The neon glow of New Ember’s skyline pulsed like a dying heartbeat, casting jagged shadows over the slums below, where the air tasted like rust and regret. Lila pressed a scrap of stolen time—a thin, glowing vial—against Mia’s lips, her hands shaking as her sister’s breath hitched. Mia’s skin was papery, her hair streaked with gray, though she was only twelve years old. 

“Come on,” Lila muttered, “just a little more.” The vial emptied. Mia’s eyes fluttered open, but the light in them had grown dimmer than yesterday.

Outside, a clock tower tolled. Not the grand chimes of the Citadel, where the elite sipped time like wine, but the creak of a scavenged pendulum, counting down seconds that the slums didn’t have. Lila had stolen that vial from a noble’s pocket an hour earlier, slipping through a ballroom where women in silk laughed over flutes of amber liquid—each drop a year stolen from someone like Mia. It wasn’t enough. Nothing ever was.

The execution bells rang. Lila dragged Mia to a cracked window, the girl too weak to protest. In the square below, a rebel—someone who’d tried to slash a time pipeline—knelt in a cage. Above him, on a balcony draped in velvet, stood Lady Seraphina. Her gown shimmered like starlight, her face unlined, ageless. She raised a hand, and the cage hummed.

The rebel screamed. His hair turned white in seconds, his skin shrinking to bone. Then he was dust. Seraphina smiled, lifting a vial to her lips. “Sacrifice,” she said, her voice carrying on the wind, “is the price of order.”

Mia whimpered, burying her face in Lila’s shoulder. “Make it stop,” she whispered. But Lila was transfixed—staring at Seraphina, at the vial glinting in her hand. Rage coiled in her chest, hot and sharp. I will burn them all down, she thought.

Three days later, Mia collapsed. 

And so Lila, in her desperation to save her sister, found the black-market medic in a back-alley clinic, surrounded by empty vials and the moans of the dying. “Fix her,” Lila demanded, slamming a handful of stolen coins on the table. The medic—a gaunt woman with a clock embedded in her forearm—shook her head. “Scraps won’t cut it anymore,” she said. “Her timeline’s frayed. Only a direct hit from the source will stitch her back together.”

“Source?”

“The Chronophage Engine. In the Citadel.” The medic’s voice dropped. “You’d have to crack the core. But that thing’s a monster. It doesn’t just take time—it eats it. Eats lives.” 

Lila’s jaw tightened. “How do I get in?” 

The medic studied her, then tossed her a crumpled map. “Find Darien. Ex-Weaver engineer. Lives in the Old Clock District. He hates them more than you do.”

Darien was a ghost of a man, jumpy and thin, with a scar slicing through his left eyebrow. He flinched when Lila mentioned the Engine. “I helped build it,” he said, his voice raw. “I watched it swallow people whole. Can’t go back.” 

“Then let me die trying alone,” Lila said, turning to leave. “But what about Mia—” 

“Fine.” He grabbed her arm. “But you’ll need Tik. The kid sees time. Knows when guards move, when doors lock. Freaky, but useful.”

Tik was a girl about Lila’s age, with a shock of white hair and a mouth sewn shut—punishment, Darien said, for “seeing too much.” They communicated in gestures, Tik tracing patterns in the air that Lila slowly learned to read: Guard at 3; Door locks at 7; Danger.

Then Kael appeared. He sauntered into their hideout, a warehouse full of broken clocks, with a grin and a sack of supplies. “Heard you’re planning a heist,” he said, tossing Lila a vial of fresh time. “Thought you might need a hand.” He was handsome, attractive in a familiar, friendly, and unpretentious way. Lila didn’t trust easily, but Kael knew things—Weaver patrol routes, blind spots in the Citadel’s defenses.

“Hate the Weavers,” he said, when she asked why he cared. “They took my sister. Now I take from them.”

Lila let him stay.

