Before the first scene

Priya grew up above her family’s clock-repair shop, where every broken mechanism was a promise that patience could restore order. Her acceptance letter arrived inside a clock that had never kept proper time; when she opened it, every hand in the shop pointed toward Astra Noire.

At school she discovered that magic is less orderly than machinery. Last term, Priya charted a repeating pattern in the academy’s moving staircases—one that points to a room missing from every official map. She has quietly assembled a team to find it before the pattern changes again.