The Clockmaker’s Secret

The town of Drelmere had always run on perfect time.

Every hour, on the hour, the great bell of the clocktower sang out across cobblestone streets and fog-covered roofs, its deep chime echoing through the sleepy alleys like the breath of an ancient titan. For as long as anyone could remember, the clock had never faltered, never stopped—not even during the great storm of 1872, nor the fire of ‘83.

At the heart of it all was one man: Elias Grimsby, the town’s reclusive clockmaker. He lived alone in the tower’s shadow, in a small brick shop crammed with gears, springs, and clocks of every size. Elias had no family, no apprentice, and—most strangely of all—no apparent age. He had been there when the eldest townsfolk were children, looking much the same as he did now: tall, wiry, with hands that seemed to tick as precisely as the machines he tended.

Then, one day, the clock stopped.

It was three minutes past midnight when silence fell over Drelmere. Dogs barked, children cried, and sleep fled from the hearts of the townsfolk as they stared at their dead clocks in horror. And when they looked toward the tower, they saw something no one had seen in over a century:

The windows were dark.

No light. No movement. No Elias.

Mayor Hensley gathered a group at dawn to investigate. Among them was Clara Montrose, a local librarian with a taste for secrets and a stubborn sense of curiosity. The heavy oaken door to Elias’s shop was unlocked—eerily so. Inside, the place looked untouched: every clock still ticking on the walls, except the great one.

“Up to the tower,” the mayor ordered.

The staircase creaked like it hadn’t been stepped on in decades. They climbed in silence until they reached the workshop perched at the top of the tower—a room filled with rusting gears, blueprints nailed to walls, and in the center, the heart of it all: the great mechanism that powered the town’s time.

And Elias Grimsby, slumped over the console, unmoving.

His skin was pale. Eyes closed. A thin smile on his face, like he had just told himself a very good joke. But he wasn’t dead—not quite.

He was frozen.

His body was stiff, like a doll wound too tight. One of the men reached to touch him, but Clara stopped him.

“There’s something wrong,” she whispered. She knelt beside the console, eyeing the array of gears. One massive gear—blackened and ancient—was missing a tooth. A strange hum emanated from it, like it was singing in reverse.

Clara noticed something else: a small keyhole in the base of the clock’s main gear shaft. A hidden compartment.

The mayor scoffed. “Leave this to the authorities.”

But Clara returned that night with a lantern, a magnifying glass, and the smallest lockpick in her collection.

Inside the compartment, she found a letter, yellowed and sealed with wax bearing a strange sigil: a serpent eating its tail, coiled inside a clockface.

She broke it open.

To Whomever Has Awakened the Silence,

If you are reading this, then I am no longer able to contain the truth.

The clock does not run on gears alone. It runs on time itself—my time.

In 1812, I was a desperate man, obsessed with the idea that time could be controlled, bent, preserved. I met a stranger who gave me the design you now see. He offered me life—as long as the clock ticked, so would I.

And so I built it.

Every tick of the great clock stole one second from my death, locking it away behind the tower’s walls. The people of Drelmere came to depend on my work, on the perfection of their lives. But nothing comes without cost.

Each time the clock chimes, a second is taken not just from me, but from everyone. A collective sacrifice—barely felt, never noticed.

That is the secret.

Tonight, I tried to end it. I removed a gear, let the machine falter. But it retaliated. It does not want to die. It has become something more—an engine of hunger.

If you wish to end this, you must finish what I could not. Destroy the clock. Burn the gear etched with the serpent. Time must be freed.

But know this: if you fail, the machine will choose a new keeper.

And if it has chosen you, you will know by midnight.

—E.G.

Clara’s hands trembled. She looked toward the mechanism. The black gear. The humming.

And then, faintly, behind her, a tick.

A single, slow tick from the great clock.

The hands began to move again.

Midnight.

She turned toward the window, seeing her reflection in the glass—only it wasn’t hers.

It was Elias’s face, smiling back at her.