The library breathed like a sleeping animal, slow and vast. Samy felt it in her teeth first — a vibration that made the fillings ache. Jet's fingertips moved along a spine of leather; the moment she touched it, the book shuddered as though alive.
"This place is wrong," Jet said, pulling her hand back. Her voice was low, but it carried, and the stacks listened.
Tony kept scanning the aisles with a fighter's readiness, eyes darting to every shifting corner. He liked to joke when he was nervous; tonight, no jokes came. Tin stood a step behind them, quiet, every muscle coiled. He always noticed details the others missed — the faint mildew behind a row, the scent of old paper that smelled like a memory. Tonight his jaw was tight. He didn't smile. He watched the library the way he watched people: careful, cataloging what might hurt them next.
Far away, in another calm that felt too calm, Roger and Kim were somewhere else entirely. That distance offered no comfort. The library was its own world — and it had woken.
A heavy thump rolled through the stacks. A book the size of a dinner table slammed onto the floor and fell open with pages glowing red. Ink crawled into shapes: a man on his knees, chains biting into wrists, and a shadow behind him that had too many elbows.
Tony muttered, "Fantastic. Glowing misery."
Samy's breath hitched. Tin stepped forward before anyone could stop him and read the scene with the same flat tone he applied to everything that needed analyzing.
"It's looking for reaction," he said. "It shows fear to see what we do."
Jet crossed her arms. "Cute. It makes memories into monsters. We just blow it up emotionally and call it a day."
Tin didn't laugh. He reached out, touched the edge of the red page. The ink rippled and spilled into the air — not a creature, not exactly. A memory uncoiled.
Samy saw faces she hadn't thought about in years: the senior kids who used to mock her hair and the loud laugh that always came after a nasty comment. It wrapped around her like cold ivy.
"Don't—" Jet snapped, stepping in front of Samy. "Don't look at it. Don't feed it."
Samy trembled. "It feels—real."
Tin's hand closed on her shoulder. Not tight; a steadying pressure. "It isn't real. It's trying to trap you in the old hurt."
Tony launched himself at the memory, fists swinging, and the apparition hissed, breaking into a fog. The red pages snapped shut angrily, then hundreds more books creaked open at once.
Shelves twisted and rearranged; aisles bent like rivers changing course. Ink dripped from high carvings, forming symbols that rotated in the air before splatting silently on the floor and skittering away like black snails.
"This place is learning," Tin said, kneeling to touch the patterns. The symbols reacted to his breath, pulsing darker. "It watches what scares us and then makes more of it."
Tony's laugh was brittle. "Great. A machine that designs terror. Of course."
A blank book tore itself free and hovered before Tony, pages fluttering like wings. On the paper, a future unfurled: Tony, chained and ash-smeared, shoulders bowed under some unknown weight.
Tony's face went white. "No. Not that." He bolted back, but the book lunged, edges slicing like claws.
Jet kicked it hard, sending it careening into a shelf where it slammed shut with a choked sound. "Back off, page-face!"
The book skittered away, but the warning had landed. They were vulnerable. The library could show futures as easily as pasts, and if it learned the pattern of their fear, it would keep returning to the wound until it opened something permanent.
The maze of shelves finally opened into a circular chamber. The walls were alive with rearranging script; letters crawled like insects. In the center, a stone pedestal held a single closed volume. When they stepped in, the crawling words halted and formed a sentence in their language:
ANSWER OR BE TRAPPED. TRUTH UNLOCKS THE PATH.
Tin studied the pedestal like a scientist might study a wound. "It wants honesty. Or submission disguised as honesty."
Samy shuddered. "It could be both. Let's hope it's the truth version."
The book opened on its own. Words lit up on a blank page.
WHO DO YOU FEAR BECOMING?
Tin paused. He could have dodged the question — many did — but he didn't. He had seen dangers, read them in people long before the signs became damage.
"Someone who waits to act because he thinks he can see all moves," Tin said quietly. "Someone who freezes while others get hurt."
The book drank the answer like cold water. The page turned.
WHAT TRUTH DO YOU HIDE?
Samy's voice came out thin. "That I still want to belong. I pretend I don't—because it hurts less that way."
Accepted.
WHAT DO YOU AVOID FACING?
Tony's fingers tightened into fists. "My anger. I stuff it down until it slams out when I least want it to."
Accepted.
WHAT DO YOU RUN FROM?
Jet's laugh died in her throat. She looked at them — at Tin particularly, because he was the mirror she'd always hate to check.
"Showing weakness," she whispered. "Letting anyone learn when I'm scared."
The book closed slowly, as if satisfied. The floor's fog that had been curling around their boots thinned and disappeared. Where it had been, a bright corridor unraveled out of the pedestal.
Tony exhaled loud enough to be embarrassed. "So… we passed. Or whatever this thing calls passing."
Tin stood, the corner of his mouth softening for the first time into something almost like relief. "For now. It learned a little, but there's more. It's not done yet."
Jet flexed her hands. "Bring it. I want to see the next stupid challenge."
Samy slipped her fingers into Tin's. He didn't pull away. He didn't need to.
They walked into the opening together. The living library watched from above, shelves rustling, anticipating the next moment it could try to pry open their worst parts.
Outside, in whatever quiet space Roger and Kim inhabited, no one knew they were being tested again. Inside the library, the four moved forward — wary, matching footsteps, not letting the place pick them off one by one.
Whatever came next, they decided, they would face as a unit.