Seraphina climbed the last cliff stair with a broom in one hand and her red hair pinned back. She had promised herself she would fix the library her ancestors built here. Now she stood in its doorway and saw the impossible size of that promise. Shelves rose four stories into the dark. Ivy crawled through cracks in the stone. Thousands of books lay in heaps, spines split, pages loose. Her wings twitched against her back. She did not know where a single one belonged. She picked up a book and stared at the empty shelves. If she set it in the wrong place, no one would ever find it again. Her ancestors had ordered every volume by some plan. That plan was gone. She sorted one pile by color, then stopped. Color meant nothing. She tried by size. That was worse. By afternoon she had moved a hundred books and understood none of it. She sank onto a broken step and pressed her palms to her eyes. A warm breath stirred her hair. She looked up. A ginger-colored horse stood in the doorway, wings folded along its warm coat, mane pale and flowing. It had climbed the cliff stair on hooves that should not fit. The horse walked past her, straight to a toppled shelf, and pushed its nose against a small brass plate bolted to the wood. Seraphina crossed to the shelf and rubbed grime from the plate. Letters showed through. Numbers followed the letters. She turned and looked hard at the other shelves. Every one carried a plate. She had walked past them all day. Each plate held a letter and a number. She grabbed a fallen book and checked its spine. A tiny mark, faded but real, matched the code. The books were not sorted by color or size. They were sorted by these marks, and the shelves told her exactly where each mark belonged. She laughed out loud and the sound echoed up the ruined tower. The winged horse stamped once, as if pleased with itself. Seraphina found the first book she had touched that morning. She read its mark, walked to the matching shelf, and slid it home. It fit. For the first time all day, one thing was right. She reached for the next book and stopped. The mark had worn to a smudge. She checked another. Also smudged. She pulled ten more from the pile. Half the marks were gone, rubbed away by time and damp. The shelves knew where the books went. But the books had forgotten their own names. Seraphina held a nameless volume in both hands and understood her real problem had only begun.