Amber stood frozen in the doorway, her sketchbook still open to the prophetic drawing. Her hazel eyes—flecked with gold that seemed to catch and hold the Archive's amber light—darted between the three women staring at her and the cracked marble floor that still radiated wrongness.
"I'm not interrupting anything, am I?" she asked, though her voice suggested she already knew the answer.
Skitty let out a laugh that sounded more like a sob. "Oh, you know, just the usual. Wolf dissolved himself into the Archive, some government agent threatened to erase us all, and our friendly neighborhood reality-bender just went full cosmic horror on her. Normal Tuesday."
"It's Saturday," Ari said quietly.
"My point stands."
Amber stepped fully into the Archive, and Skitty noticed how her eyes tracked the silver threads in the air with practiced ease. Not surprised. Not confused. Just... resigned, like someone who'd been expecting this exact scenario.
"You can see them too," Skitty observed. "The threads."
"I've always been able to see them," Amber replied, clutching her sketchbook tighter. "Ever since I was seven. My grandmother told me I was special, that some people could see the patterns that connect everything. She called it a gift." Her voice turned bitter. "She died before she could explain that gifts usually come with price tags."
From the walls, Wolf's voice emerged—softer now, the fury from before replaced by careful control and evident exhaustion. "Amber James. You're early. I wasn't expecting you for another hour."
Amber's head snapped up, searching for the source of the voice. When she couldn't find it, her knuckles went white around the sketchbook. "You're... everywhere?"
"At the moment, yes. It's complicated."
"Your message said I could help. That you needed someone who could see patterns before they formed." Amber opened her sketchbook again, flipping through pages filled with sketches. "I've been drawing the Archive for three weeks. I've never been here before, but I know which floorboards creak, which shelves hold dangerous books, where the reading room catches afternoon light."
She stopped on a particular page and turned it toward the others. The sketch showed Wolf—fully corporeal, wearing the wolf mask—standing beside a young woman with dark brown hair and glasses. Both were studying a book that glowed with internal light.
"I drew this yesterday," Amber said. "Is that you?" She looked at Skitty.
Skitty adjusted her glasses, uncomfortable with the scrutiny. "Probably. I'm the only person Wolf knows who wears glasses and drinks excessive amounts of coffee."
"Your coffee cup is on the table behind you," Amber said, pointing. "Same design as in my sketch. Same chip on the rim."
Skitty turned. The cup sat exactly where Amber had drawn it, chip and all.
"Okay, that's unsettling," Skitty muttered.
Ari moved closer to examine the sketchbook. "You're precognitive. You draw the future."
"I draw possibilities," Amber corrected. "Multiple futures branching from every choice. Most of them never happen, but some..." She flipped to another page showing Dr. Vance's arrival. "Some are inevitable."
"The woman who just left," Wolf said, and there was tension in his voice even through the walls. "You drew her coming here?"
"Three days ago." Amber's hands trembled slightly. "I drew her threatening you. Drew your response. Drew the way your eyes..." She stopped, swallowed hard. "I've been having nightmares about those eyes ever since."
Silence settled over the Archive like a shroud. Skitty saw Amber's face had gone pale, remembered her own terror when confronted with Wolf's rage just minutes ago.
"I'm sorry," Wolf said quietly. "You shouldn't have had to see that version of me. Even secondhand through your drawings."
"Is it true?" Amber asked. "What you told her? About the stories waking up? About reality breaking if you stop being the filter?"
"Yes."
"Then the other drawings are coming true too." Amber flipped through her sketchbook with increasing urgency, showing page after page of apocalyptic imagery: books exploding into consciousness, people dissolving into narrative threads, entire city blocks rewriting themselves into different genres mid-sentence. "I've been drawing the end of the world for weeks and I couldn't understand why until I got your message."
She stopped on the final page—the one she'd shown when she first arrived. The Archive in ruins. Wolf dissolving. Three women trying to save him.
"This is today," Amber said. "This happens today. Maybe in an hour, maybe in ten, but it happens. I've drawn it seventeen different times and it's always the same. You're running out of time, Wolf. Running out of... cohesion."
"I know," Wolf admitted. "I can feel it. Like trying to hold water in cupped hands. The harder I try to reconstitute, the more I slip through my own fingers."
Ari wrapped her arms around herself. "Then what do we do?"
"We figure out who's forcing the stories awake," Wolf said. "That's the root cause. If someone is deliberately rewriting books into consciousness, we need to stop them at the source. Otherwise, even if I reconstitute, the problem continues."
