You wiped down another tablet, feeling the pleasant weight of the microfiber cloth in your palm. Tim had left them in a neat stack with a sticky note: "If you're bored. These are for the cave—no rush."

A comfort, almost. To be trusted with something. To be useful.

The screen flickered.

Not a normal flicker. A tilt. A glitch that split sideways into white static, and then—

Cascading green code. Rain falling up the screen in broken pixels.

A low, rhythmic chirp began to pulse. Chirp. Chirp. Chirp.

The cloth dropped from your hand.

Suddenly, the study wasn't a study anymore. The walls pressed inward, cold and damp and made of concrete. The desk became a steel table. The ticking of the clock became a countdown—a glowing red number that blinked in the corner of your vision, taunting you with seconds you couldn't reclaim.

The chair scraped backward as you stumbled to your feet. Your shoulder clipped the doorframe. You didn't stop. You didn't look back.

The library was dark when you reached it, lit only by the dim glow of the tall windows and the cold light of a half-moon. Dust motes floated in the air, undisturbed for weeks.

You wedged yourself between the towering bookshelf and the fireplace wall. Your knees came up to your chest. Your nails dug into your palms.

The chirping didn't stop.

It wasn't real. It wasn't real. But the beeping buried itself in your skull like a splinter, and the concrete walls of that basement folded over you like a coffin lid, and—

Somewhere in the manor, a door closed. Footsteps. Soft, purposeful. Padded on the Persian runner.

They stopped at the library threshold.