There was something about dusk that didn't feel real.
Eveline stood on the stone balcony outside her room, watching the horizon melt into shades of honey and ash. The day had blend gently into twilight, as if even the sun had grown weary of remembering what came next.
Below, the garden lay in stillness. The wind had paused mid-song, and the vines curled around the gate like punctuation — as if to end a sentence no one had spoken aloud.
"I don't know what time it is anymore," Eveline whispered to the wind, "only that it's not quiet now."
She returned to the library just after six — though the clocks insisted it was still five fifty-nine. The hallways of Greymoor were quieter at this hour, as if the house itself obeyed some forgotten rhythm, some old grief it could not name.
Thaddeus was waiting, his sleeves rolled up, ink stains on his fingers. The table was covered in scattered papers — all of the, unaddressed letters in the same slanted handwriting.
"He never mailed these," Thaddeus said without looking up. "Most of them are written to someone unnamed. Some begin with 'You,' others with 'Dearest.' A few… with no greeting at all. Just thoughts, falling out of his head like rain."
Eveline sat across from him, carefully unfolding one of the letters. The parchment was yellowed at the edges, but the ink was still strong.
She read aloud:
"The hour does not pass — it opens. And in its golden light, I remember things that never happened."
Another one read:
"You wore the yellow the day I forgot your name, and it nearly killed me. The forgetting, I mean — not you."
Eveline's breath caught.
"He's not writing from memory. He's writing from between memories," she said softly. "As if he's trapped in them."
That evening, she wandered the west hall, guided only by candlelight. Her footsteps were soft on the rug-lined floors, the air growing colder with each step, though the flame did not flicker. She stopped at the door she hadn't noticed before. It was narrow and painted the same color as the wall — almost hidden, like a secret not yet ready to be told.
The handle was cool. It opened without resistance.
Inside, dust blanketed everything. It was a small sitting room, filled with forgotten things — a cracked teacup, a piano with one broken key, a silk scarf hanging over the edge of a chair.
And on the desk in the far corner— a letter.
Not folded. Not sealed. Just sitting there, as if it had been waiting.
The ink was fresh.
It said, simply:
"You found the hour. I knew you would"
And below it, in curling script, was a name Eveline had never seen before — but somehow recognized:
Rowan.
She stepped back, her hand trembling.
"How can something wait for me that I've never touched?"
"How can a stranger know me before we've met?"
She fled the room quietly, leaving the candle on the desk.
The hall felt different on the walk back. The shadows were deeper. The silence — heavier.
But something had shifted.
She could feel it in her breath. In her bones.
"The hour is not haunted," she whispered, "it's alive."
That night, Eveline dreamed.
She stood in the garden beneath the clocktower, wearing a dress that was not hers — soft gold, with embroiderd vines at the sleeves. The tower struck five fifty-nine, and she turned.
A man stood beneath the archway.
She couldn't see his face, only his silhouette in the fading light.
He didn't speak. But she felt the words — as if they had once been hers, given away and returned again.
"You were here before," he said without moving. "And you left something behind."
She opened her mouth to ssk him what.
But the clock chimed once—And she woke up.
In the stillness of her room, Eveline sat up slowly, her hands shaking.
On her bedside table, the journal she'd left closed earlier was now open.
One line stared back at her, written in the same hand as the others.
"I'll be there when the hour turns."
And outside, the clocktower's hands—for the first time in years—had moved.