The Clockmaker’s Curse: How Belle’s Father Built a God

Maurice Deschamps, the man known as “Belle’s Father” in French lore, wasn’t a mere inventor. Archival notes from 1762 describe him as a “temporal engineer,” obsessed with creating a device that could “store the soul in time.”

He called it La Bête.

His goal: to preserve his dying wife’s consciousness in a clockwork body. But the experiment failed — until his daughter, Isabelle, touched the machine and it began to breathe.

Witnesses said the automaton’s eyes glowed blue and followed her wherever she went. It spoke her name in a voice that was both hers and not hers.

Within weeks, Maurice disappeared. Locals claimed the beast roamed the hills at night, groaning in mechanical anguish.

When the ruins of his workshop were uncovered during WWII, the furnace still burned — centuries cold, yet red-hot within.

A charred engraving above the hearth read:

“Every beauty makes her own beast.”