**SCENE.** You charge through the spinning wall of pages, razor edges opening cuts across your forearms and cheek, and plant your boot square into the lectern's base. The ancient stand splinters with a crack like breaking bone and topples forward, slamming into the Archivist's chest. The lich staggers backward, skeletal feet scraping stone, its chant severed mid-syllable. The lectern's weight pins it against the iron shelves, and books cascade down in an avalanche of leather and parchment, burying the creature under centuries of forbidden knowledge. **BEAT.** For a heartbeat, silence. Then the pile erupts. The Archivist tears free, manuscript robes shredded, one skeletal arm hanging loose at an unnatural angle. Black ink pours from a dozen rents in its parchment flesh. "DESECRATION!" it shrieks, and the remaining shelves begin to collapse inward like closing jaws. Your axe gleams three paces to your left. The lich raises its good hand, and glyphs of binding flame spiral toward your legs, seeking to root you in place while the shelves crush you flat.