He woke up on his knees.
The ground beneath him wasn't wood or stone, but cold earth, damp enough to cling to his skin. His breathing came shallow and fast, like he'd been running—but there was no room to run. He looked up and saw only black. It wasn't the absence of light. It was weight.
The first instinct was to push. He pressed both palms into the dirt above him, expecting it to give. It didn't. The soil pushed back, heavy and final, as if it knew it belonged there more than he did.
Something in his mind screamed that he'd been here before.
And then it broke open.
The smell was the first thing. Rotting leaves. Wet wood. The tang of metal on his tongue.
He remembered the sound—shovels striking soil, dull and steady. Someone murmured above him. Too muffled to hear clearly, but the rhythm of the words was wrong for comfort. They weren't trying to calm him. They were agreeing on something.
He tried to call out. The earth swallowed the sound.
There were hands before. Hands pinning him. Hands that didn't shake.
Two voices, close enough that he could have touched their shoes if he'd been able to move. Familiar voices. The kind you'd call for when you were afraid.
One of them said his name.
The other laughed.
The shovel struck again. Dirt slid across his cheek. Into his mouth.
His chest convulsed. He tried to spit, but there was nowhere for the air to go.
He woke up gasping.The desk was there.The room was the wrong size again.
His hands trembled. He looked down. Dirt under his fingernails, the half-moons filled with black.
A knock at the door.The girl stepped inside.
"You're pale," she said. Her tone was careful, too careful. Like she knew what he'd seen.
He stood so quickly the chair tipped over. "It's them, isn't it? It's always been—" He stopped. The rest of the sentence slid away like wet paper. The names. The faces. The certainty.
She walked to the desk, lifted the envelope, and set it down again without opening it. "You're bleeding memories faster now."
"It's not just memories," he said. "It's pieces."
She didn't deny it.
The scene warped—no fade, no warning.
He was outside. The street was empty. The sky wrong.
The Archivist was leaning against a lamppost that hadn't been there before. "Pages can't hide forever," he said. "Not if they keep bleeding through like that."
"They're real," the boy said, almost pleading.
"Maybe." The Archivist's gaze was sharp. "Or maybe they're only as real as the story needs them to be."
"And what if the story ends?"
The Archivist's mouth tightened. "Then you'll see whether they were yours at all."