He woke up.
The desk was there.The envelope wasn't.
He reached for the memory of the last thing he'd done, but it came in bursts: the girl's voice, the swing in the shop window, the sound of dirt shifting above him—none of it in the right order.
He stood, opened the door—
and found himself standing outside, mid-step, as if the hallway had been erased in the time it took to blink.
The street was empty this time. No loops, no faces. Just buildings leaning toward him as if they were listening. He walked faster.
He woke up.
The desk was there.The envelope was there.He picked it up.
It was blank.
He didn't remember sitting down, but the chair was beneath him, and his hand already held a pen. He wrote the word key over and over until it filled the page, until the letters bent into shapes that weren't letters anymore.
The paper tore when he set it down.
The room flickered, like a candle about to gutter—
He woke up.
The girl was in front of him.
"I found something," he told her. "Under the tree."
Her eyes widened, but the reaction was cut off, as if the scene had been sliced in the middle. The next moment, they were walking down an alley neither of them had entered.
"I'm losing it," he said.
"You're losing you," she said, and her voice sounded wrong—like someone else was saying it through her mouth.
He woke up.
The Archivist was sitting at the desk.
"You're accelerating," he said without greeting.
The boy's voice cracked. "I can't hold anything."
"That's because there's less to hold." The Archivist leaned forward. "The pages are slipping out faster than I can catch them."
"I don't care about the pages," the boy said. "I care about—"
"You don't remember what you care about," the Archivist interrupted.
And he was gone.
He woke up.
He was running.
The city was breaking apart around him—sidewalks tilting, glass bending without shattering, clouds peeling away like old paint to reveal nothing behind them. He thought he saw the girl ahead of him, but her dress flickered from white to black to grey between each step.
He called out to her.
The sound fell out of his mouth like a stone and never hit the ground.
He woke up.
The room was smaller.
The walls were closer, the desk pressed almost against his knees. The air felt thick. He looked at his hands. Dirt was under his fingernails again.
His stomach turned.
"I had it," he whispered to himself. "I had it."
Had what?
He closed his eyes, trying to force the memory into shape. It was there—on the other side of something—but the harder he reached, the further it slipped.
The thought hit him like cold water:If the loops kept shrinking, he wouldn't have enough time to remember anything at all.
Not the key.Not the girl.Not even himself.