Hours earlier, when Death had left the treehouse...
Death appeared in a swirl of darkness at the entrance to the Hall of Hourglasses—the vast Lifetimer Library where every living being's hourglass was stored—his scythe held tightly in one bony hand. The sound that had summoned him—a chaotic, discordant chiming of millions of tiny bells—grew louder as he approached.
"Marty!" Death called, his hollow voice echoing through the vast gothic space. "Marty, what in blazes is happening?"
A thin, harried-looking skeleton in an ill-fitting black robe scurried toward him, nearly tripping over the hem. Unlike Death's impressive stature, Marty was diminutive, with a slightly crooked skull that gave him a perpetually worried expression.
"Sir! Thank the endless desert you're here!" Marty's jaw clattered anxiously. "It started about an hour ago. I've never seen anything like it!"
Death strode past Marty toward the disturbance, the substitute death trailing behind him like an apologetic shadow. As they moved deeper into the library, Death noticed something alarming—a strange blue glow emanating from one of the side chambers.
"It's the microbiological section," Marty explained, hurrying to keep pace. "At first I thought it was just a minor fluctuation—we get those sometimes when there's a pandemic brewing—but then..."
They turned the corner into a cavernous room that should have been filled with the smallest hourglasses in the collection—the timers for insects, bacteria, microscopic organisms, and the smallest forms of life. Instead, Death found himself facing a storm of blue light, whirling and pulsing like a cyclone. Within the maelstrom, millions of impossibly tiny hourglasses were materializing, their sand beginning to flow the instant they appeared, only to be pushed aside by newer, equally minuscule timers.
"WHAT," Death demanded, "IS THIS?"
Marty wrung his skeletal hands. "They just started appearing! Billions of them—no, trillions! The categorization system crashed almost immediately. We've had to shut down three wings of the library because the overflow keeps spreading."
Death approached the edge of the blue vortex, examining one of the tiny hourglasses that had settled on a nearby shelf. Each was no larger than a grain of rice, but perfectly formed. He lifted one between the tips of his phalanges and squinted at the identification plate.
"'QUANTUM PROBABILITY WAVE FUNCTION #7,294,385,027-B, LOCATED AT COORDINATES...'" Death read, then dropped the hourglass in shock. "These aren't organisms. These are... potential states of matter?"
"Yes, sir," Marty nodded frantically. "And they keep coming! The ones that appeared first have already run out—see?" He pointed to a corner where thousands of depleted hourglasses had piled up, their sand completely settled.
Death stood silently for a moment, watching the continuing manifestation of new hourglasses. "Someone," he said finally, his voice dangerously quiet, "has done something very foolish."
"Sir?"
"Someone has observed that which should remain unobserved. They've forced countless quantum possibilities into temporary existence." Death's eye sockets flared with tiny pinpoints of light. "It's as if someone decided to make every possible position of every electron in every atom... suddenly real."
Marty's jaw dropped open. "But... that's..."
"Impossible? Clearly not." Death gestured at the chaos before them. "Reckless? Absolutely."
He straightened to his full height and raised his scythe. With a single sweeping motion, he sliced through the blue vortex. The light stuttered, dimmed, and then reassembled itself, though noticeably weakened.
"That will slow it temporarily," Death said, "but we need to find the source." He turned to Marty. "Call in reinforcements—all of the regional deaths, every rat, cat, and fly operative we have. Someone needs to keep collecting the regular dead while I handle this... situation."
Marty saluted, his arm bones rattling slightly. "Already done, sir. But there's something else you should know."
Death sighed. "Of course there is."
"The overload isn't just affecting the microbiological section. We've noticed anomalous manifestations in the human registry as well."
"Show me."
Marty led Death through a network of towering shelves to another chamber, this one filled with the more familiar human-sized hourglasses. Death immediately noticed the problem—several hourglasses were flickering, the sand within them momentarily pausing, then flowing in erratic spurts.
"What's happening to them?" Marty asked.
Death examined one of the affected hourglasses closely. "The metaphysical accounting system is struggling to track the normal flow of time. When too many new hourglasses appear simultaneously, it creates a backlog. Like trying to pour an ocean through a sieve."
He placed his bony hand on the glass surface, and the sand within steadied momentarily. "If this continues," he said grimly, "we'll start seeing deaths occur out of sequence. The wrong people dying at the wrong times."
"Can't you just... stop collecting them?" Marty suggested.
Death's eye sockets darkened. "The hourglasses don't control when people die, Marty. They merely record it. If we stop collecting, souls will be left wandering, unable to move on. Besides, when people start surviving the unsurvivable, things get—" he thought of his last appointed Igor "—ugly."
He turned away from the flickering hourglass. "We need to find who or what is causing this. It's not natural observation—this is something more deliberate. Someone has found a way to see beyond what should be visible."
Death moved toward the exit with renewed purpose. "I need to speak with Science. He might understand what kind of device could cause this level of disruption."
"But sir, what about—" Marty gestured helplessly at the continuing cascade of tiny hourglasses.
"Contain them as best you can. I'll return shortly." Death paused at the doorway. "And Marty?"
"Yes, sir?"
"If you notice any fluctuations in the incarnation hourglasses—particularly that strange Love and Magic one—notify me immediately."
With that, Death vanished, leaving behind only the echo of his words and the ceaseless, dissonant chiming of billions of newly-formed hourglasses, marking the brief lives of things that should never have been observed into existence.