The morning smells like bacon and normalcy — until it doesn’t.

Your hand twitches on the mattress, and the world just… stops. The sizzle from downstairs cuts out. Dust hangs frozen mid-air. The curtains quit swaying.

Maren is standing in the middle of your room, eyes half-shut, hair wrecked, murmuring something that almost sounds like your name. She sleepwalked in again — third time this week — and she has no idea time just froze around her.

Downstairs, Delphine is mid-flip on a pancake that will never land.

You’re wide awake, heart hammering, with a brand-new power and zero instructions.

And this house is only where it begins.

School, the neighborhood, the city, anywhere you go — time can stop whenever you want it to.

The question isn’t whether you can stop time.

You just did.

The question is what you do with it.