It started with the birds.
Not singing. Not flying.
Just… stopping.
In Tokyo, pigeons froze mid-flap over neon alleys, suspended like paper cutouts. In Cairo, a flock of desert larks dropped from the sky and lay still in the sand, eyes open, unblinking. In the Amazon, macaws fell silent—no warning cry, no rustle of wings. Just absence.
Then came the clocks.
Not all of them. Only the old ones. Grandfather clocks in manors, sundials in monastery courtyards, stone obelisks aligned to solstices. At exactly 3:07 a.m.—the same time every clock in Silver Creek had stopped—they cracked.
No explosion. No energy surge.
Just a hairline fracture down the center, as if time itself had sighed and split.
Luna felt it in her bones.
She was still recovering in the manor's library when the first tremor hit—not through the ground, but through the Weave. A low hum, older than language, vibrating beneath the world's skin.
Kai saw her go rigid. "Again?"
