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Vesper called in sick to work for the first time in two years.

Lila answered on the second ring, her voice bright with morning energy. "Hello?"

"It's me." Vesper kept her voice hoarse, which was not difficult given how little she had slept. "I can't come in today. I think I have the flu."

There was a pause on the other end. "Are you okay? You sound awful."

"I just need rest." That was not a lie, technically. "Can you cover for me?"

"Of course. Take care of yourself, Vesper. Actually rest, okay? Don't just sit at home worrying about work."

"I won't," Vesper lied.

She hung up and immediately left her apartment, heading for the archive. The streets were quiet at 7:00 AM, the early risers shuffling toward their jobs with coffee cups and tired expressions. Vesper moved against the flow, a ghost in an oversized coat, heading toward the one place that might have answers.

The archive was empty when she arrived. She had her own key, a privilege of seniority and the fact that no one else wanted to work alone in the old building. The security system beeped as she disarmed it, the sound overloud in the silence.

Vesper went straight to the Restricted Collection.

Every archive had one, a section of documents deemed too fragile or controversial or simply too weird for general access. Theirs was kept in a climate-controlled room in the basement, behind a door that required both a key and a code. Vesper had both.

She hesitated at the door. This was a fireable offense. But if she was right, she would not be around long enough to get fired.

The room smelled of preservation chemicals and old paper, a scent she usually found comforting. Today it just made her anxious. She did not have much time. The director would arrive by 9:00 AM, and she needed to be gone before then.

She started with the card catalog, running her fingers over the aged entries. The collection was not fully digitized yet, another project that had stalled for lack of funding and interest. But that meant it contained things that had not been filtered through modern skepticism, documents that had been filed and forgotten decades ago.

Dream Weavers. That was what the journal had mentioned in her dream, the text that Eryx had tried to stop her from taking. She needed to find references to that term, or anything similar.

She pulled drawers, scanned cards, her movements quick and organized. Years of archival training made the search systematic despite her racing pulse.

Finally, a match. Dreams, Lucid: Historical Perspectives and Medical Documentation, 1847-1923. Box 47, Shelf 12.

Vesper found the box and carried it to the reading table. Inside were leather journals, loose papers, and several bound volumes that looked handmade rather than professionally published. She pulled out the largest journal and opened it carefully.

The handwriting was spidery and old-fashioned, but legible. The author identified himself as Dr. Jonathan Ashford, a physician studying what he called "nocturnal maladies" in the late 1800s.

She flipped through pages of case studies, medical observations, and theoretical frameworks that ranged from insightful to completely absurd. Then, on page 127, she found it.

The Dream Weaver Phenomenon

I have observed in three patients now a curious pattern of exhaustion that resists all conventional treatment. These individuals report vivid, persistent dreams of a specific location, often described as more real than waking life. They speak of inhabiting these dream-spaces fully, interacting with dream-persons, and experiencing genuine physical sensations.

Most tellingly, they exhibit signs of magical expenditure despite having no conscious awareness of magical ability. The exhaustion they feel is not from illness but from sustaining an entire realm with their unconscious power.

Her fingers shook as she read.

Dream Weavers do not merely visit other planes. They create them, or at minimum, they sustain planes that would otherwise collapse. The dream-space becomes dependent on the Weaver's life force, drawing from them night after night. If the Weaver burns out completely, the realm they sustain will freeze and die.

Guardians or Wardens often manifest in these realms, beings created unconsciously by the Weaver to protect both the realm and the Weaver herself. These Wardens are typically powerful but limited, bound to the dream-space and unable to fully manifest in the waking world without great cost.

The journal went on, but Vesper had to stop reading. Her vision blurred. Not tears. She never cried. Just pressure behind her eyes.

Eryx was real. The library was real. And she had created it, or was sustaining it, without even knowing what she was doing.

She flipped ahead, desperate for more information, and found a passage underlined in faded red ink.

WARNING: If the Weaver burns out, the realm freezes. The Warden, being a construct of the realm, will die first. He will sacrifice himself to preserve the Weaver's life, using his own essence to buy time for her to recover. But without the Weaver's power, his death is inevitable.

Vesper closed the journal with shaking hands.

Eryx was dying. Every night she slept, every moment she spent in the library, she was draining him. And he knew. He had always known. That was why he had been rationing her visits, why he had tried to send her away, why he looked so exhausted.

He was protecting her from the knowledge that she was killing him.

She sat in the climate-controlled room, surrounded by forgotten documents and fading ink, and finally understood the true cost of her escape.

The library was not just a dream. It was a life. His life. And she had been taking it without even realizing what she was doing.

"No," she whispered to the empty room. "No, no, no."

She had to fix this. Had to find a way to sustain the realm without draining him, or to anchor it properly, or something. There had to be a solution.

Vesper grabbed the journal and several related documents, stuffing them into her bag. She would study them at home, would find every reference to Dream Weavers in the entire collection if she had to.

She would not let Eryx die for her comfort.