The bar was a disaster zone of upturned mahogany tables and shattered highball glasses. Tom sat at the only remaining upright stool, hunched over a tablet playing security footage on a loop. He stared at the grainy screen, rubbed his temples, and let out a long, weary sigh.
"So," Tom began with a flat voice as he tried to understand what he'd just seen, "The Professor Mayakovsky, right? He gets caught sleeping with his student. He's sentenced to life as a magical hermit in a castle high up north. Then, because magic gets absolutely wrecked for everyone except us, the pact keeping him there dissolves like cheap sugar. So, naturally, he comes back, picks up right where he left off, and marries said student."
Beside him, Larry leaned against the bar, picking a piece of food out of his teeth, "Pretty much covers the rehearsal dinner."
Tom pointed at the screen. "And to celebrate, the happy couple comes to this bar. Where the Professor is confronted by one of his exes, Professor Lipson from Brakebills who proceeds to pickpocket a battery off him. One of the high-yield, internal-core batteries we developed with the Boss."
"Yes," Larry nodded solemnly. "The 'Don't-Leave-This-Near-Crazy-People' model."
"Then," Tom continued with his voice rising in disbelief, "Lipson uses the battery to turn Mayakovsky into a literal bear. A bear that then proceeds to turn this bar upside down and inside out. Tell me I missed something, Larry. Please."
Larry snorted. "You forgot the part where Lipson wandered out into the street, high on stolen juice, and used the magic on a museum -worthy piece. She brought a dinosaur to life, Tom. A dinosaur that then went on a very public, very confused orgy in the park. Among other things. At least that's what the boss told me, I didn't ask how he supposedly knows the future."
Tom stared into his drink for a long, silent minute before downing the entire glass of amber liquid in one go. He slammed the glass onto the counter. "This is all Boss's fault. You know that, right? Kai's 'generosity' is basically just chaos with a better haircut."
"Oh, I know," Larry replied, pushing off the bar and stretching his shoulders. "I definitely know. But who's gonna say it to his face? You, because it's certainly ain't gonna be me."
Tom sighed, looking at the wreckage of the room. "Well, now what?"
"Now," Larry said as his expression sharpened a bit, "we go get those batteries back before Lipson turns a city bus into a sentient dragon. I've got the Professor or the bear, whatever he is right now. You go after the new bride. She's probably got the spare battery."
Larry stepped toward the door, paused for a fraction of a second, and then vanished in a blur of vamp-speed.
Tom sat alone for a moment. He signaled the bartender who was currently cleaning the shot cups for one last shot.
"Man, I hate my boss," Tom muttered to the empty room. He suddenly froze, his eyes darting toward the security camera in the corner, he then pointed a shaky finger at the bartender's hiding spot, "Don't tell him I said that. Seriously. He'll turn my kidneys into maracas."
With a sudden burst of speed, Tom blurred out of the bar, leaving nothing but a spinning stool and a very confused bartender.
———-
Ever since the "Anomaly", that chaotic, innocent-eyes ripple in the fabric of things known as Kai had delivered his cryptic warning to Zelda, the silence of the stacks had felt like a held breath.
'Warning Everett?' Zelda thought, her heels clicking rhythmically against the marble floor.
Everett, the Head of Circulation, was the silent heart of the Library. He oversaw the Balance; he ensured that every book, every storyline, and every branch of reality remained in its designated place. It was a monumental task, made infinitely more complex by the thirty-nine branches of reality, most of them now barren, necrotic echoes of a failed world. Everett's job was to ensure no one stepped out of line, especially not after the Great Sacrilege, where those who possessed the Library's forbidden knowledge had ascended to godhood.
But what gnawed at Zelda the most wasn't Everett's burden, it was Kai's insight.
How had he learned one of the Library's most guarded secrets? The truth of the Librarians-turned-Gods was a story kept in a vault within a vault. To the rest of the multiverse, it didn't exist. Yet Kai spoke of it as if it were common gossip. And then there was Castle Blackspire. The secret of what was locked at the very end of the world was a mystery known only to the gods, a handful of high-ranking Librarians, and the ancient Quest of the Seven Keys.
