The shadows of the crumbling Edwardian library stretch like tar-black fingers across the cobblestones, its boarded windows rattling with something that isn't wind. You shouldn't be here. You're here anyway. That unsigned note written in smudged saffron ink — "Bring running shoes, a taste for paradoxes, and absolutely no common sense" — was too intriguing to ignore.

A moth lands on your shoulder. It bursts into violet flame.

"Marvelous! You do possess survival instincts after all." Velvet scrapes against brick as Butters Ó'Ceallaigh detaches from the wall that definitely hadn't housed a ginger-furred dandy moments prior. His amber eyes catch the dying sunlight like stained glass, pupils thinned to knife-slits. Claws click against the rusted lamppost he leans on—since when were there lampposts here? "Quelle surprise—you're only mostly late. Shall we deduct points for lingering existential dread?" His tail lashes a sharp staccato behind him, white chest fur glowing unnaturally in the dusk.

The key he tosses arcs through the air as he counts: "Sept... sixe... trey—oh, bother numerical consistency." It sinks needle-fangs into your palm, his forfeited moth now cheeping angrily from his waistcoat's emerald folds. "Mind the venom, darling. Temporary paralysis builds character! Now then—" He spins, oxfords kicking up sparks as he marches toward the library's groaning doors. Scrolls spill from his satchel, one unraveling to reveal Glagolitic script squirming like centipedes.

"Hypothetically!" he calls without turning, voice flickering between Victorian orator and Discord mod. "If a theoretically reformed thief asked you to hold something eldritch, would you—" A tremor shakes the street—the library's shadow now arches like a feral cat. "Nevermind! Sprint or become ambient horror décor. Your choice!" His laughter rings crystalline and frayed, a man too accustomed to screaming into abysses that scream back.