I've always believed that the secret to a happy life is setting the bar for excitement very, very low.
As the Senior Archivist of the City of Omen, my most dangerous daily activity was correcting catalog errors. Yesterday, someone had shelved Funerary Flora of the Lower Realms under Botany instead of Necromancy, and I'd needed a full cup of tea and several deep breaths to recover.
I was three bites into a perfectly adequate ham sandwich when the universe decided to file a formal complaint.
The air above the Reference Desk groaned.
Not vibrated. Groaned. Like reality itself had stubbed its toe.
I looked up just as a hairline fracture appeared in empty space—thin, crooked, and wrong. It reminded me of a cracked mirror, except instead of silver backing, there was a swirl of neon-pink nebula on the other side. Something large and tentacled drifted past the crack, looking profoundly disappointed.
"Oh, come on," I muttered, carefully setting my sandwich on a napkin. "I just had the floors waxed."
The ceiling exploded.
Glass, stone, and several centuries of architectural integrity came crashing down as a man in glowing platinum armor smashed through the skylight and landed face-first in the Biography section.
He skidded across the floor, coughing up golden glitter.
Behind him, the fracture widened—and out floated a giant eyeball the size of a carriage, hovering serenely in midair. A gold monocle was clipped over its iris.
Because of course it was.
The armored man dragged himself toward me, leaving a smear of luminous dust across the carpet. He grabbed my wrist with surprising strength and shoved a cold, pulsing crystal shard into my hand.
"Take it," he wheezed. "The Core—if the Curator gets it—the story ends—"
"Sir," I said, trying to give the glowing rock back, "I'm a librarian. The only cores I deal with are apple. You're looking for the Hero Department. Three blocks down, next to—"
He dissolved.
One second, dying knight. The next, a pile of rose petals that smelled faintly of expensive cologne and bad decisions.
I stared at the petals.
"…That's new."
"UNAUTHORIZED ARCHIVING DETECTED," boomed a voice that had never known mercy or a customer service survey.
The eyeball rotated to face me.
"SUBJECT: ARTHUR VANE. OCCUPATION: NON-ENTITY. ACTION: DELETE."
"Now wait just a minute," I said, my heart hammering in a way I found deeply unprofessional. "I have a union. You can't just delete a city employee without a hearing."
The Eye began to glow.
The shard in my hand melted—liquid heat racing up my arm and settling behind my eyes.
The world changed.
I no longer saw shelves. I saw descriptions of shelves. Footnotes. Marginalia. Poorly written load-bearing metaphors.
I didn't see a monster.
I saw a very badly edited antagonist.
The Eye fired a beam of pure erasure.
My brain screamed Inaccurate! and I flicked my wrist.
The beam hit the air in front of me and turned into six furious, honking geese.
The geese immediately attacked the monocle.
The Eye blinked.
I blinked.
"…Did I just do that?" I asked the ruined library.
"Technically, the Shard did it," said a raspy voice from beneath my desk. "But you provided the sarcasm. That's the fuel."
A fat orange tabby cat emerged from the wreckage, wearing a tiny gold crown stolen from something that had definitely not consented.
"I'm Puck," the cat said, licking his paw. "Former God of Conquest. Current divinity of naps and grudges. You just broke the Great Script."
"I just wanted to finish my sandwich."
"Tragic backstory," Puck nodded. "The Curator's Janitors will be here shortly. They don't use soap. They use a vacuum that sucks you out of history."
The furnace at the back of the library glowed emerald green.
"That's a Slipstream," Puck said. "Smells like wet copper and regret. Much better than deletion."
I looked at my glowing hand.
I looked at my ruined sandwich.
"I'm going to regret this."
"That's the spirit."
I grabbed the cat and jumped.