It was raining fire again.
Not real fire — more like burning glitter. The kind that clings to your thoughts and makes your dreams smell like cinnamon and static.
The Goblin stood at the edge of the Lair’s upper parapet, wearing a patchy cloak made of scribbled-out shopping lists and muttering to himself.
“They moved the vault doors again,” he grumbled. “I had the key right there next to the screaming mushroom. Who keeps cleaning this place?”
A distant boom rattled the floor. Something howled three octaves below reality.
“WHISKERHEX!” the Goblin shouted. “IS THAT YOU OR A DEMON?”
Below, in the Machine Wing
Whiskerhex had constructed a new friend. Again.
It was mostly springs, half a toaster, and some kind of self-aware jelly that kept singing old tavern songs in reverse.
“I didn’t summon the explosion,” he snapped, tail twitching. “It’s just recalibrating. The sky is unstable again.”
The creature blinked its four mismatched eyes. Then exploded gently into confetti.
Whiskerhex sighed. “Back to version 14.”
In the Library That Never Ends
Mournfyr sat curled beneath a collapsed bookshelf, sipping heated bone tea and trying not to panic.
He’d just read something awful. A page that didn’t exist yesterday. One with no ink, only whispers. One that told him something was returning.
He didn’t know what.
But it called him by his true name.
Somewhere Else: Scarla Vexroot Vanishes
Scarla had been gone for hours.
She’d said she was heading into the Hollow Wilds to collect starlight for spellwork. “Be back by dusk,” she’d tossed over her shoulder, metallic blue hair catching the wind like liquid moonlight.
But dusk had come.
And dusk had gone.
And her comm-crystal? Silent.
She wasn’t the type to go quiet. She was the type to get loud, especially when something didn’t want her there.
The others were beginning to worry.
Even the Goblin.
He hadn’t said it out loud. But he’d stopped muttering for almost ten seconds earlier.
And in the Basement… Something Stirred
Deep below the Lair, beneath even the Goblin Vault, past the old summoning circles and the Room of Unspoken Snacks, a shape moved.
A shape that had been watching. Listening.
Waiting for the Lair’s protectors to become distracted.
Waiting for Scarla to walk too far.
Waiting for the Vault to crack.
It smiled.
It stretched.
It whispered a single word into the soil.
“Begin.”
