The Clock That Bled Names

Season 2

Chapter 1: Through the Spine of the Castle

Hunedoara, Romania — April 5, 2024

They should’ve never survived the breach.

But they had.

Dr. Mara Ciobanu stumbled forward through a corridor that no longer resembled stone. It pulsed like a throat, sinew-like walls rippling with every step. Her blood-soaked boots squelched through the shifting floor as she dragged Evelyn—still alive, but murmuring in ancient dialects no living tongue had spoken for centuries.

Vasile Petrescu limped behind them, right arm broken, eyes hollow. Since Andrei was taken, he hadn't spoken a word.

The hourglass had collapsed.

But not broken.

It had transformed. As they escaped the chamber, its skeletal structure folded inward, retreating into the darkness like a spider collapsing its web. What replaced it was worse...a doorway. A gate. A spiral of bone and mirror that reflected not their bodies, but their thoughts.

And it had let them go.

“It let us go,” Mara whispered aloud for the first time.

Vasile looked at her, and for the first time in 18 hours, he spoke. “No. It expelled us.”

Behind them, the stone resealed like healing flesh.

The staircase they now climbed twisted at impossible angles, passing through dimensions that seemed looped in fractal repetition. They could see echoes of themselves—ghost images—climbing higher, looping endlessly behind and ahead.

Evelyn’s voice pierced the silence. “The clock is bleeding... it bleeds names... names no one remembers...”

Mara stopped. “What names, Evelyn?”

She looked up, eyes glazed. “Yours.”

And she pointed to the wall.

There, scrawled in a fluid darker than ink, was Mara’s full name: CIOBANU, MARA ANA—and it was dripping.

Chapter 2: The Librarian of Teeth

They emerged in what once was a sub-basement. Records showed it had been sealed in 1923 after an “unexplained fatality” during an expansion effort. But what they saw bore no resemblance to a basement.

They stood before an immense circular chamber. Racks towered in spirals to the dome above, filled not with books, but with glass jars.

Each jar held a set of teeth.

Milk teeth. Wisdom teeth. Yellowed dentures. Even sharpened animal fangs—each labeled meticulously with a strip of ancient vellum.

Then they saw the figure.

She stood behind a wooden desk, impossibly tall, wrapped in funeral linen and veiled in lace.

The Librarian.

Her face was hidden, but her voice was bone-dry.

“You’re late,” she said.

Mara trembled. “Where... where are we?”

“The place between records,” the Librarian replied. “This is where memory comes to rot.”

Vasile approached a jar, reading a label: VASILE PETRESCU — RIGHT CANINE, AGE 11 — PUNISHMENT: LIED ABOUT THE DOG.

He stepped back.

The Librarian turned a page in her logbook. “Each lie. Each theft. Each thought unsaid. We remember them in enamel.”

Evelyn stirred. “She’s a guardian. A warden.”

The Librarian nodded. “And you are trespassing.”

Suddenly, the jars began rattling. Teeth clicked violently inside, trying to reassemble themselves.

A name echoed from above. “MARA.”

Then another: “EVELYN.”

Then came the bells.

Chapter 3: The Tolling That Never Ends

The tolling wasn’t sonic. It vibrated the bones. Their teeth ached in response.

Evelyn collapsed, clawing at her mouth. “They’re calling us. By our bite.”

Mara helped her up. “We need to move. We need to find an exit.”

The Librarian stood motionless as if frozen in time. Her veil began to disintegrate, revealing a mouth stitched shut with human hair.

Vasile kicked over a shelf of jars, glass exploding. The tolling paused for one second.

Then the wall behind them cracked open.

Not split. Opened....like eyelids.

A tunnel.

More spiral staircases.

The walls were lined with molars forming patterns...glyphs made from teeth.

Evelyn whispered, “The clock is reading us backwards.”

Mara turned. “What do you mean?”

“It’s counting down... not to an end. But to our origin. It's bleeding our identities, backward, until we’re nothing.”

Chapter 4: The Room of Unbirth

The stairs ended in a room lit by pale flame that cast no heat. In its center, a pendulum swung...not by gravity, but by names.

Hundreds of parchment slips hung from threads above the pendulum, burning slowly as it passed under them.

Each name vanished with a whisper as the fire consumed it.

Mara stepped forward and saw one nearing the swing: CIOBANU, MARA ANA.

She lunged for it, but Evelyn screamed, “DON’T TOUCH YOUR NAME!”

Too late.

The flame didn’t burn her but her memories began to distort. Faces of her parents melted into each other. Childhood smells turned sour. The taste of soup. Her sister’s voice. Gone.

She staggered back. “I can’t remember my birthdate…”

The pendulum whispered, “You are being unwritten.”

Chapter 5: The Clock That Bled Names

They found it in the next room.

The Clock.

Not made of gears and hands. But vertebrae.

Each hour mark was a spinal disk. The hands were made of fingerbones, ticking in time with their breath.

And in the center, a bleeding hole where names dripped in red ink.

Each drop formed letters on a wall of vellum behind it, writing names...crossing some out. Rewriting others.

The last three lines:

CIOBANU, MARA ANA ..... To be forgotten

HALE, EVELYN JO .....To be translated

PETRESCU, VASILE.....To remain

They stood in silence.

Then Evelyn walked forward and whispered something into the clock.

The bleeding stopped.

Mara turned to her. “What did you say?”

She smiled.

“I gave it a new name.”

Then vanished.

Just… blinked out of reality.

Chapter 6: The Vault of Names Unsaid

Now only two remained.

The vault beyond the clock held shelves upon shelves of silence.

Not books. Not bones.

Just empty jars labeled with things no one dared say.

“I never loved her.”

“I saw him die and didn’t stop it.”

“I wished them dead.”

Whispers hung in the air. Regret incarnate.

A bell rang behind them.

Mara turned. “We’re not alone.”

From the far side of the vault, something moved.

Not walked. Moved—like a shadow being exhaled.

It wore no shape but had eyes that held your deepest lie.

It moved toward Mara.

And whispered her full name.....

Then added one more word.

“Erased.”

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🌑 Season 2 Ends 🌑

The bleeding has stopped—but time remembers who you were.

Will Mara survive her erasure?

Will Evelyn ever return from her linguistic vanishing?

No one knows what happened after. May be someday we stumble upon Mara somewhere in the dark shadows to know what happened next.

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Your whispers have guided me this far...

Do you dare step into the darkness once more? My latest horrors await—click if your heart still craves the unknown.

Missed my latest story?, read it here:

📜 The Hourglass of Hollow Earth

Now, my beloved readers...my extended shadowed family—I need your voices in the dark. Should I breathe life into Season 3, or let something new take shape from the abyss? Your words will decide it. Comment down below your thoughts based on that i will decide the next story.

And always remember, when the candle flickers… know you’re not alone.

—Ssssshhhhhh... she hears you too