Chapter 36: The Library Burns

They walked in silence.

The Cartographer had vanished the moment they turned from the tracks. Not walked — vanished. Like a page ripped straight from a book, without leaving a seam behind. One moment he had been standing, maps swinging like lanterns in wind — the next, nothing.

Haruto and Hina strolled together, side by side, but even that wasn't steady now. With each step, his mind skipped further. As if his own personal narrative was skipping pages. He blinked and there was a vending machine. Blinked again and there was a lamppost. Blinked a third time — there was nothing at all. Just static. ***.

Hina didn't respond. She walked with her scarf gripped in both hands — though he wasn't certain it was cold. Maybe she wasn't sure either.

"Where are we going?" he asked.

"You said you knew," Hina whispered.

Did he?

He attempted to trace back the reasoning. One anchor after another. Countdown ticking. Loss mounting. Something had brought him here — something intuitive. Like a final page calling to be read.

Then he saw it — looming like a mirage in front of them: the Library.

A tall white spire striped with copper and light, it now bent slightly, like an old man standing against the gale. Its spires trembled. Pages floated in slow parabolas through the air, disintegrating before they touched the ground.

The ground around it cracked like an egg. Roots of memory tore loose.

The large doors were open.

But there was no light.

They entered.

The inside smelled of scorched paper and something old — the rot of time itself. The walls, once warm and endless, now curved inward like a gullet closing. Shelves leaned like alcoholics. Scrolls curled inward, striving to protect secrets too weak to be remembered.

Whispers unraveled through the air, brushing their ears with half-heard phrases.

Haruto took a book. The spine cracked like parched skin. The title was rubbed off, but he remembered that it had been his.

Only blank pages within.

One line on the last page:

"You were here."

He closed it. Now the book was heavier, as if weighted by its silence.

Hina moved beside him. She pointed to a floating sheet of paper that was shaped like a feather. "That one spoke my name," she whispered.

They looked around. More pages danced like dead leaves on a still breeze. Some hovered in mid-air. Others disintegrated in mid-air. Whispers lingered in the air like dandelion down. Some were hisses. Some were pleas. Some just repeated names over and over — broken prayers to gods long forgotten.

A book opened by itself. The pages turned — faster, faster — and then burned without fire, dissolving into dust.

And somewhere in the deep stacks — fire.

Crackling. \\

And laughter.

But it wasn't merry. It was empty. Mechanical. Like a record skipping on a joke it no longer knew how to finish.

He stood as he always stood: tall, lean, half-shadow.

"Haruto," the Librarian said. "You've reached the core."

The fire now burned behind him — a slow, creeping flame that didn't spread fast, but relentlessly.

Haruto looked past him. The shelves at the back of the library were already ablaze — not with normal fire, but with a ghostly silver-blue flame that consumed memories instead of paper. Books keened softly as they dissolved. One of them had Ayaka's name on it.

"How did it start?" Haruto asked.

"It never started," the Librarian replied. "It's always burning. But each anchor you created stirred the air. Gave the flame something new to feed on. Truth is fuel, Haruto. And you've been wasteful."

Haruto's voice cracked. "So I did this."

"You revealed this," the Librarian corrected. "And now the system is reacting."

"I anchored five," Haruto said. "Why are they disappearing?"

The Librarian extended his hand. A glowing thread unraveled from his wrist. At its tip: a loop — the same kind Haruto had seen earlier before the first countdown.

"Each anchor struggled against entropy. But resistance isn't reprieve. Memory has boundaries. Your soul. even more."

He stepped aside.

Behind him: six chairs.

All of them empty.

"You can still choose. Reset… or remember.".

Hina clutched at Haruto's arm, her eyes large. "Reset to what?" she whispered.

"To a version of the world in which none of this pain existed," the Librarian said. "The countdown never begins. The echoes never wake. You never looked. You live in peace. Alone, but unaware.".

Haruto closed his eyes. His heartbeat was distant, someone else's. He could hear the fire burning pages. Could smell ink melting.

Ayaka's laugh. The sound of Hina offering him her scarf. Mirror-Haruto's bitter admonition: "You chose pain."

And then — nothing.

"What's the price?" he asked.

The Librarian tilted his head.

"Simply what you love."

The flames now were more rapid.

Slow at first, starvation coals licking the floor. But when Haruto hesitated, they swarmed — a living creature sensing hesitation. They crept up the nearest shelf, jumped to the second, then the third. Ink bled from the covers like bursting veins.

Every flame was shaped like a memory.

One looked like a broken childhood pencil.

One assumed Ayaka's voice.

One bore Hina's silhouette — small, trembling, calling to him across the fire.

"No," Haruto breathed.

He stepped forward blindly, as though to follow them — but the fire pushed him back with a spark of static and air.

Behind him, Hina stumbled.

Her hand was missing.

Not burned. Not severed.

Just… forgotten.

Warped at the edges like film dissolving in acid.

She stared at the empty space where her fingers should be.

"I'm slipping," she said. "Haruto, I'm not going to be able to hold on."

Haruto grabbed her wrist — the part that still was.

"You're here," he said. "You're real."

She looked up at him — face half-lit by the flames. "Not for long."

He heard the truth of it in her voice — the shake, the lag between her words and her mouth.

The Library wasn't just burning stories. It was erasing them.

Erasing her.

He looked to the chairs. They were glowing now. Beckoning.

"I could go back," he whispered. "Reset it all. Save you."

"But you wouldn't recall me," said Hina.

He couldn't breathe.

"I don't want peace," he said.

"Then remember," she said, her voice barely audible. "Even if it hurts. Even if it means watching me fade."

He took a breath.

And stepped forward.

Past the chairs.

Into the fire.

The heat didn't sear.

It stripped.

Layer upon layer, he felt his memory stripped from his skin. Names lost weight. Dates disintegrated. Feelings became unattached from their sources.

He walked until the fire turned blue.

And there, at its very center, was a small pedestal.

One page rested on it.

He picked it up.

One sentence, in his own handwriting:

"Will you be the echo, or the one who remembers them?"

Haruto turned.

Hina was all but gone.

He looked at the page.

Then at the fire.

Then he whispered:

"I remember."

The Library screamed.

And the bells began ringing again.

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