The plane had crashed behind the Annex, a plume of smoke rising against Portland's winter sky.

Ezekiel stood frozen. “We were just in that diner,” he whispered.

Cassandra reached for his hand, hers shaking. “I heard the noise. Thought it was thunder.”

“No,” Jenkins said softly. “It was a tragedy.”

The Librarians weren’t strangers to chaos, but this-this wasn’t magic. It was real. Raw.

Jacob knelt beside a lost girl who’d wandered in, soot-streaked and silent.

“We save artifacts,” Ezekiel said, voice cracking.

“And sometimes,” Eve replied, gently wrapping the girl in her coat, “we just save each other.”

100 words