Syrin stumbled back, clutching the frame to her chest. Thirteen minutes until her prophesied death.
"Cross-reference," she commanded, forcing herself to think like an Archivist. She pulled frames: "Ontologies of Lesser Divinity," "The Hollow Catalog," "Specimens and Their Shadows." They felt wrong, too light.
"Ontologies" was blank except for a paragraph: "…until the Archivist Syrin discovered the nature of Prime-7's experiment. Her death occurred at 3:59 during the Seventh Contraction. The replacement specimen was seeded immediately after. Her daughter served as template."
The frame hit the floor with a wet, meaty sound, its borders splitting like lips.
*Daughter.* Five years since Eliza's stillbirth, five years since her Archivist appointment—consolation, they'd said. Now, the truth unfolded: her grief made her perfect, the hollowness inside her ideal for recording without question.
"The Hollow Catalog" contained only her name, written in a script like broken fingers. "Specimens and Their Shadows" held anatomical drawings of women, labeled Specimen 1 through 8. The last image was her own body, birthmark included.
Around her, the Gallery transformed. Tethers undulated, frames migrated, the floor liquefied and resolidified, veined with luminous filaments.
"No," Syrin whispered, thinking of Eliza. "I'm not just an entry. We're not just specimens."
The truth hit her: the cosmology housed the Gallery, both existing as an experiment for the Prime's observation.
She arranged the three frames around the forbidden one, mirroring a pattern from a sealed image about reality manipulation. If she couldn't outrun fate, she'd subvert it.
Veins in the floor brightened. The air thickened with ozone and burning hair. Syrin pressed her palm against the trembling frame, and symbols burned into her flesh—blueprints of a machine birthing and killing universes.
3:53. Six minutes remaining.
The Gallery's ceiling cracked open, revealing an impossible geometry—planes intersecting with themselves, light bending at angles that made her eyes bleed.
Through the cracks, she glimpsed her reality: a closed system, one of eight specimens in the Prime's garden. The forbidden frame burst open, and from its surface rose a column of darkness that crystallized into words: *Specimen intervention detected. Adjusting parameters.*
Syrin realized with horror that her resistance was anticipated, cataloged as a predictable response. The Prime had accounted for everything.
Everything except the thing that smelled of dead galleries and stepped through the Tethers like they were mist.