232.778

The boy huffed and puffed as he ran up the stairs. His lungs were straining to keep propelling him up, legs burning but he needed to get up to stop what was happening. The stairway was painted a dull white, muffled light was streaming in through the dusty windows. The staircase smelled sterile and of forgotten-ness. When the elevators had been installed, almost all people had forgotten that it was here. He gasped for air. He was halfway through. The stairs felt bouncy under his foot, as if they were helping him reach the top faster. Barely had his foot touched a stair than the other one touched the next, and the first bounced to the third. When he had started, fifteen minutes ago, he was taking two steps at a time. Bounding up the staircase. Now, sweat was dripping off his brows, flying behind him. His hair was matted with it.

He had gotten the call earlier. Angry, confused, betrayed, sounded the voice on the other side of the phone. He hadn’t thought it would happen. It seemed almost impossible. But as the time he had been given drew nearer, he grew more and more upset. He could not take that risk. Never should have trusted him with it. Now was not the time for regrets.

His eyes were starting to blur, with tears, sweat, and exhaustion. Two thirds of the way up. The sunlight trickled in slowly, bright and hot where it shone, cracks of light on the floor.

Why though? Why? He had wondered after the call. It wasn’t too hard to figure out, though. The answer dawned on him pretty soon. Maybe he had always known. He had. He had just refused to believe it. The man was bitter, but how could he ever have thought that about him.

The smell grew stronger. He thought he smelled ashes. Aside from that, the stale air was stronger here, the closer he got to the top. His body was starting to smell from all that moisture. The dry air here was wicking it off of him, quenching its thirst.

The book was plain. Simple, unassuming. Leather cover, but there were hundreds of thousands of books with leather covers around the world. Pages yellowed by age, just as their caretaker was, the man he was going to see. The writing made no sense in any one language in the world. But the story went, the story passed down from generation to generation of his family, that the writing was in every language of the world. The One Tongue, his grandfather told him. The first, the last. The language from which all others sprang. That is why no one person could decipher it. Over the millennia, many had tried. Until the book had faded from the minds of all but those entrusted with it and the responsibility that came with, and their blood. He had sat confused after the call because he had never really believed what was passed down about the book. But what if it had been true?

That was why he was running. He jerked the handle, the door hit the wall, a bang echoing all the way down the staircase, and he was on the top floor. The elevator hadn’t been working today.

The book was the collective conscious of all literature.

“Grandfather, don't.” He screamed before the door to his grandfather’s apartment had even started to close.

The wrinkled old man looked at him sadly, a single tear hobbling down his face. Quietly, he said, “Literature. They do not deserve it.”

He dropped the match from his hand. The book caught fire.