Zelda tightened her grip on her trousers. It was impossible. They couldn't have found all the keys so soon, that was certainly not the last one. The timeline shouldn't allow for it, at least not yet.
She reached a towering mahogany door at the end of a corridor. She paused, smoothing her pristine suit, before rapping three times.
"Come in," a calm, resonant voice called out.
Zelda opened the door. The office inside was surprisingly modest and seated behind a desk piled high with ledger books was a short, balding man in a sharp, grey suit. He looked more like a mid-level accountant than a weaver of destinies, but his eyes held the terrifying clarity of a man who had read every ending.
He looked up and smiled warmly at her, the same man who had personally instructed Zelda to break protocol and provide the Book of the 40th Timeline to Penny.
The Library's goal had always been the same: survival through control, they didn't just want magic to return; they wanted it channeled, metered, and ultimately monopolized by the Head of Circulation himself. A favorable timeline was one where the Library held the tap.
"To what do I owe this visit, Zelda? It isn't time for our quarterly review of the 40th branch, is it?"
"No," Zelda said with a tight voice, her hands folded primly in her lap, "There has been a development with the Anomaly."
Everett's pen stopped mid-stroke as he looked up again, his expression seemed to harden into something foreign to her, "And what has Mr. Malachai done now?"
"Kai, actually," Zelda corrected softly.
Everett raised an eyebrow, "I beg your pardon?"
"He... he prefers to be called Kai," she murmured, before clearing her throat to regain her composure. "He paid a visit regarding our arrangement with Penny Adiyodi."
Everett leaned back, his chair creaking in the silence. "What?"
"He knows," Zelda said flatly. "He knows we are using the traveler to jumpstart the Wellspring. He is aware that our end goal is the restoration of magic under Library oversight."
Everett's face went pale at that piece of information, "How is that possible? The compartmentalization of that project is absolute. Not even the other heads of the other branches have the full picture."
"I have no idea," Zelda replied, her eyes reflecting a rare flicker of genuine fear, "But that is not the most concerning part. He spoke of the Great Sacrilege. He has intimate knowledge of the incident involving the librarians who used our archives for personal ascension."
Everett stood up so abruptly, "What are you talking about?"
"The librarians who became gods," Zelda whispered.
"How the hell does he know that?" Everett whispered as his calm facade finally shattered. He began to pace the small office, "That is a closely guarded secret buried under eons of redaction! Only the gods themselves and the highest-ranking personnel in this building even know those archives exist."
Zelda watched him wonder how it was possible, "Just like every other piece of information he possesses that he shouldn't have. He is a fracture in our probability models, Everett, a variable we didn't account for, and one that is currently rewriting the script faster than we can read it."
Everett stopped pacing and looked at a map of the Neitherlands on the wall, and his eyes narrowed slightly, "If he knows the beginning of the story, he knows the ending we've planned. This isn't just an anomaly anymore, Zelda. This is a competitor."
Then, he moved back to his desk and pulled out an object from his drawer and stared at it. It wasn't a standard leather-bound volume from the Library's infinite shelves. It was a thick tome, bound tightly in what appeared to be living tree roots that shivered whenever a hand drew near.
Zelda's breath hitched as she saw it. "His book," she whispered. "The Master Volume for the Anomaly."
Everett nodded grimly as his fingers hovered just inches from the surface, "We still can't get it to open."
Zelda adjusted in her seat, "This is a significant hitch in the Great Balance, isn't it?"
"A hitch?" Everett let out a dry, mirthless chuckle. "It's a structural collapse, Zelda. We are librarians; we thrive on the predictable flow of the narrative. But Kai... he's caused a lot of ripples we weren't prepared for. This interference with our plans for the 40th timeline is just the beginning." He looked at the root-bound book with a mixture of professional fascination and confusion, "What do we do now? For now, we do what we have always done. We observe. We wait for the ink to settle."
