The ground beneath him was soft with memory.
He didn't know how long he'd been on his knees.
The swing behind him creaked gently. There was no wind.
The girl had already walked away—or faded—or had never been there to begin with.
His fingernails were packed with dirt.
His voice was raw.
It was all happening again.
But not the same way.
This time, he knew.
He knew it wasn't the first time he'd been here, screaming into silence.
Not the first time he had clawed at the soil as if he could unearth identity like a root.
He had felt this collapse before.
He had raged.
He had wept.
He had whispered, "What did I forget?" in a dozen different inflections.
And now?
Now he wasn't even asking the question.
He was watching himself ask it.
Like a scene in a play he couldn't stop performing.
It hurt more.
Not because he didn't understand.
But because he did.
He stood, breathless, and turned in place.
The tree.
The grass.
The wrong-colored sky.
He could name them all, but naming them didn't make them real.
And naming himself?
Impossible.
Not because he'd forgotten.
But because the name he kept finding didn't belong to him anymore.
He laughed once. It came out cracked.
Then came the spiral.
Thoughts folding.
Scenes bleeding.
Memories overlapping.
The room. The swing. The mirror. The hallway. The Archivist.
The door he couldn't open.
The book with no title.
The voice behind the wall.
The letter on the desk.
The warning he wrote to himself.
The key.
The key.
The—
He dropped to his knees again, clutching his head.
There was something inside it.
Something that wanted out.
But every time it came close to the surface, it spoke in reverse.
He could almost hear it.
Almost understand it.
"̶̝̚e̸̤͘m̴̡̐ ̸̡͌r̵͎͝ő̷̱f̶̺͝ ̵͚̚g̵̩̐n̴̲̾ȋ̷͓n̸͈̾r̵̜͐u̵͈͊t̶̻̄ ̷̘̽t̵͖͑r̸͓̋a̸͎͝t̷̙̄s̸̛̻ ̸̖̈́t̶̰̓n̵͇͐o̸̯̅d̵̯͐ ̷͓̑Ȋ̵̙"̵͚͝
He tried to scream.
Instead, he whispered, "This is where I go mad."
And for once, the world whispered back:
You already did.