A.R. Hammond

Idir Mezraoui was once the most feared duelist in the civilized territories, his blade a blur of silver. Now, a lingering injury restricts him to pacing the polished, claustrophobic halls of Dar-el-Mizan Academy as a coach to the prodigious Safiya Tindani. But when a sudden assassination strikes the academy's inner sanctum on the eve of the grand exhibition, Idir finds himself violently yanked backward in time to the exact start of the day. Trapped in a temporal lock, he must untangle a decades-old covered-up internal scandal, analyze a closed circle of academy elite, and unmask a killer who strikes from the shadows with institutional sanction. With every loop, Idir gathers concrete clues and peels back the pristine veneer of Dar-el-Mizan, uncovering the rot eating away at the only institution standing between civil order and absolute chaos.

Seventy-two hours. That is all the time remaining on the clock when a routine witness relocation in the isolated, snow-choked county of Krasnograd shatters. Bodyguard Viktor Volkov, a man whose tactical brilliance is matched only by his absolute pragmatism, finds himself trapped behind closed borders with a protectee who knows just enough to get them both killed, and an elite kill squad closing in. The only institution that can extract them is the regional Directorate—a corrupt, rusted bureaucratic machine that is functionally the sole barrier against complete societal collapse in the region. To survive the countdown and secure his charge, Volkov must outmaneuver the assassins hunting him while manipulating the very machinery of the Directorate that wants the witness buried. In a county where the cold is lethal and trust is nonexistent, every hour costs blood, every decision narrows his options, and Volkov is the only one who sees the board clearly enough to win.