The power flickered once, dimming the workshop to the color of old brass. For a heartbeat the ticking staggered again, then steadied. Dev kept his hand on the glass.
Beneath his fingers, the reflection of the clock's face rippled. Not the surface—something beneath it.He leaned closer.
Across the workbench a faint shimmer ran through the air, a hair-thin filament of pale light linking the stopped watches together. He blinked, and it was gone. The fan kept turning. The rain whispered. The world pretended nothing had happened.
He waited.
There—again. A thread, or maybe a line of dust catching the light, stretching from the table to the half-open window. It pulsed once, like the throb of a vein, then vanished into still air. He could almost hear the echo of its movement, a note too low to belong to any machine.
Dev held his breath. The room felt larger, emptier. Every clock ticked at a slightly different time; every sound came a shade too late. For a strange second, he wondered if sound itself had to travel along those unseen lines, like beads on wire.
He whispered, "Is this what you were fixing, Baba?"
No answer. Only the soft return of rain against the shutters.
He stepped back, switched off the light, and stood in the doorway. From there the workshop looked ordinary again: tools, shelves, his father's old chair. Nothing moved that shouldn't. Yet the sense of a held breath lingered—something waiting to exhale.
When he finally turned away, the second hand of the nearest clock gave a single, careful tick.