Unfortunately, the band of misfits’ first raid went wrong. They targeted a Weaver outpost, aiming to steal a keycard to the Citadel, but the guards waited. Tik pushed Lila out of the way as a bullet cascaded, taking it in the shoulder. The girl crumpled, and as Lila dragged her to safety, she saw Tik’s eyes—wild, wide, as if watching a hundred horrors simultaneously. I am afraid of death, her fingers shakily signed, over and over.

Darien froze when the alarms blared, his face pale. “She’ll know,” he whispered. “Seraphina will know we’re coming.” 

Kael shot the lock off a back door, hauling them through. “Move!” he barked. “I’ll hold them off.”  He did, somehow. When Lila glanced back, he was laughing as he took down three guards with a rusted pipe. 

That night, Lila sat by Tik’s cot, cleaning their wound. “Why’d you do that?” she asked. Tik traced a shape in the air: Sister. Lila thought of Mia, and her resolve hardened. 

After another switch of days, they finally arrived at the battlefield. The Citadel loomed ahead, a spire of glass and gold piercing the smog. They snuck in through a drainage pipe, Darien muttering about “design flaws” he’d insisted on adding. Tik led the way, her gestures urgent: Guard in 10 seconds; Elevator at the end of hall.

They passed rooms where elites lounged, their skin glowing as they watched screens showing slum-dwellers wasting away. Lila’s hands curled into fists—she’d known, of course, that the pain of the poor gave the elite a sick sense of joy, but she’d never seen it so blatantly displayed. 

At last, they reached the Engine.

The Chronophage Engine dominated the chamber—thirty feet tall, its metal frame twisted like gnarled roots, wrapped in glowing green tubes that pulsed with stolen time. At its core, a jagged emerald crystal the size of a cart throbbed, casting sickly light over the thousands of translucent faces pressed to the machine’s surface: a toddler clutching a toy, a farmer mid-laugh, a teenager holding a lover’s hand—all frozen mid-scream, their eyes hollow as their time was ground into fuel. The air hummed so loud, it rattled Lila’s teeth, and the floor felt sticky beneath her boots, as if soaked in the residue of vanished years.

“Shield’s on the crystal—needs a jolt to short it,” Darien gasped, fumbling with a homemade device: a clock face wired to a vial of unstable time liquid, its contents fizzing. “Hit it with this first, then swing the hammer. Don’t miss—one shot’s all we get.” He pressed the device into Lila’s palm; it burned like a live coal.

Tik stepped forward, white hair standing on end as their time-sight flared. They traced a frantic pattern: Six guards, 20 seconds. Time-slowers. Their hands trembled, and Lila saw the horror in their eyes—they were seeing more than patrols, seeing the room bathed in blood, seeing Darien crumpled on the floor. Death, they signed again, over and over.

Lila nodded, gripping the device. Standing beside her, Kael’s hand rested on the knife at his waist, and his grin sharpened. “Ready to take down the monster?” he said. Lila didn’t miss how his gaze flicked to the shadowed doorway, but Mia’s face—gray, gasping—took precedence, and she pushed the doubt down.

The first guard rounded the corner.

Tik lunged, tackling him before he could raise his time-baton. It clattered to the floor, and Lila heard a crack as Tik’s wounded shoulder hit concrete—they didn’t make a sound, just clung to the guard’s legs. Darien grabbed the baton, jabbing it at a second guard; the man froze, his movements slowing to a crawl, his face contorting in confusion.

“Now!” Darien yelled.

Lila hurled the device. It struck the crystal dead-center. For a heartbeat, nothing—then the shield flickered, a blue barrier rippling like water before shattering into sparks. The Engine’s hum rose to a shriek, and the trapped faces twisted, as if screaming into the void. Lila hefted her hammer—stolen from a construction site, its head wrapped in scrap metal—and ran.

Then Kael moved.

He didn’t just attack—he struck like a snake. His knife sliced through Darien’s shoulder before the engineer could react, then he kicked Darien’s legs out from under him. Darien hit the floor with a thud, blood gushing from his wound, and Kael pressed his boot to Darien’s chest, grinding it into the injury. “Foolish old man,” he sneered. “You thought you could undo what you built?”

