The Clockmaker’s Daughter

When the first scream of a newborn echoed through the small town of Verden, every clock stopped.

Grandfather clocks stopped in the middle of ticking. Wristwatches halted. Even the tower clock, famous for never stopping, not even during storms, went quiet. Its hands hung in the air, as if they were holding their breath.

People whispered that the child, a girl named Elara, was born at the exact moment time itself hesitated.

But only the clockmaker knew the truth.

Harlan, Elara’s father, felt it—an invisible shiver in the world when he first held her. It was old and unbelievable. When the clocks finally started again, hours later, he saw each one was a little slow, as if they were trying to catch up to a new life.

Elara grew up quiet and watchful, with a mind that worked like her father’s hands. She saw things others missed. She heard patterns in silence. By twelve, she could take apart a cuckoo clock and put it back together with her eyes closed.

But there was one place she was forbidden to enter: the old attic room.

Her father kept it locked; the only key hung around his neck.

“This room is not for the living,” he’d say simply.

She didn’t understand until the day she found her own name carved into the wooden doorframe. Underneath it was a date, her date of death.

The date was 212 years old.

On her seventeenth birthday, the clocks stopped again.

Elara was alone in the workshop, polishing an old mantel clock when everything stopped. It didn’t happen slowly or with any warning. Everything just froze. The second hand stopped moving. The air felt heavy. Even the dust hung still, floating like stars in a quiet sky.

And from upstairs, she heard it: Footsteps. In the sealed attic.

She caught her breath. The key was still around her father’s neck, but he wasn’t home. With her heart racing, she took the spare skeleton key from the bottom drawer. It was forbidden. It was her last hope.

The attic door unlocked with a soft click.

Inside, the air was freezing cold. The room looked like time had never touched it. Sheets covered the furniture but were free of dust. Half-melted candles looked just as they did the day they were first lit, hundreds of years ago.

And at the center stood a large mirror.

Not dusty. Not cracked.

But alive.

It rippled like water. In the mirror, she saw a girl who looked just like her, with the same eyes and face, but paler, thinner, and sadder.

“Elara,” the reflection whispered.

“You came back.”

The room spun.

“I’ve never been here before,” she said.

“Yes, you have.” The reflection stepped closer. “Centuries ago. Before the accident.”

“What accident?”

“The one that ended your life.”

Her reflection lifted her sleeve, showing scars Elara didn’t have. Memories she never knew flooded her mind: falling, choking smoke, a town burning, and a desperate try to turn back time, but it was too late.

“You had the gift,” the reflection said. “The ability to rewind time… but only here. Only in this room. You tried to save the town. You tried to save everyone. And you died doing it.”

Elara staggered backwards.

“No… I’m alive.”

“You are the echo,” her reflection said softly. “The life your father rewound.”

A truth like ice pierced her.

Her father hadn’t just fixed clocks.

He had fixed her.

Time suddenly jumped forward. The house creaked. Everything seemed to shake.

“You must choose,” said the reflection as the mirror began to crack. “Let time move as it should and lose everything you have, or rewind again and risk becoming nothing.”

Elara’s hand hovered toward the mirror.

Toward herself.

Toward the truth.

From downstairs, she heard her father yell her name; terrified, pleading.

She closed her eyes.

Then, she made her choice.

When all the clocks resumed in Verden now, they didn’t run behind time.

They didn’t tick faster.

They ran perfectly.

But the clockmaker’s attic stayed locked forever. Some nights, when the town is quiet, people say they hear whispers inside, repeating the same moment again and again.