The Clockmaker of Hollowmere

In a hidden valley where sunlight seldom reached, there lay the village of Hollowmere. Few visited, and fewer left. At its edge, beneath ivy-covered rooftops, stood a crooked little clock shop run by a man named Elric.

Elric wasn’t like other villagers. He rarely spoke, smiled only in the company of his clocks, and never aged. His hands, though weathered and oil-stained, moved with the precision of gears. The villagers believed he was merely a hermit, but children whispered tales of magic and mystery—of how the clocks in his window ticked backward when no one looked.

One rainy dusk, a girl named Linna burst into the shop, soaked and breathless. She was a curious child with wild red hair, often seen climbing roofs or reading under trees. She had no family and few friends, but a heart loud with wonder.

“I’m not here to buy anything,” she huffed. “Just needed somewhere dry.”

Elric looked up from his workbench, his eyes glinting behind spectacles. “Then sit, and let the storm pass,” he said kindly.

Linna wandered among the shelves, marveling at the intricate designs: clocks shaped like dragons, trees, or even galaxies. But one caught her eye above all—a tall brass clock with no hands and a face of swirling mist.

“What’s that one?” she asked, drawn to its glow.

Elric stiffened. “That one is not a toy. Nor is it for sale.”

But Linna reached out and brushed its glass surface. In an instant, the clock pulsed, and the world cracked open.

They were no longer in the clock shop, but floating above a sea of stars. Islands drifted in the air, waterfalls flowed skyward, and enormous beasts of gears and feathers circled lazily overhead.

“Elric… where are we?”

“The Time Between Time,” he said solemnly. “I once lived here—before I broke a law even time cannot forgive.”

He explained: long ago, he had been one of the seven Keepers of Moments, guardians who wove the past, present, and future into balance. But Elric had fallen in love with a mortal and abandoned his post. For this, he was banished, and the Clock Without Hands sealed.

“But you,” he said, “have reopened it. You carry a piece of forgotten time within you.”

Before Linna could ask more, a great darkness rippled through the sky—the Time Thief, a shadow of a former Keeper, corrupted by consuming discarded timelines. It had awakened, drawn to the rift Linna had opened.

“We must mend what’s broken,” Elric said, “or everything—past, future, even now—will be unraveled.”

Together, they journeyed through time’s discarded fragments: a forest of clocks frozen in mid-tick, a river flowing with childhood memories, and a ruined city where dreams once lived. Linna discovered she could shape the world with her imagination—building bridges from forgotten lullabies and unlocking doors with questions no one had dared ask.

In the final confrontation, the Time Thief loomed—tall, eyeless, its body made of broken hours and unraveling fates. It reached for Linna, whispering every regret she never had, every moment she might have lost.

But Linna stood firm. “You don’t get to write my story.”

And she didn’t fight it—not with force, but with something more powerful: a story of her own. A tale of a lonely girl who found a friend in a clockmaker, who stepped into wonder and became more than she’d ever imagined.

Her words stitched reality back together.

The Time Thief, caught in her tale, remembered who it had once been—a Keeper like Elric. With a final sigh, it dissolved into a rain of golden sand, returning to time's great hourglass.

The moment the clock ticked again, they were home.

Sunlight warmed Hollowmere for the first time in generations. Flowers bloomed. Laughter returned to the streets. And in Elric’s window, the once-handless clock now ticked slow and true.

Elric passed the mantle to Linna, who became the new Keeper of Moments. She wandered often, sometimes vanishing for days, but always returning with a new story and a little more light.

And on stormy nights, if you pass the old shop at the village’s edge, you might hear a soft ticking—and the beginning of a tale no one’s ever heard before.