As our hero sits in a prison cell in the depths of the Kind Queen's deadly dungeon, Death is about to carry out her duty and cross the hero off her list. When suddenly her hourglass stops working. Since her hourglass determines the time every humanoid being has to fork over its soul to the realm of Death, naturally this constitutes an existential crisis for Death. So, counter-intuitively, Death herself spared our hero's life - for now. Well, she rips out the soul, converts it into a ghostly wraith, and commands the hero to search for the cause of the time