The Clockmaker’s Secret
In the heart of an old city, tucked between crooked alleys and hidden beneath the shadow of
towering stone buildings, there was a small, inconspicuous clock shop. Its windows were always
fogged with age, and the faint ticking sound of a thousand timepieces echoed from within, even
when the door was locked.
he shopkeeper, an elderly man named Mr. Thaddeus Wren, was a quiet soul, known by the
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few who noticed him as an expert in fixing clocks—though, not just any clocks. He repaired
timepieces of all kinds, from the most delicate pocket watches to towering grandfather clocks.
But what most didn’t know was that his clocks were not merely for telling time.
Inside the shop was a room few dared to enter, behind a hidden door in the back. There, a
massive clock tower stood, smaller than the one outside the city walls but far more intricate. Its
gears clicked and whirred, and its hands moved not just in time, but through it. Mr. Wren had
built the clock long ago, using forgotten alchemy and forbidden knowledge, and it was not just a
device to mark hours—it was a device to shift them.
or years, he’d kept it hidden, repairing the rift between past and future that the clock controlled.
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But one night, a strange young woman named Elowen entered his shop, asking for a broken
timepiece of her own—a clock she said had been passed down through her family. She claimed
it had always been broken, stuck forever at midnight.
Elowen was no ordinary customer. She had no intention of simply fixing her clock.
s Mr. Wren examined the timepiece, he noticed an engraving on the back he had never seen
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before. It was a symbol, a series of interlocking circles, matching the design on the strange
clock tower in his hidden room.
lowen smiled, her silver eyes gleaming, and whispered, “I’ve come to fix your clock... and
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unlock something far more important.”