Page 6 of Autumn L.A.W

“Lioness!”

Lioness flinched. The pencil slipped. The vision snapped like a rubber band breaking. She blinked, and the world came back into focus.

Sahara stood three feet away, her face frozen somewhere between rage, horror, and devastation. “What,” she said softly but through clenched teeth, “are you doing to my notebook?”

Lioness glanced down. “Oh. Oh, that… I know it looks bad, but it’s important.”

Sahara’s crisp, orderly glyphs were nearly obliterated—buried beneath Lioness’s charcoal-dark lines and chaotic shapes. The page looked like a crime scene reenacted in pencil.

“And my work isn’t important?”

Lioness winced. “I can explain.”

“Can you?” Sahara asked coolly, which was far more terrifying than yelling.

“There was, uh, movement.”

“Movement?” Sahara knelt, snatching the notebook from Lioness’s hands. Her eyes scanned the drawings, then she went very still.

Lioness swallowed. “Do you see it?”

Sahara didn’t answer. Her face drained of color. She traced her fingertips over the bars, the spiral, the chamber.

“This is a prison,” Sahara whispered. “An ancient one. And if your sketch is accurate—which, annoyingly, it always is—then the internal wards are buckling.” She leaned closer, as if she could see more that way.

“Yeah,” Lioness said. “The thing inside is pushing upwards.”

The ground gave a short, sharp pulse, like a fist pounding the soil. Both witches went silent.

Then Sahara exhaled, slow and furious. “Still, I can’t believe you touched my notebook.”

“I had a vision! It was an emergency!”

“Where is your sketchpad?”

“I must have left it back at the building collapse.”

“You used my best pencil.”

Lioness held up the pencil—carbon smudged on her fingers, guilt smudged all over her face. “I’ll buy you a new one?”

Sahara closed the notebook with a decisive snap. “We’re going to talk about this after we keep Manhattan from exploding.”

Lioness nodded quickly. “Right. Priorities.”

They turned back toward the obelisk as the ground throbbed again, deeper this time, almost a warning.

Sahara whispered, “Something or someone is waking.”

Lioness whispered, “Then we need to move up our timeline.”

Sahara Nadir needed five consecutive minutes without Lioness causing emotional, magical, or structural damage. Apparently, that was too much to ask.

She clutched her notebook to her chest like it was a wounded animal as she led them a few paces away from the fissure. The park was deceptively calm. Dog walkers, joggers, and tourists had no idea a millennia-old prison was stirring beneath their sneakers. Sahara’s pulse hadn’t settled since the vision ripped through Lioness, and every beat echoed with the same awful realization. Something down there was pushing up, trying to escape.

She exhaled through her nose, long and deliberate. “Lioness, stand still. I need a minute to process.”

Lioness obeyed, which was suspicious all by itself. She looked pale and unsettled. Still vibrating with leftover psychic static, Sahara softened a fraction. Not much, but enough to let concern creep in.