The nursery walls pounded with golden light as Evangeline's prophecy mark projected backwards lullabies into the air.
The words separated like spools of thread, each syllable peeling away from reality.
"Hush little princeling, don't say a word...
Mama's going to unbreak the world..."
Whiskerton's fur stood on end as the stuffed animals began unstitching themselves, seams splitting in reverse, stuffing retreating into nothingness.
The rocking chair creaked sideways, moving in a direction that shouldn't exist.
"Mistress, stop singing along!" the cat howled, batting at the floating threads of melody with his paws.
But Evangeline was entranced, her tiny hands conducting the reversed symphony of time itself.
The mobile above her crib spun counterclockwise, its celestial bodies unforming into clouds of stardust.
Then—
A new voice slithered between the notes.
"Tick-tock goes the crumbling clock..."
The sound wasn't heard so much as remembered, the way one recalls a nightmare when waking up.
The Clockwork Prophet's brass eye lens cracked with a crystalline ping.
"She's here."
…..
The Duchess' private study had become a gallery of vanishing history.
Her fountain pen hovered over parchment as ink retreated back into its snout.
The latest casualty was tomorrow's trade agreement with the maritime guild, half the signatures now gaped like missing teeth.
"Blast it all," she muttered, watching the words "shall not be infringed upon" dissolve into "shall be delicious with butter".
A drop of lavender oil bloomed on the page, its scent sweet. The Duchess quivered as the stain spread, forming unmistakable shapes.
A doll's face.
A crown.
A keyhole.
Somewhere beyond the walls, something that wasn't quite laughter echoed through the castle halls.
…..
Lucien burst into the war room-turned-spa, his formerly silver-streaked eyebrow now restored to boyish brown.
"Eureka! I've stabilized the chrono-conditioner!"
Dante's hair flinched as Lucien brandished a bubbling vial that gave off faint screams.
"IT SMELLS LIKE REGRET AND BROKEN PROMISES."
"Of course it does!" Lucien adjusted his glasses, which kept flashing between round and square. "It's infused with ground clock gears and the tears of a time-displaced badger!"
The hair formed a skeptical question mark.
Lucien sighed.
"Fine, no badger tears. Just... extremely pressurized moments of deja vu."
He demonstrated by pouring a drop onto a spoon, the utensil promptly remembered being ore in a mine.
"WE'LL TAKE FIFTY BOTTLES," the hair decided, already braiding itself into protective temporal loops.
…..
The barber's scream could be heard three wings away.
"MY MUSTACHE!"
The Duke clutched his face where his once-proud facial hair now existed in patches, some areas regressing to prepubescent smoothness.
"This was a fully grown adult mustache! I paid taxes with this mustache!"
Selphina leaned against the doorway, crunching an apple that kept un-biting itself.
"Wow. You look like someone's nervous nephew."
The Clockwork Prophet adjusted his cracked eyepiece, oil leaking down his cheek like black tears.
"A minor temporal wound. Unlike that."
He pointed to the stained glass window just as the castle's tallest tower un-collapsed, stones flying upward in perfect reverse, only to crash directly onto the newly rebuilt stables in a shower of both broken and intact masonry.
Evangeline giggled from her seat on Seraphina's shoulders as hay rained upwards into waiting pitchforks.
…..
The scent grew stronger in the family room, wood and floral, clinging to the back of teeth like spoiled honey.
Selphina cornered the prophet near the unstable grandfather clock which was currently striking "never".
"Spill it, cog-boy. That's graveflower lavender, the exact strain the Laughing Empress grew in her palace gardens."
The prophet's remaining eye blurs, focusing on Evangeline who was happily untying time's knots like a cat with yarn.
"She was my maker. My... mother, in the way of gears and oil." His voice box made a sound like a music box winding down. "I was there when they erased her. When they made the world forget*."
A terrible understanding dawned on the Duchess' face.
"That's why Evangeline's mark shows a smiling doll. Not a portrait, a toy. Something made to be played with."
The prophet's shoulders slumped.
"And now the toy wants its maker back."