Before Lila could swing the hammer, Kael spun, grabbing Tik by the throat. The girl’s feet kicked uselessly, their hands scrabbling at his arm, and he squeezed harder, delighted. Lila saw Tik’s face turn purple, their time-sight flaring—now Lila could see it too: the room collapsing, Tik’s body crumpling, Mia’s eyes going dark.

“Drop the hammer,” Kael said.

The shadows erupted. Four more time-guards marched in, batons crackling. Behind them stood Seraphina, her gown now a deep crimson velvet, her ageless face cold as marble. She clapped slowly, her heels clicking on the floor as she approached. “Bravo, Lila,” she purred. “You navigated my Citadel, outwitted my guards, and even made Kael work for his pay. Impressive.”

Lila’s hammer shook. “Let Tik go.”

Seraphina laughed, a sound like breaking glass. “Let her go? I’ll offer you more than that. Join the Weavers. Swear loyalty to me, and I’ll pump Mia full of time—enough to let her grow old, have children, live a life. Refuse…” She nodded at Kael, who tightened his grip on Tik’s throat, making their eyes roll back. “And this one dies first. Then I’ll send a guard to your slum. You’ll hear Mia scream while her last seconds are torn from her. Slowly.”

Lila’s throat went dry. She thought of Mia—her weak coughs, her whispering “I love you,” the way she’d held Lila’s hand when the execution bells rang. For a second, she wavered. What if Seraphina kept her word? What if she could save Mia?

Then Darien groaned. He reached up, bloodied fingers wrapping around Kael’s ankle. “Don’t… don’t do it,” he wheezed. “She’ll drain you. Drain Mia. The Engine needs rage—needs people like you. You’ll be just another face on the machine.”

Seraphina’s smile faded. “Kill him.” 

Kael raised his knife as instructed—but Tik bit him. Hard. Her teeth sank into his forearm, and he yelled, releasing her. Tik fell to the floor, gasping, and scrambled toward Lila, grabbing her ankle and pointing at the crystal. Now, her fingers signed. Now.

Lila swung the hammer.

It hit the crystal with a crash that shook the room.

Time exploded.

A wave of green light surged outward, so bright that Lila had to shield her eyes. The Engine’s metal frame split, gears grinding to a halt as the crystal shattered into a thousand shards. The trapped faces screamed—joyful, desperate screams—as they were torn from the machine, but instead of floating free, they twisted into a vortex, pulling time with them. Lila felt the wave hit her: one second she was seventeen, the next she was twenty, then fifteen, her bones aching as her timeline flickered.

The machine didn’t just break—it inverted.

Stolen time rushed back, but not evenly. A guard nearest the Engine screamed as he aged fifty years in a second, his skin shrinking to bone before he crumbled to dust. Another guard—young, barely twenty—rejuvenated, his face smoothing into a child’s, his armor hanging loosely off his tiny frame. The trapped faces didn’t find their owners—some merged, some vanished, their timelines unraveling into nothing.

Seraphina screamed. She fell to her knees, her skin wrinkling before Lila’s eyes, her hair turning white, her back hunched. In seconds, she looked like a woman of ninety, her gown hanging loosely off her shrinking frame. “No!” she shrieked. “My time! Mine!”

Kael stumbled, clutching his chest. Years flickered across his face—twenty, thirty, forty—his hair thinning, his scar fading, then reappearing as time rippled around him. He fell to the floor, convulsing, the stolen time tearing away.

The chamber shook. Dust rained from the ceiling, and chunks of concrete crashed to the floor. A beam fell, narrowly missing Lila, and she saw Darien—his eyes closed, his chest still. Dead. Tik grabbed her arm, pointing to the door, and Lila didn’t hesitate. She dragged Tik toward the exit, glancing back only once: Seraphina, now so old she could barely lift her head, staring at the broken Engine with hatred.

The Citadel collapsed behind them.

