One autumn evening, as the wind rattled the windowpanes like skeletal fingers, an old woman draped in a cloak of crow feathers entered his shop. She placed a single, silver key on the velvet counter. It wasn't ticking. In fact, it was so cold that frost began to bloom across Silas's workbench.
"This is the Key to the Winter Solstice," she rasped. "The year has snagged on a jagged second, and tomorrow morning will never come unless the mechanism is cleared."
Silas peered through his magnifying loupe. Inside the bow of the key, he didn't see iron or silver. He saw a stilled snowflake, suspended in a fragment of time that refused to pass.