It started small.
A bird flying backward across the palace courtyard.
A noble's teacup filling itself, then un-pouring in reverse, over and over in a loop.
By the time the fifth maid in two days claimed she'd relived the same morning twice, panic was whispering through the corridors like a draft no one could seal.
Alaira and I watched from a balcony as the sun stalled at the horizon for a full minute before jerking upward like a skipping reel.
"We're running out of time," I said, gripping the edge. "Literally."
"We still don't know what triggered it," she murmured, "or what exactly we're supposed to fix."
That's when we saw it—the garden statue.
Once a depiction of the founding queen holding a sword, it now showed a faceless woman holding an hourglass. The change hadn't been sculpted.
It had just… rewritten itself.
"This is happening because of us," I whispered. "Because I didn't follow the story. Because we made a choice that wasn't written."
Alaira turned to me. "Then we need to find the person—or thing—that's writing now."
We stared at the altered statue as its hourglass slowly filled with dark sand, falling upward.