The skylight pulsed like a heart that didn't know how to beat.
Red poured through the glass and soaked the balconies, and the big room—meant for quiet—woke up angry.
"Stay close," William said.
"Aye," said the brownie, hat tipped, and then he was already gone—one blink and he'd slipped sideways into the stacks like he'd never been there. A patch of air, a smudge of shadow, nothing more.
Figures.
He cut the System notifications down to a murmur. He knew what the pop-ups would say and he didn't need the running commentary.
Then the first wave came.
Lesser goblins and regular goblins boiled out from between cases, under railings, sliding along marble like spilled tar. The red light made their eyes pop like glass beads; their mouths were still the same knives in a sack. He felt his new footwork catch the floor for him and let it carry him into the line.
He went through them like a weather front.
Elbows. Palms. A short shin across a knee to fold one; a rising knee to the jaw to settle another. He didn't break his knife out of habit; he kept it sheathed because equipment mattered and this wasn't a knife problem. A goblin grabbed for his sleeve and caught air; he redirected a second into a bookcase and let the shelf tell it a secret. A third lunged; he stepped into it and turned its momentum into the floor.
Simple. Ugly. Efficient.
Two breaths later they were down.
He tasted copper at the back of his throat and swallowed air that wasn't blood and made himself slow down for two counts. Don't chase. Let them come. Save the tank. He could do this all day if "all day" meant he used the right muscles and not the wrong ones.
A flash of green lit the second level.
His scouting pricked: names without faces—Goblin Librarian on the balcony to the left, Goblin Librarian to the right. Their hands formed sigils; thin bolts of lime light hissed down like thrown needles.
He moved before thought. The first bolt lanced where his head had been; the second carved a smoking stripe along a brass rail. He felt the room like a map in his feet and took the line it gave him—two steps, drop, roll behind a reading table. Polite wood turned into cover.
He didn't return fire yet. He listened for the space between volleys.
More feet—first-floor stone chewing itself to powder. His scouting ticked again and offered a bouquet of trouble: Goblin Warrior in a knot of armor, shields low and ugly; behind them, a Goblin Captain, much taller, darker, helmeted, moving like it had watched other things die and learned from it.
The air cracked like poured ice. The Head Librarian stood on the far balcony, fingers forming a box in the air. Force wrapped William in a bright cage that sang against itself, bars closing with a tone he felt in his teeth.
He didn't shout. He didn't breathe loud.
Dispel Magic.
The cage stuttered and thinned as the pattern unmade the pattern. He stepped forward through its flicker and it died quietly, denied.
"Third level!" the brownie's voice came from high above him, thick and urgent, warped by railings. "Up ye go, master! Left side!"
"Copy."
He ran.
A case gave him height; he planted one foot, popped seven feet up to the top like a leapfrog, felt the shelf flex under his weight, then cast Jump and kicked off. The spell turned his already superhuman jumping into an impossibly clean and high arc. He hit the second balcony light, landed like he didn't mean to break it, and moved.
Now the sling.
He let a smooth, enchanted stone slide into his palm from the Item Box and the cords took it like a handshake. One clean circle. Release.
The first Goblin Librarian lost the top third of his head and the balcony rail behind him learned a wobble. The second tried to track and fire; William was already drawing again. The stone hit sternum and there was a noise like a small tree snapping. The body went soft.
A translucent dome shimmered over the Head Librarian and the last librarian like someone had upturned a glass over them. A shield that hated physics.
Fine.
Dispel.
The dome unraveled like a spider web in a breeze. William didn't wait. He closed the space and hit the last librarian so fast it didn't understand it was already done; a straight right that went through bone and into the wall behind with a sound that he'd remember later if he let himself. He pivoted and caught the Head Librarian's wrist, broke the angle, then took the neck and turned it the wrong way. Clean. He didn't waste time with speeches.
Boots on stairs.
