When fifteen-year-old Rowan Blackwood discovers a strange compass in his late grandfather's attic, he expects nothing more than a dusty relic. Instead, the device awakens something ancient buried beneath his sleepy coastal town. The compass doesn't point north. It points to impossible places that exist between heartbeats, where clockwork creatures guard forgotten secrets and time itself bends like water. Alongside his sharp-tongued neighbor Petra and her younger brother Finch, Rowan must navigate a realm where every choice rewrites reality. But someone else wants the compass, someone willing to unravel everything to claim its power.
