The Clockmaker’s Apprentice

The clocks never lied. That was the first lesson Master Corwin taught me.

“They can be wound too tightly,” he’d say, squinting over his spectacles, “but they don’t lie. People do. Time doesn’t.”

I was twelve when he took me in, half-starved and full of questions. His shop smelled of brass, oil, and something older—like secrets kept behind gears. Every surface ticked. Tiny cogs spun in open-faced watches. Pocket watches breathed in slow, metallic heartbeats. Tower clocks whispered through pipes in the walls.

The master was a legend in the Lower Quarter. Nobles sent their carriages for his repairs. Some whispered he’d once made a timepiece that could rewind regret—but that it broke, as all things do when asked too much.

I didn’t believe the stories. Not until the night the boy came in.

It was past closing, a storm tapping against the windowpanes. I was polishing the hands of a moon-phase clock when the door creaked open.

The boy was no older than me. Pale. Eyes wide like they hadn’t slept in weeks.

“I need a clock fixed,” he said, voice barely above a breath. “It doesn’t belong to me, but I need it to work.”

Corwin emerged from the back, wiping his hands on a dark cloth. “Let’s see it, then.”

The boy placed it on the counter.

It wasn’t like any timepiece I’d seen. Its face had no numbers—just markings, like phases of the moon and strange constellations. The hands spun erratically, one ticking forward, the other backward. The second hand hovered, uncertain.

Corwin’s face changed. Not fear. Recognition.

“Where did you get this?” he asked.

“I can’t say,” the boy replied. “But I was told you’d understand.”

Corwin nodded slowly. “Come back in three days.”

The boy looked at me. Not at Corwin—me. “You’ll fix it, won’t you?”

I wanted to ask why he was scared, or what the clock meant, but I nodded.

After he left, I turned to the master. “What is that?”

He sighed and drew the curtains. “A soul clock.”

I laughed. “You’re joking.”

He didn’t smile.

“They’re rare. Illegal in most parts. They don’t tell time—they tell you. What you’ve wasted. What you’ve held onto too long. What moment you’ll never get back. They were built during the war—meant to warn generals before they made fatal decisions.”

“Did they work?”

He picked up the clock gently. “Too well.”

We worked on it in silence for two nights. Every time I touched it, it thrummed under my fingers, like it was alive. On the third morning, it stopped. Just... stopped.

Not broken. Resting.

When the boy returned, he looked older somehow, like he’d lived years in those three days.

“It’s ready,” Corwin said.

The boy didn’t take it. “Do I have to read it?”

“No,” Corwin said. “But it already read you.”

The boy stared at the clock. His hands trembled. Then, slowly, he reached out and turned it toward himself.

The second hand jumped forward.

The hour hand pointed straight at him.

The markings on the dial shimmered, rearranged—until one word settled in the center.

Forgive.

The boy exhaled. Just once. Deep. Long. Then he smiled.

“I think... I needed that,” he said.

We never saw him again.

Later, I asked Corwin, “Can anyone own a soul clock?”

He shook his head. “No. They find you. When you’re ready to stop lying to yourself.”

I looked at all the clocks on the wall.

Every one of them ticking.

Some, I realized, not to mark time—but to mark truth.