He didn't move for a while.
The pain receded slowly, like a tide pulling back after a storm. His breathing steadied. His thoughts… didn't. But they became louder. Clearer.
Not memories.
Not like names or birthdays or a childhood scraped together through sentiment.
These were sharper. Stranger.
He remembered a hallway lined with mirrors, but he couldn't remember his own face.
He remembered a girl in a burnt dress—her smile, the way she looked at him like she'd seen him before—but he couldn't remember her name, or if she had one.
He remembered falling.
Again.
And again.
Each time from a different place. Each time into the Archive. Or something like it.
He remembered waking up to a letter that he didn't write—but maybe he did.
He remembered sitting at a desk, scrawling words in panic. Words about a key.
Yes. The key.
That memory stood above the rest like a signpost in fog. It rang with conviction. Urgency.
He didn't know what the key opened. He didn't know where he last had it. But he knew this:
He was supposed to find it. He always was.
And now he remembered where to go.
He stood, knees still shaky, and looked down the hallway ahead. He didn't know its name, or where it led, but the geometry of it made his chest ache. He had seen it before. Not once. Not twice. Many times. Always forgotten. Always looped. But never quite the same.
This time, he knew he had to follow it.
His hands curled into fists. The pages of his story were out of order—he understood that now. Something inside him had kept reading anyway. A part of him was watching the story, not living it. Tracing every scene. Every page. Like a reader trapped in a character's body.
He took a step forward.
Another.
He passed a chair he remembered breaking. A door that should have been locked.
He could feel the fragments shifting behind him, like a book being read too fast to keep its spine intact.
He remembered the Archive. The way the Archivist had looked past him and spoken to the reader. You'll start to notice the breaks too. He'd said that. It hadn't felt like fiction then. It felt like a warning.
And now here he was.
Moving with purpose.
Remembering without understanding.
Find the key.Find the truth.Before the story forgets how to end.
The hall opened into a larger space.
The swing was there.
Still.
Empty.
Waiting.
But he didn't go to it.
Not yet.
He turned left instead, toward the room that wasn't always there.
But tonight—it was.