The final room took its time revealing itself, as if it wanted him to be sure. When the walls settled, two doors faced him.
The first was familiar: a handle smoothed by repetition, edges worn by countless turns. He could feel the grooves of his own history in it—letters written and forgotten, swings visited and fled, deaths rehearsed until they dulled. Behind it lay the mercy of habit, the narcotic of trying again.
The second door almost wasn't a door at all: a seam, a hairline split, a suggestion. No handle. No grain. It looked like a mistake the architect had decided to keep.
The Archivist stood between them, older still, though time had no right to work here. "I can close the first one," he said. "But I won't. It's not mine to close."
"And the other?"
"It's never been opened. Not by you."
"What's there?"
"I don't know," the Archivist said, and for once his voice was not an answer but a true admission. "It might be nothing. It might be everything you can't take with you."
The boy looked at the familiar door. He saw whole bookshelves of almosts: the comfort of the fake trauma, the sweet ache of being wrong and knowing it, the loops where he stayed angry because anger felt like proof of life.
He placed the thin book on a small table by the wall. He placed the key beside it.
"Will you read it?" he asked.
"I already have," the Archivist said. "Every time."
"Then take care of it," he said. "Even if no one else comes."
"I will."
He stepped to the seam and pressed his palms flat against it. Paper flexed. Light bled through like breath through cloth.
He didn't say goodbye to the Archivist. He didn't say goodbye to the girl. He didn't say goodbye to himself.
He pushed.