"How do we find them?" Skitty asked.
"We follow the threads." Wolf's voice took on a lecturing tone—falling back into familiar patterns perhaps for comfort. "Every act of reality manipulation leaves traces. Whoever is doing this has been writing changes into hundreds of books simultaneously. That much narrative energy leaves a signature, a pattern. We just need someone who can—"
"See patterns," Amber finished. "That's why you called me."
"Yes." Wolf paused. "Though I'll understand if you want to leave. After what you've seen in your drawings, after witnessing what I became earlier, you have every right to walk away."
Amber was quiet for a long moment, studying her sketches. Her hazel eyes—those gold flecks seeming to pulse with their own internal light—moved across the prophetic images with the careful attention of someone reading a map to their own potential future.
"I've been running from my ability my whole life," she said finally. "Trying not to draw, trying not to see what's coming. It didn't help. The drawings happened anyway. I'd wake up with sketches I didn't remember creating, find notebooks filled with futures I didn't want to witness." She looked up, meeting where she thought Wolf's attention might be focused. "If I can actually help instead of just watching disasters before they happen... that's worth staying."
"The drawings show danger," Ari warned gently. "You might get hurt."
"I get hurt either way," Amber replied with a sad smile. "At least this way I'm choosing to step toward the danger instead of just predicting it from safety."
"That's... remarkably brave," Skitty said. "Or remarkably stupid. I haven't decided which."
"Little bit of both, probably." Amber finally closed her sketchbook. "So how do we do this? How do I help you see the pattern in whoever's causing this?"
"First," Wolf said, "you'll need to attune yourself to the Archive's threads. Right now you're seeing surface connections—the visible filaments linking stories to each other. But there are deeper threads, older patterns. The fundamental narrative structures that underlie reality itself."
"How do I see those?"
"By touching one of the awakened books directly. Terminus Chronicles is still contained from earlier. If you can establish a connection with it, you'll be able to trace its awakening back to the source. See who wrote the changes, where they're located, what they're trying to accomplish."
Amber bit her lip. "That sounds dangerous."
"It is," Wolf admitted. "The book is semi-conscious. It might try to pull you into its narrative, make you part of its story. You'd need to maintain enough sense of self to resist absorption while still being open enough to receive information."
"I'll be there," Ari said immediately. "I can anchor you. Keep you grounded in this reality while you explore the book's."
"And I'll..." Skitty looked around helplessly. "I'll do whatever the normal person does in situations like this. Moral support? Coffee?"
"Your presence stabilizes reality," Wolf reminded her. "Just being near Amber while she's connected will help keep her from being pulled too deep."
"Great. My superpower is standing nearby and being concerned." Skitty grabbed her messenger bag. "At least I have snacks."
Amber managed a genuine smile at that. "Snacks are good. Snacks are normal."
"Speaking of normal," Skitty said, pulling out her phone. "Should I be worried that Sarah hasn't shown up yet? You said she was on her way from the city."
"Sarah?" Amber's head snapped up. "Sarah Chen? Dreams that manifest?"
"You know her?" Ari asked.
"I've drawn her." Amber flipped through her sketchbook rapidly. "Here—Sarah standing in front of the Archive, but she's..." Amber's voice trailed off, confusion creasing her brow. "This doesn't make sense."
Skitty leaned over to look. The sketch showed a young woman with long black hair standing before the Archive's entrance. But the image was wrong, distorted. Sarah's form seemed to flicker between solid and translucent, and around her feet, flowers grew—impossible flowers with colors that shouldn't exist, petals opening to reveal tiny geometric patterns that hurt to look at.
"Those are the flowers from her dreams," Amber said slowly. "The ones that manifested in her apartment courtyard. But in this drawing, they're not just growing. They're spreading. Taking over the sidewalk, the street, climbing the Archive's walls..."
"When did you draw this?" Wolf asked, and there was new tension in his voice.
"Two hours ago. Right before I left to come here."
The Archive's lights flickered.
Wolf's voice came back sharp, focused. "Ari, check the perimeter. Now."
Ari didn't question. She moved to the nearest window with inhuman speed, her translucent form becoming more ethereal as she peered outside. Her copper eyes widened.
"Wolf," she said quietly. "You need to see this."
Skitty and Amber rushed to join her at the window.
Outside, the Archive's front steps were covered in flowers. Not ordinary flowers—these bloomed in impossible colors, petals that shifted through shades that had no names. They grew in fast-forward, spreading across concrete and stone, roots burrowing into cracks and widening them, stems reaching upward with deliberate purpose.