The Goblin Warriors were already halfway up, shields banging, lines tight enough to make a football coach proud. He palmed a spell and let Grease silently loose along the steps with a painter's care, laying a thin coat where weight would go. The lead pair planted and immediately weren't anywhere good; their feet went out from under them and the whole file turned into a metal slinky.
He didn't watch them bounce.
More armor on the far side. Two figures behind, robes that caught the light—Goblin Wizard, Goblin Wizard. And threading between them, taller, thicker plates, white crest on the helm: Goblin Elite. The GoblinCaptain pushed through behind them with that same unpleasant patience.
He wasn't holding the high ground long. The second wave had angles.
He broke left; a ladder led nowhere useful and everywhere he needed. He rode it to the next case top and burned another jump spell, angling over a knot of warriors too slow to turn. A second ladder gave him the line to the third floor.
He hit with a knee bend and moved to the next stair quietly with his last jump spell due to his silent spells perk. He palmed more grease and laid it over the third-floor stair throat as the front of the goblin mass found the second's top.
"Ha!" crowed the brownie at his elbow, appearing from pure mischief with the mushroom cap cocked. "That's the sauce."
He didn't ask how the brownie had gotten there; he accepted it like weather. He saw the little man already had William's firestarter in his hands—pilfered from the Item Box like it had always been his—and a grin too big for his neat face.
"Allow me." A spark. A curl of flame. Oil found heat and leapt.
The staircase turned into a skillet. Grease cooked fast; goblin leather cooked faster. The shriek that came up the well was the kind that put cracks in memory you couldn't patch. William could vaguely hear the suppressed pings of the system as the brownie's kills poured experience into him.
On the far balcony, a Goblin Wizard pointed at the GoblinCaptain and sang three phrases that made William's gums itch. The Captain lifted like a puppet pulled on a clean wire, plate and crest rising over open air to clear the killing ladder.
Levitate. Cute.
Dispel magic.
The Captain turned from weightless to weight in a breath and discovered the ground had opinions. He hit the first floor headfirst and his dark armor rang like a dropped kiln. No one got up after that.
A second Goblin Wizard on the ground floor pitched a fireball with the gracelessness of someone who had learned everything from a bad teacher and a worse book. The spell bloomed against the second-floor balcony like a sunflower made of gasoline. Heat punched upward and the rail took flame.
William burned the last grease spell and guided it with a careful thought. He put it through the burnt wood and down the stairs like a pour—thin curtains on every step—then let the fire run the path he'd just drawn. Heat roared up through levels. A column of air became a column of flame that ate chains, masks, old dust.
Smoke rolled toward the skylight and slipped through vents that might have been built for that exact lie.
"Right, master," said the brownie, face gone serious now beneath the brim. "Enough skylarkin'. This way."
William listened because the brownie had a nose for the kind of survival he wanted to keep. They ran—not fast and loud, but close and low. The third-floor balcony had a glass passageway like the spine of a fish, ribbed and bright, connecting this hub to a different wing. Beyond it, the sky stayed red through the panes—an arterial sheet over everything. The bell-pulse traveled through the glass like a rumor.
Behind them, goblins tried to find purchase on burning stairs and failed. A few elites made the long way around and would learn regret.
He kept moving.
"Ye've a tidy talent for makin' librarians cross," the brownie said, breath easy, accent thicker now that the distance grew. "Not that I mind. But the longer we stand in their atrium, the more they know which ladders to pull."
"Working on it."
A bolt of something hissed from a far balcony and hit the glass three ribs ahead, spreading spiderlines through the pane. He counted steps, did the mental map for shatter and fall. The brownie did the same math and beat him to the next brace.
They crossed into the new wing as another pane went out behind them, glass scything down in a single bright tide. The sound chased them like a wave on stones.
He didn't look back.
They ran under the red, and the library breathed like a thing that had learned a new word and wanted to practice it on someone's bones.
And William, knife still sheathed, stones down one, spells down to half, kept moving toward something he could control.