In 2039, the world is already ash. Three time travelers cross into the 1960s with one doctrine: no Big Moves. Only butterfly breaths.

Helene believes patriarchy lit the fuse. Hiêu believes colonialism did. Zack believes it was the oligarchs — it’s always the oligarchs. Each has a target, a plan, and the righteous certainty of someone who has already read how history ends.

They are all wrong.

Elizabeth Hood is murdered before she can talk. The monk burns anyway. Richard Oakes turns out to be only a man. Targets die, vanish, or prove far more complicated than any briefing file promised. And the ones who actually bend the arc of history — Waylene, Annie, Nguyet, Yvonne — are women none of them were sent to find.

From the church bombings of Birmingham to the jungles of Vietnam to the rocks of Alcatraz, Mission: Butterfly follows three would-be saviors who learn, one failure at a time, that the mission was never about being right.

For anyone who has run the numbers on climate change and come up feeling too small to matter: you don’t save the world by being right. You save it by being present. Humble. Relational.