The nursery door creaked open without being touched.
Evangeline sat up in her crib, eyes wide as a porcelain doll tumbled from the shelves, not falling, but descending with eerie purpose.
Its painted smile cracked wider as it landed perfectly upright, joints moving with smooth precision.
"Little keyhole," it sang in a voice made of rewinding music boxes, "won't you let me in?"
Whiskerton's rose as the toy's head rotated 180 degrees. The markings on its back matched Evangeline's prophecy sigils exactly.
The Clockwork Prophet's gears stuttered.
"She's using the dolls as anchors. Everyone played with, everyone loved it, they're doors were waiting to open."
Evangeline reached out.
The doll reached back.
Selphina cornered the prophet in the clock tower, her cutlass pressing against his ticking throat.
"You knew this would happen."
The prophet's brass eye dimmed.
"I did."
A terrible silence filled the chamber, broken only by the click-click of his internal mechanisms.
"I was there when they erased her," he admitted, voice box crackling with static. "I held the hourglass while they erased my maker. And now... she will use the child to erase everything else."
Outside, the first screams began as castle staff reported toys remembering how to walk.
The noble House of Follicle had reached crisis levels.
"OUR CONDITIONER IS UNINVENTING ITSELF," Dante's hair cried out, strands flashing between present and past lengths. Lucien frantically stirred a vat of temporal stabilizer as his left eyebrow aged rapidly from twenty to ninety and back.
A ripple passed, half the war room jacuzzi unfilled itself.
"WE DEMAND A TEMPORAL HAZARD CLAUSE IN OUR CONTRACT," the hair spelled, now braiding itself into a Möbius strip for protection.
The Duke, whose mustache had finally stabilized at the unfortunate age of fourteen, groaned.
"Just fix time already!"
They found the first victim in the kitchens, the head chef, frozen mid-scream as his famous soufflé unbaked itself inside his stomach. His skin was cold to the touch.
"No pulse," Seraphina confirmed, then frowned. "...But he's still breathing?"
The Clockwork Prophet touched the man's forehead.
"She's not killing. She's rewinding." His voice box emitted a horrified click. "Turning people back into their raw materials."
Evangeline's mark flared as another doll voice echoed through the halls
"Meat and marrow, bone and bread,
Soon you'll all be unmade!"