Liam Corbin's workshop was a sanctuary where time stood still. The noise of the City of Terminus outside—the screams of steam-powered trams, the muffled coughs of factories, and the hiss of gas lamps—was smothered behind thick velvet curtains. Inside, there was only the calm, rhythmic ticking of a hundred clocks and the sharp scent of machine oil mixed with wood dust.
Bent over his workbench, Liam peered through a jeweler's loupe into the heart of a silver pocket watch from before The Shattering. He was twenty-five, but his movements held the patience of a seventy-year-old master. With a miniature pair of tweezers, he tried to set a spring, no larger than a tenth of a millimeter, into its housing. He held his breath. A bead of sweat formed at his temple, but his hands were as steady as a surgeon's. Click. After two centuries, the spring was home. Liam exhaled slowly, his body relaxing. This was his world. A world with rules, a world that was comprehensible, repairable.
"Brother?"
The voice from the doorway was the only discord in the rhythm of the hundred clocks. Liam turned. Elara was there, holding onto the doorframe, watching him. She wore the simple, cream-colored dress Liam had laid out for her that morning. She was in the body of a twenty-year-old woman, but her eyes… her eyes shone with the wonder of a seven-year-old child.
"Can I go out to the garden?" she asked with childish excitement. "Mother was going to set up the swing."
A familiar ache pierced Liam's heart. Their mother had died fifteen years ago. "It's a little chilly, Elara," he said softly. "Maybe later."
Elara's face fell, but a moment later her eyes lit up again, this time with a different light—the worry of an old woman. "Liam, did you take the letters to the post? You know how your father gets angry if he has to wait."
Their father had died four years ago.
"I did," Liam lied. "Everything is taken care of."
Elara paused. For a fleeting second, her eyes cleared. The twenty-year-old Elara surfaced from the wreckage. In a horrified whisper, she asked, "Is it happening again?"
Liam shot up from his chair and rushed to her side. "I'm here," he said, taking her hand. "It's okay."
But her eyes had already clouded over again. She gently pulled her hand away from his. "Please don't bother me, sir," she said in a polite but distant voice. "My husband will be here to pick me up soon." Then she turned and walked slowly back toward her room.
Liam leaned against the doorframe and closed his eyes. Two years. For two full years, he had lived this heartbreaking play every single day. All that remained of the girl he once knew was a ghost, drifting through the shattered fragments of her memories.
He returned to his workbench. He set the repaired silver watch aside. From a drawer, he pulled out another object from a velvet pouch. An antique chronometer. The cursed instrument that had fallen and frozen at the very moment of the attack on his sister. Its hands were sealed forever upon that moment from two years ago.
Liam's fingers traced the cold metal of the chronometer. It wasn't just a broken machine. It was a monument to his failure, to his sister's stolen future. And he had sworn that one day, no matter the cost, he would make it run again.