Sixteen-year-old Nika Xaliari was raised on a rule every child in Svitlaris learns before they can read: wear your iron cuffs, or be taken by the dark. In a city where magic calls spirits, power is something you bind early, softened into obedience through lullabies and fear. Nika, a sun-forger who shapes heat and metal, has spent her life trying to keep hers small, controlled enough to belong, while her sister never had to.

Until Nika stops trying. In desperation she slips off her cuffs, and a Night Thread- dark spirit, drawn to her unbound magic,but it takes Odessa instead. Nika doesn’t get to grieve. The Night Thread is already moving toward three god-forged masks that if joined can rewrite time, erasing the lives built in it.

To stop it, Nika must hunt the masks through portals of shifting seasons, with a blackmailing protector and a companion bound to his bargain. If she fails, her sister will be erased from the world she knows, and the life Nika is fighting for may never have had a chance to exist. To succeed, she must become something she was taught to keep locked away.