Chronophage

In the last museum on Earth, the exhibits are coming alive. And they’re hungry.

Welcome to the Chronophage, a sentient museum that preserves history by devouring it. For Security Officer Faye Moreau, the job is simple: keep the past in its place. But in a building where the walls breathe and the floor swells like a digesting beast, the past refuses to stay dead. Armed with a custom-milled tuning fork that resonates against temporal distortions, Faye is all that stands between reality and the ravenous anomalies that bleed from the artwork.

When a fourteenth-century plague spills from a mural and a Victorian toy train begins to rewrite its own history, Faye realizes the museum's hunger is evolving. The breaches are becoming more frequent, more intelligent, and more personal. The Chronophage's own immune system—the enigmatic and terrifying Collectors—are deployed to purge the paradoxes, but they see Faye and her fellow humans as part of the infection.

Forced to confront the ghosts of a life she never lived and a grief she can't explain, Faye is drawn into a desperate battle for the museum's soul. Her investigation leads her from breathing corridors to the Original Exhibition, the very heart of the museum's insatiable appetite, where a single, ancient artifact holds the key to everything. Faye must make an impossible choice: allow the museum to consume her own painful memories to restore balance, or risk the collapse of time itself.

Perfect for fans of Jeff VanderMeer's Annihilation and the mind-bending concepts of House of Leaves, Chronophage is a gripping, atmospheric thriller that masterfully blends speculative fiction with psychological horror. It is a haunting exploration of memory, loss, and the price of preservation.