The Chronometric Engimas

Pepper Lockhart never asked to be extraordinary. At fifteen, she’s still grieving her grandfather when she’s shipped off to the Lumenford Institute, a school hidden inside a strange bubble where physics bends, impossible creatures roam, and everyone seems to know her name before she speaks it.

Pepper quickly learns why. Her father was the man who sealed the Brightfold, a cosmic rupture that nearly tore reality apart. Now the anomaly is waking again, and it’s reacting to her.

As Pepper navigates unsettling professors, new friendships, and creatures that shouldn’t exist, she uncovers a legacy woven into the fabric of the Fold itself. A powerful billionaire is manipulating the anomaly for his own ends, and the truth about her parents is far more dangerous than she imagined.

The Brightfold is shifting. The world is thinning. And Pepper may be the only one who can stop the coming collapse, whether she’s ready or not.