Chapter 0: WHEN TIME FALTERED

Darkness.

That's all I remember between dying and waking.

A silence thick enough to smother one's breath.

A coldness that felt like hands closing around my ribs.

And somewhere far away—the echo of a heartbeat that wasn't mine.

...

They say your life flashes before your eyes when you die.

Mine never does.

Not anymore.

I've died too many times for memories to matter.

Usually, when the end comes, the world folds, time snaps, and I open my eyes exactly where my last death anchored me.

A year, a month, a week, a day.

A few hours back.

A few minutes

Sometimes only seconds.

This time, something slipped.

The darkness stretched.

Stretched until it felt like a deep ocean swallowing me whole.

Stretched until I could no longer tell if I was floating or sinking, or dissolving altogether.

And then—

A breath.

Cold stone beneath my palms.

Morning light through tall windows.

The scent of incense and wet soil.

My heart lurched once.

I knew this place.

I had stood here before.

Six years ago.

I staggered to my feet, my hands trembling.

My body—not the twenty-year-old shell stained with blood and grief—but the fifteen-year old girl's limbs I thought I'd outgrown long ago.

This isn't right.

Resets don't jump this far.

They don't leap across lifetimes.

They only rewind to where I last died.

But Max had died in my arms.

And I died right after.

So why was I standing in the palace corridor the day before the Empress' funeral?

Footsteps echoed down the hall.

The same footsteps I remembered from this day—this horrible, unavoidable day.

My breath hitched.

This wasn't a second chance.

This wasn't mercy.

Something had gone impossibly wrong.

And as the heavy doors creaked open and familiar faces stepped out, a whisper crawled up my spine, cold as winter:

Here is the first stitch in your next mourning.

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