He sighed, leaning back, but noticed Zelda hadn't moved. She was watching him with an uncharacteristic hesitation, her fingers twisting together.
"There is something else, isn't there?" Everett asked, his eyes narrowing.
Zelda swallowed hard and smiled nervously, "Before he departed... Mr. Kai left a message. Specifically for you, sir."
Everett froze. "For me?" He let out a sharp breath, "There is no way he should even know of my existence…" He stopped himself from saying further, shaking his head. "And yet, with the way things have been going, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. What is surprising is him having the audacity to leave me a message."
He moved closer to Zelda, placing a steadying hand over hers. His voice softened, "Oh, don't worry about the decorum, Zelda. Just tell me. What did our Anomaly have to say?"
Zelda adjusted her glasses as she prepared to channel the sheer, unfiltered arrogance of the man she had encountered. She cleared her throat and her voice dropped a few octave to match the weight of the words.
"He said to tell you that the 'Check-Out' date for your little monopoly has been moved up, sir," Zelda said, her voice trembling slightly. "It was a simple warning, Everett. A direct warning to you."
Zelda took a shallow breath, the words feeling like shards of glass in her throat feeling the man's hand grip hers gently, "He said... I should warn you to be very careful. That to become a god comes with tribulations. And he promised that should you try to ascend, he will be there. He will be there to 'bless' a tribulation upon you."
The hand Everett had placed so gently over hers stiffened, then slowly, deliberately and retreated. Everett sucked in a sharp, rattling breath and as he turned around, she didn't see his expression smoothing into a mask of terrifyingly calmness. He stood up without a word, smoothed his vest, and returned to his seat behind the mahogany desk.
"Nonsense," Everett said, his voice a dry rasp.
He looked at Zelda and offered a thin smile. "He is being deliberately provocative, Zelda. Do not let the ramblings of a chaotic element rattle your senses. I would never be so ambiguous or so foolish as to commit the same sacrilege as those disgraceful librarians who stole our knowledge for their own vanity. We are the stewards of the story, not the authors."
He let out a short, dismissive huff of air, "Mr. Malachai is simply trying to create tension. He wants to sow doubt between us because he resents the fact that we've put his friends on a path that serves the greater good of the Library. It's a schoolyard tactic."
Zelda stood up, her shoulders dropping as the tension bled out of her. A look of profound relief washed over her face. "I knew it. I knew it was just venom. It's blasphemous to even suggest you would ever want to leave your post as Head of Circulation to become... one of those beings."
Everett let out a soft, melodic laugh. "Oh, if only the world were as simple as his threats. Is that all, Zelda?"
She nodded, her posture returning to its usual rigid perfection. Everett rose once more, walking her to the door. He opened it for her while leaning against the frame.
"Thank you for believing in me, Zelda," he said with his eyes crinkling warmly, "I won't disappoint you. Great things are coming up ahead, revolutionary things. And we will be there to witness them together."
Zelda offered a rare, genuine smile. "Good night, Everett."
"Good night, Zelda."
He closed the door with a soft click.
Zelda stood in the hallway for a moment, she looked down at her hand, the one Everett had touched and a small, nagging frown creased her brow. There had been a tremor in his grip at the very end, a coldness that didn't match his words. She looked back at the heavy office door, she stood still for a heartbeat longer than necessary, and then turned to walk back into the stacks.
Inside the office, Everett's face contorted into a mask of absolute, vein-popping rage. He swept a stack of priceless ledgers onto the floor. He gripped the edge of the desk so hard the wood groaned and his knuckles turned a ghostly white.
"You think you can 'bless' me, you little abomination?" he hissed to the empty room, his eyes fixed on the root-bound book of the Anomaly. "You think you can stop what's already in motion?"
He snatched a heavy glass inkwell and hurled it against the far wall. It shattered, the black ink splattering across a map of the multiverse like a spreading shadow.