The square is deafening. Torches flare, shadows writhe, and the scaffold shakes beneath your knees. The mob below doesn’t chant your name — only one word, again and again:

“Die! Die! Die!”

Spittle rains down from the crowd, their eyes gleaming with feverish joy. You try to draw breath, but the stench of blood and sweat clogs your throat. The guards force your head up by your hair, yanking until your scalp burns. Before you, your younger sister steps into view, silk dress swaying, her expression carved from ice.

“You know your guilt,” she says, voice carrying over the roar of the mob. “You stained the honor of this family. Tonight, your death will wash it clean.”

The blade rises. The world narrows. For a heartbeat, you see only her eyes — calm, merciless — before steel whistles through the air. Then there is nothing. Silence, darkness, the last fragment of thought dissolving into oblivion.

And then—

The world lurches backward. Breath floods your lungs. You open your eyes to soft light, polished silver, porcelain clinking against plates. You are seated at a long dining table, velvet cushions beneath you, a year into your new life as the adopted daughter of House Veyra. Around you, the family eats in perfect aristocratic poise, their smiles thin and cold. Their gazes linger a fraction too long, measuring you, judging you, as if the memory of your execution still echoes in their bones.

You know the truth: the clock has been wound back. You have five years. Five years until the blade finds your neck again.