Lincoln's POV:
Time feels different after you nearly lose it.
Not in the dramatic way people imagine—no ticking clocks echoing in your head, no visions of futures slipping through your fingers. It’s quieter than that. Heavier. Like every second has already know what it costs to exist and it now refuses to be just wasted.
That's what I noticed it when I woke up.
The Pale Verge don't have mornings like in Duskbane, not really, but the fractured sky had shifted into a softer array, pale light spreading more evenly across the land. The counter-root Ayaana and Star had anchored the night before still pulsed faintly in the distance, its rhythm steady enough that my chest loosened when I focused on it.
The Chrono-Forge lay beside me, half-buried in pale dust.
I hadn’t set it there.
I must