And standing in the middle of the floral invasion, staring up at the Archive with eyes that didn't quite focus on the present, was Sarah Chen.
She looked exactly as Amber had drawn her. Long black hair loose around her shoulders, wearing the same gray sweater from the sketch. But her feet didn't quite touch the ground. She hovered an inch above the flowers, supported by nothing visible, and her expression was distant—not absent, but focused on something no one else could see.
"Is she awake?" Skitty asked. "Or is this... sleepwalking?"
"Something in between," Wolf said. "She's dreaming while conscious. The boundary between her sleeping and waking mind has dissolved."
As they watched, more flowers erupted from the ground. Vines thick as wrists crawled up the Archive's exterior walls, their leaves forming patterns that matched the geometric designs on Wolf's mask—angles that hurt to perceive, fractals that suggested depth in directions that shouldn't exist.
"She's not attacking," Ari observed. "She's... reaching out. Trying to connect."
"Or trying to enter," Wolf said grimly. "Sarah's dreams respond to her emotional state. If she's desperate, confused, seeking help—her subconscious might be trying to force entry the only way it knows how. Through manifest dreaming."
The flowers reached the window where they stood. Petals pressed against the glass, and where they touched, frost formed. Not from cold, but from narrative incompatibility—Sarah's dream-reality meeting the Archive's story-reality and neither quite able to process the other.
Amber flipped through her sketchbook frantically. "I have more drawings of her. From after she enters. They show—" She stopped, face going pale. "Oh no."
"What?" Skitty demanded. "What do the drawings show?"
Amber held up a page. The sketch showed the interior of the Archive transformed into a garden—flowers growing from bookshelves, vines replacing silver threads, reality itself being slowly rewritten from story-logic into dream-logic. And in the center of it all, Sarah stood with her arms outstretched, eyes glowing with the same silver-blue radiance that had blazed from Wolf during his rage.
Beneath the image, in handwriting that definitely wasn't Amber's, three words were written:
She joins him.
"Joins him?" Skitty looked from the sketch to where Wolf's presence permeated the walls. "What does that mean?"
"It means," Wolf said slowly, understanding dawning in his voice, "that Sarah isn't just manifesting dreams anymore. She's becoming like me. Dissolving into her medium. Spreading throughout her domain. If she enters the Archive in this state, we won't be able to separate her consciousness from mine."
"Would that be bad?" Ari asked.
"It would be... complicated. Two reality-benders sharing the same space, both partially dissolved, both trying to maintain coherence while containing awakening stories." Wolf paused. "We'd either stabilize each other or destroy each other. I genuinely don't know which."
The flowers reached the Archive's door. Vines wrapped around the handle, and the wood began to crack—not from force, but from incompatible realities trying to occupy the same space.
"We need to get her inside before she tears through the boundary," Wolf said. "But carefully. If she enters hostile or panicked, her dreams could override the Archive's narrative structure entirely."
"How do we get someone to calm down when they're trapped between dreaming and waking?" Skitty asked.
Amber was already moving toward the door, sketchbook clutched to her chest. "I have an idea. But I need to get close to her."
"That's dangerous," Ari warned.
"Everything about this is dangerous." Amber's hazel eyes—those gold flecks now seeming to glow with determination—met each of theirs in turn. "But I've been drawing her for three weeks. I know her fears, her hopes, what she's running from and what she's running toward. If anyone can reach her, it's me."
"Or," Skitty said, hefting her messenger bag, "you could let the normal person try first. Sometimes the best solution isn't magical. Sometimes it's just... coffee and common sense."
"You want to walk out there?" Ari asked incredulously. "Into the reality-distortion field?"
"I stabilize reality, right? That's apparently my thing?" Skitty shrugged, trying to project confidence she didn't feel. "So let's find out what happens when Ms. Normal meets Ms. Nightmare Garden."
Wolf was quiet for a moment. Then: "It might work. Your presence could give Sarah something solid to focus on. Something undeniably real to anchor to."
"Great." Skitty took a deep breath. "So I just walk out there, introduce myself, and hope she doesn't turn me into a rosebush?"
"More or less," Wolf confirmed. "Though I'd recommend moving slowly. And perhaps leading with the fact that I sent for her, that she's expected and welcome."
"Right. Expected and welcome. I can do that." Skitty looked at the door, at the vines crushing through the wood, at the flowers pressing against every window. "This is definitely the weirdest thing I've done this year."
