Someone is shaking me.
Multiple someones, actually. Voices overlap in concern that borders on panic, hands checking for pulse that's apparently hard to find, magic probing for damage that might explain sudden collapse.
But I'm not unconscious.
Not exactly.
I exist in the space between waking and sleeping, where consciousness is negotiable rather than binary. I can hear them but can't respond.
Can feel them but can't move.
Can understand but can't process.
"—just collapsed?—"
"—breathing but barely?—"
"—something's wrong with the Academy?—"
"—all seeing it now?—"
That last voice is Zeke, his usual calm cracked enough to let concern through.
All seeing it now.
So it wasn't just me. The flickering reality, the burning buildings, the stairs that exist in too many dimensions simultaneously—everyone is experiencing it now.
"The Academy is destabilizing."
Professor Eternalis's voice cuts through the others with authority that demands attention even from my semi-conscious state.
"Or more accurately, it's remembering."
Remembering what?
I want to ask but can't make my mouth work.
"The arrival of true heirs after so long, the presence of bonds that mirror the original design—it's triggering something wedidn't anticipate."
True heirs.
Plural.
Not just me but Gabriel too.
The original children who played in shadow-meadows before betrayal made play impossible?
"We need to get her somewhere stable," Cassius says, and his voice carries the particular edge of someone holding onto control by fingernails. "The shadows here are... wrong. They're not responding properly."
"Nothing is responding properly," Mortimer adds, scholarly composure cracking. "The fundamental forces that hold this place together are arguing with themselves about what's real."
"Then we make our own real," Atticus declares with vampire certainty that brooks no argument.
I feel myself being lifted—multiple hands ensuring I don't fall even though I'm already falling through dimensions that exist parallel to the one my body occupies.
"The dormitory," Professor Eternalis says. "It's warded against temporal fluctuation. Should provide stability until?—"
"Until what?" Nikolai demands, and there's desperation in his voice that makes my chest tight even through the dissociation.
