“Who are you?”
He doesn’t answer. The hooded man glides past me like I’m furniture—something irrelevant and entirely unworthy of acknowledgment. His steps don’t echo. They don’t even sound like steps. I follow. Not out of trust. Out of necessity.
No words. No footsteps. Just movement—too smooth to feel natural, too slow to be threatening. The shelves bend slightly as we move through them, not in design but in presence. As if they know where we’re going and shift just enough to allow passage. No doors. No tricks. Just… space. We arrive at a clearing of sorts. A circular alcove tucked into the heart of the library. A low, stone bench curves around a single round table in the center. The table is carved with concentric rings—each one etched with symbols I don’t understand, spiralling inward like an eye gazing up toward the domed ceiling above. The hooded figure lowers himself onto the bench with the slow, deliberate weight of someone ancient and unbothered. He folds his hands, head bowed slightly—as if waiting. Watching something I can’t see. Then, without looking up, he speaks. His voice is rough parchment over stone. Low, smooth, and unreadable.
“It’s been a while since someone alive was here. Let alone doing well.”
I stop walking. The words hang there, casual and cold. “Someone alive,” I echo, quietly. I’m not sure if it was a statement or a test.
What the hell am I supposed to respond to that? The silence stretches again. Then I settle on the obvious again: “…Who are you?”
He simply begins to speak,
“You carried the weight of your world in silence. Not to be brave— but to avoid asking for help you didn’t think you deserved.”
His hood tilts slightly, not in judgment— in recognition.
“You call it strength. But I wonder… how much of it was just fear wearing good posture?”
My breath stalls in my throat.
“Tell me—when did exhaustion become your normal? When did you stop waiting to feel okay, and start calling survival a personality trait?”
His hand grazes the edge of the table. The carvings react—faint pulses of light, like veins beneath stone.
“You rewrote your story in small lies. I’m fine. I can handle it. It’s not that bad. You told them so often they became scripture.”
He looks up. I can’t see his eyes. But I feel them.
“This place was born the moment you broke in a way no one saw. Not all at once. Just enough to fall through the cracks— Until you stopped being a person with pain… and started being the pain itself.
I don’t answer. A weight settles in my stomach. Not new—just finally noticeable. My thoughts begin to organize themselves, piece by piece. Everything he said starts to make sense in a way that hurts. This place isn’t drifting further from reality. It’s pulling me closer to it. The pressure in my chest is familiar. That frozen feeling where you can’t move, can’t breathe right, like your body’s afraid of your own mind. Thoughts circling until they coil around your legs, dragging you down until sleep becomes a kind of drowning. The shame sits just beneath the skin. Not about what I’ve done— just the fact that I keep needing to explain myself, even when no one’s asking. That isolation doesn’t need walls. I built it myself. These aren’t metaphors. They’re memories. Thought patterns. Things I feel every day. Things I think every night. I’ve carried all of it into this world without realizing. I can’t explain it, but something about this place starts to feel… familiar. Like a song you’ve heard once in a dream— a melody that hums just beneath recognition. I stand still. Trying to replay his words. Trying to replay mine. Mostly just trying not to throw up. I haven’t had time to process any of this. I don’t get time. Because he continues.
“You can sit.”
He gestures to the empty bench across from where he’s seated. Like this is a conversation we’ve had before. Like it’s already happening, with or without me. I move on instinct. The ground tilts slightly under me. Vertigo creeps up my spine like a warning. He watches. Not impatient—just inevitable.
“What was the first thing that happened to you when you landed here?”
I open my mouth. Nothing comes out. “Hmmm,” I manage, which is less of a sound and more of a glitch. I know what I want to say. But the words feel distant. Like I forgot half the alphabet. The Guardian leans forward slightly.
“Boy, you have to start to think. Calm down the storm and start thinking— or it won’t end well.”
I look at him. “Not end well? What d—” He cuts me off. Sharp.
“What is the first thing that happened?”
His voice doesn’t rise. But something about it drops— like a hand slamming onto the table without needing to move. I take a breath. Then another.
Okay. First thing I remember? Nothing. A blank. Then— like someone flipped a switch and every locked drawer in my brain opened at once— a truckload of thoughts smashed into me. Almost three decades of life compressed into a few minutes. Regrets, names, mistakes, feelings I thought I’d buried. Like someone binge-watched my entire existence at 5x speed and left me with the aftertaste. Is that what he meant? Do I say that out loud?
Before the sentence can even finish forming in my head, he responds.
“Yes. That’s what I meant.”
My spine tightens. Can he read thoughts now?
“Yes,” he says, calmly.
And then, without taking his eyes off me, he shifts. Slow, deliberate—like he’s practiced making people uncomfortable without lifting a finger. He sinks into the bench across from me. Moves like someone who owns time. And suddenly I feel younger than I am. Smaller than I should. Like the weight of my thoughts is written across my skin and he’s reading every word.