"The year's not over yet," Ari muttered.
Skitty approached the door slowly. Through the warped wood and proliferating vines, she could see Sarah's silhouette—still hovering, still distant, but also somehow yearning. Reaching out. Seeking connection even while her dreams threatened to overwhelm everything around her.
"Sarah?" Skitty called through the door. "Sarah Chen? My name is Skitty. Wolf asked me to meet you. You're at the right place. We've been waiting for you."
The flowers stopped growing.
Not dramatically. Not all at once. But gradually, like a held breath being slowly released.
Sarah's form solidified slightly. Her feet touched the ground. Her eyes focused forward—not quite on the door, but closer to the present moment than before.
"He's... here?" Sarah's voice was soft, uncertain. "The Guardian?"
"He's here," Skitty confirmed. "Though he's had a bit of a... transformative day. It's complicated. But you're expected, you're welcome, and we need your help."
"My help?" Sarah laughed, the sound brittle and close to breaking. "I can't even help myself. I can't stop dreaming. Can't wake up fully. Can't sleep properly. I'm stuck between and it's killing me."
"We know," Skitty said gently. "That's why Wolf called you. Because being stuck between is what we do here. It's our specialty."
The vines loosened their grip on the door handle slightly.
Amber stepped forward, her artist's eye catching details the others missed. "Sarah, I've been drawing you. For weeks. I know this is terrifying, but you need to know—the dreams aren't a curse. They're trying to tell you something. Show you something. You just need to learn their language."
Sarah's head turned toward Amber's voice, eyes struggling to focus. "Who...?"
"I'm Amber. I draw futures. You manifest dreams. We're..." She paused, searching for the right word. "We're colleagues. In the impossible."
Sarah's laugh was more genuine this time. "Colleagues in the impossible. I like that."
The flowers began to retract. Not disappearing—they remained, beautiful and strange and definitely not natural—but they stopped spreading. Stopped trying to force entry. Instead, they formed a path from where Sarah stood to the Archive's door, petals arranged in patterns that suggested welcome rather than invasion.
"I don't know how to control it," Sarah admitted, looking down at the flowers she'd unconsciously created. "The dreaming. It just... happens. Whether I want it to or not."
"We'll teach you," Wolf said, his voice emerging from the walls but gentler now, all traces of earlier fury gone. "That's what the Archive is for. Teaching people to control abilities they never asked for. Helping them understand gifts that feel like curses."
"And if I can't learn?" Sarah asked, vulnerability raw in her voice. "If I'm too broken?"
"Then we'll be broken together," Skitty said simply. "Come inside, Sarah. It's warmer in here. And I have snacks."
For a moment, Sarah stood frozen. Then she took one step forward. Then another. The flowers parted for her with each step, creating that impossible path, and when she reached the door, the vines released their grip entirely.
Skitty opened the door.
Sarah stepped across the threshold.
The moment she entered, the Archive seemed to sigh—a sound like pages settling, like books finding their proper shelves. The temperature stabilized. The silver threads that had been vibrating with tension relaxed into gentle pulsing rhythms.
Sarah looked around the reading room with wonder and recognition. "I've dreamed this place," she whispered. "Every night for a month. I thought it was just my imagination, but it's real. It's all real."
"Dreams usually are," Amber said softly. "We just call them dreams when we experience them alone and reality when we experience them together."
Sarah turned to face them—Skitty with her practical messenger bag and concerned expression, Ari with her translucent form and copper eyes, Amber with her sketchbook full of prophetic futures. Her own eyes were brown, deep and exhausted, carrying the weight of too many sleepless nights and too many dreams that refused to stay contained.
"So what now?" Sarah asked. "What happens to the four of us stuck between dreaming and waking, fiction and reality, normal and impossible?"
From the walls, from the books, from the very architecture of the Archive itself, Wolf's voice emerged—warm, welcoming, carrying traces of the scholar he'd been before dissolution claimed him:
"Now," he said, "we figure out who's trying to wake up every story ever written. We trace the pattern back to its source. We stop them before reality itself forgets the difference between written and lived."
He paused, and when he continued, there was something almost like hope in his voice:
"And maybe, if we're very lucky, we learn that being stuck between isn't a curse at all. It's just a different way of being whole."
The four women stood together in the Archive's amber light, surrounded by silver threads and awakening books and the lingering scent of impossible flowers. Outside, the sun was setting. Inside, something new was beginning—fragile, uncertain, but undeniably real.
Amber opened her sketchbook to a blank page.
She began to draw.