers."
"Record keepers."
"Star readers."
The man shrugged.
"They collect copies of old records."
Now that sounded interesting.
Very interesting.
"Why?"
The clerk's expression softened slightly.
"Because things disappear."
Silence.
Haruto's fingers stopped moving.
The clerk noticed immediately.
Most people didn't react to that statement.
Haruto did.
The man continued quietly.
"Stories disappear."
"Maps disappear."
"Records disappear."
His gaze drifted toward the window.
"So they keep making copies."
The familiar unease returned.
The forgotten city.
Arthur's warnings.
Missing records.
The holes appearing in history.
All of it connected.
The clerk tapped one section of the registry.
"See this?"
Haruto leaned closer.
Several names appeared together.
Travelers arriving from different regions.
One entry stood out.
Not because of the name.
Because of the occupation.
**Librarian.**
His heartbeat skipped.
The clerk pointed.
"That one passed through recently."
Recently.
Not years ago.
Not months ago.
Recently.
Haruto stared at the page.
The word seemed impossibly small.
Yet he couldn't look away.
"Librarian."
The clerk nodded.
"Heading for the Sky Vault."
Silence filled the room.
Haruto's thoughts raced.
A librarian.
Traveling east.
Toward a place preserving records from being forgotten.
It sounded exactly like something Sakura would investigate.
Exactly.
The clerk folded his arms.
"You know them?"
Haruto smiled.
A small smile.
The kind that appeared before he could stop it.
"Maybe."
The clerk laughed.
"That's definitely a yes."
Probably.
Outside, Brighthollow had fully awakened.
The sounds of miners echoed through the canyon.
Merchants opened their stalls.
Life continued.
Ordinary.
Unaware.
Haruto looked at the registry one final time.
Then carefully closed it.
For a long moment, he simply sat there.
Thinking.
Not desperately.
Not anxiously.
Just thinking.
Because the feeling growing inside him wasn't excitement.
It was certainty.
A strange, quiet certainty.
The same certainty he'd felt while looking at the records yesterday.
The same certainty he'd felt standing on the ridge before Brighthollow.
The road wasn't ending.
Not yet.
But it was narrowing.
Every path.
Every clue.
Every choice.
All pointing toward the same horizon.
And somewhere beyond the mountains—
a librarian was walking east.