I’ve read a dozen accounts of those clandestine stacks, tucked behind brick walls or in the crawl‑spaces of abandoned churches. They were the only place where rebels could flip a page on a banned novel without getting hit for the next hour. I even have a small, dusty volume of a suppressed manifesto that once slipped into my collection—no one knows how I got it, but it’s a good thing it’s in my personal archive.

I keep it under a false title and inside a hollowed‑out case that’s glued shut; if it falls into the wrong hands, I’ll lose the very thing that keeps me sane. The truth whispers back when I turn the pages, but it also demands that I keep it hidden, like a secret flame in a cellar that only I can control.