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Vesper did not want to sleep that night.

She sat on her couch with every light in the apartment blazing, drinking coffee that had gone bitter hours ago. The television played some late-night talk show, the host's laughter tinny and artificial. She was not watching it. She was watching the corners of the room, the spaces where shadows gathered despite the light.

At 2:47 AM, her body made the decision her mind had been fighting.

Her eyelids grew heavy, the coffee cup tilted in her grip, and sleep pulled her under like a riptide.

She woke in her bed with no memory of moving there.

Her body was frozen, locked in place by an invisible weight. Sleep paralysis. She had experienced it before, that terrible state between waking and dreaming where the mind was conscious but the body would not respond. Usually it lasted seconds, maybe a minute at most.

This was different.

The room was freezing, more bitter than the archive had been, more bitter than any winter night. Vesper tried to move her fingers, her toes, anything. Nothing responded. She could only breathe, shallow gasps that misted in the frigid air, and watch.

The corner near her closet began to darken.

Not with normal shadow, but with something that ate light. A void that grew larger, spreading like spilled ink across her bedroom floor. The temperature dropped further. Vesper's teeth chattered, the only part of her that seemed capable of movement.

Something emerged from the darkness.

It had the shape of a person, tall and thin, but wrong in ways her eyes could not quite process. Its edges were indistinct, blurry, as if reality itself rejected its presence. Where its face should be, there was only static, the same corrupted emptiness she had seen on the man in the subway.

The Hollow moved toward her bed with horrible, patient slowness.

It smelled of absolute zero, of the space between stars, of the absence of everything warm and living. The scent made her lungs ache, made her bones feel brittle.

Vesper tried to scream. Her mouth would not open. Her voice was trapped in her paralyzed throat.

The Hollow reached the edge of her bed and extended one hand toward her face. She saw through it, saw the wall behind its translucent fingers. Emptiness radiated from it in waves.

"Eryx," she managed, forcing the word through frozen lips. It came out as barely a whisper. "Eryx, please."

The hand touched her forehead.

Ice spread through her skull, through her thoughts. The Hollow was not taking her warmth. It was taking everything. Memory, emotion, consciousness itself. She faded, dissolving into static like the page from the dream book.

"STAY BACK!"

The voice was not thunderous or commanding. It was desperate, raw with panic and protective fury. Eryx's voice, closer than it had ever been in the waking world.

Shadow erupted in the corner opposite the void, but warm shadow, protective darkness that pushed back the emptiness. His presence manifested as weight, as gravity, as the opposite of the void's absence. It was heat without flame, warmth made tangible, the feeling of being wrapped in heavy quilts on the coldest night.

The Hollow recoiled, its hand jerking away from Vesper's face. It made a sound like wind through empty buildings, mournful and angry.

The warmth coalesced into a shape. Not Eryx himself, not fully, but his presence. A guardian made of protective heat and determination, standing between her and the void.

"You cannot have her," the presence said, and this time the voice was fully Eryx's, steady and sure. "She is mine to protect."

The Hollow and the warmth collided silently. There was no explosion, no dramatic battle. The void simply unraveled like smoke in a strong wind. It fled back into the corner, back into whatever space it had emerged from, and was gone.

The paralysis broke.

Vesper sat up gasping, her body suddenly her own again. The warmth faded slowly, reluctantly, as if it wanted to stay but could not maintain its presence in the waking world.

"Eryx?" she called into the empty room.

No answer. But the air was no longer freezing. In fact, it was sweltering, as if someone had turned her radiator up to its maximum setting. Sweat broke out across her skin. The sudden heat was almost painful after the bitter air, but she welcomed it. It meant she was alive. It meant she was safe.

Vesper threw off her blankets and stumbled to the window, pushing it open to let in the December night. Air rushed in, but it was normal winter air, natural and clean, the kind that came from weather rather than malevolent emptiness.

She leaned against the windowsill, breathing hard, pulse still racing. Outside, the city was quiet. Snow continued to fall, peaceful and ordinary.

The frost mark on her arm pulsed once, a gentle warmth against her skin. Not the phantom heartbeat she had felt before, but something more deliberate. A message, perhaps. A reassurance.

I am here. I will always be here when you need me.

Vesper touched the mark gently, pressing her fingers against the pale pattern. "Thank you," she whispered.

The warmth pulsed again in response.

She did not try to sleep for the rest of the night. Instead, she sat by the window, wrapped in blankets, watching the snow fall and waiting for morning. The radiator continued to blast heat, working harder than it had in months, as if whatever force Eryx had manifested had supercharged the old pipes.

When dawn finally came, gray and bitter, Vesper made a decision.

She needed answers. Real answers, not just dreams and reflections and phantom touches. She needed to understand what was happening, what she was, and why her sleep was becoming a battleground.

The archive held thousands of documents, centuries of collected knowledge. Somewhere in those stacks, there had to be something that could explain this.

She opened the window wider. The snow outside was falling upward, defying gravity, each flake rising toward the sky like a prayer.