The ticking of the clocks was almost hypnotic.
Dozens of pendulums swung in uneven arcs, their rhythms colliding and overlapping until the sound became a shifting ocean of seconds. Elara stood in the middle of it, clutching the journal like a lifeline, her pulse matching the fastest ticks.
Casimir moved behind the counter, his movements precise, almost mechanical. He took down a small wooden box, unlocked it with a tiny brass key, and withdrew a pair of round spectacles. When he put them on, the lenses caught the lamplight — but instead of reflecting it, they seemed to drink it in.
"You've seen the first signs," he said, peering at her through those strange lenses. "The quiet. The blankness. It will grow worse."
"I want to know what's happening," she said. "All of it."
Casimir hesitated, then nodded. "Time is not a single thread. It's a weave — millions of threads, twisting together to form the cloth of reality. When a thread is cut, the weave frays. What you saw back there—" he gestured toward the street "—was a fray beginning."
"Someone's cutting time?"
"Not someone," Casimir said quietly. "Something."
The word seemed to carry weight. The air in the shop felt colder.
He turned, scanning the wall of clocks, and selected a brass carriage clock with cracked glass. Setting it on the counter, he wound it backward. As the hands turned, the ticking slowed, deepened… until it stopped entirely.
The silence hit Elara like a held breath.
Casimir looked at her. "You are what we call an Anchor. It means time remembers you — and when it tries to unravel, you remain. That journal in your hands is… your compass."
She stared at him. "So I'm some sort of—what—time traveler?"
His mouth curved in a humorless smile. "Not yet. Right now, you're a target."
The words settled heavily in her chest. "Target for what?"
Before he could answer, every clock in the shop stopped.
The sudden silence was so absolute it made her ears ring.
Then the humming began again.
Casimir's eyes flicked to the front window. "They've found us."
The glass darkened. Not like a shadow passing over — more like ink spilling upward from the bottom, erasing the view of the street. The blackness moved with unsettling precision, crawling along the frame until only the faint reflection of the shop's interior remained.
Casimir grabbed a leather satchel from under the counter, throwing in tools without looking. "We have maybe a minute. When the gap closes, everything it touches is gone."
The floorboards beneath Elara's shoes gave a faint shudder.
The journal in her hands grew heavier, the cover warm again.
A new line of ink bled onto the page.
"Do not leave through the front door."
Casimir saw her reading it. "It told you that?" His tone was sharp, urgent. "Then we use the back."
They moved quickly through a narrow hallway to a rear door. Casimir unlocked it with a key the size of a sewing needle. Beyond lay another alley — only this one was utterly silent, the kind of silence that pressed against the skull.
They stepped out, and the door shut behind them.
For one dizzying moment, Elara thought they'd escaped.
Then she looked up.
The sky was fractured.
Not with lightning, but with lines — hairline cracks running through the clouds, faint golden light leaking through. The cracks spread slowly, and with each one came the hum, deeper and deeper, until her bones vibrated.
Casimir's voice was low. "The Fracture is opening faster than I thought."
The journal's ink shifted again.
"You have twelve minutes."