Chapter 4 · free to read
I had grown arrogant about dying. Sixty seconds felt like a shield. Then a loose stair taught me exactly how thin that shield was.
Sixty seconds. Not sixty seconds before the mistake — sixty seconds before the death. It returned me already falling. The loop does not undo choices. Only endings.
So I stopped mourning my deaths and started measuring them. Each fall, each cup, a data point. If sixty seconds was my only tool, I would learn its every edge.
In thirty-eight loops, no one had ever known my name. He was the first person in this palace who saw a maid, not a mark.
Artwork and narration generated with AI.