As they burst into the street, the city was a nightmare. A noblewoman ran past, her face aging and de-aging in seconds, screaming as her timeline frayed. A slum-dweller, Lila knew. Mrs. Hale, who’d given Mia bread once, rejuvenated, then aged a hundred years, crumpling to dust. Time swirled in eddies: some streets moved in slow motion, others in fast forward, some frozen entirely.

“Mia,” Lila gasped. She took off, Tik at her heels, their legs moving faster than they ever had—time still unbalanced, spitting them forward. The slums were in chaos, people screaming, fighting, collapsing as their timelines shattered. Lila pushed through the crowd, her heart pounding, until she reached their tiny apartment. She threw open the door.

The room was quiet. Too quiet.

Mia lay in bed, but she wasn’t the twelve-year-old girl Lila had left. She was in her mid-twenties, her hair long and black, her skin smooth—but her eyes were hollow, like two empty sockets. She sat staring at the wall, her hands trembling, and when Lila called her name, she didn’t turn.

“Mia?” Lila said, stepping closer. “It’s me. I’m back. The Engine’s broken—you’re okay now.”

Mia slowly turned her head. Her face was familiar, but her eyes were—cold, distant, almost looking through Lila. 

“Okay?” she whispered. Her voice was deeper than Lila remembered, rough with disuse. “I saw it, Lila. All of it. The time they took. The faces in the machine. The screaming.” She lifted her hands, staring at them as if they belonged to a stranger. “I’m not me. I’m… I’m pieces. Stolen years stitched together.”

Lila reached out to touch her, but Mia flinched. “Don’t,” she said. “It hurts. Every second feels like I’m being pulled apart.”

Tik stood in the doorway, their time-sight flaring. They traced a pattern: Mia’s timeline—frayed, patchy, held together by threads that were already breaking. Then they traced another: their own timeline, splitting, vanishing into the void. Tik looked at Lila, their eyes filled with fear, and mouthed: Goodbye.

Before Lila could stop them, Tik ran out the door. Lila chased after them, but the street was a whirlwind of time—one moment it was day, the next night, a guard’s body aged to dust in front of her. When she turned back, Tik was gone, swallowed by the chaos.

Lila returned to the apartment, her chest tight, to find Mia still staring at the wall, muttering to herself. “The Engine didn’t fix me,” she said. “It broke me more.”

That afternoon, Lila found Kael. He hid in an alley, his body still flickering between ages—now twenty, now fifty, now thirty. He muttered about “Seraphina’s lies,” about how she’d promised him his sister’s time back. When he saw Lila, he lunged, but his body gave out, collapsing to the ground. “Help me,” he begged. “I didn’t mean to—”

Lila walked away.

That night, she found Seraphina. The former leader of the Weavers huddled in the ruins of the Citadel, her body so old she could barely move. She clutched a shard of the Engine’s crystal, staring at it like it was a lifeline. When she saw Lila, she laughed—a dry, rattling sound. 

“You think you won?” She goaded. “You broke time. Now it’s eating itself. The rich are dead, the poor are fracturing, and soon… soon no one will be left.” She coughed, blood dribbling from her mouth. “Time always demands payment, Lila. You just paid with everyone else’s lives.”

Lila didn’t answer. She turned and walked away, leaving Seraphina to the ruins.

Three days later, Mia started fading.

Her timeline, stitched together from stolen, corrupted time, began to unravel. One moment she was twenty-five, laughing as she held an imaginary child; the next she was twelve again, coughing weakly, asking for a glass of water. Lila sat by her bed, holding her hand, but she could feel Mia slipping away—her skin turning cold, her breath growing shallow.

“I’m scared,” Mia whispered, her voice small, like the twelve-year-old she’d been. “It’s dark, Lila. So dark.”

Lila pulled her close, tears streaming down her face. “I’m here,” she said. “I’m not leaving you.”

Mia smiled, a faint, tired smile. “I love you,” she said. Then her eyes closed, and her hand went limp.

Lila held her for hours, long after Mia’s body had grown cold.