⏳ The Room That Forgot How Time Passes:

⏳ The Room That Forgot How Time Passes: The Secret of the Silent Clock!

Have you ever wondered what the world would look like if the second hand stopped racing? Not figuratively, but literally—if time itself halted within a specific space while life outside continued its furious pace?

This is exactly what happened in the abandoned "Morthan Manor," specifically in the library of Lord Alvin, its last occupant, who vanished without a trace seventy years ago. His disappearance was the city's eternal riddle: no body, no evidence of travel, just a single, cryptic note left on the dining table: "I am here, and forevermore."

"Elias" was merely a curious local history researcher, a restless thirty-year-old driven by a passion for ancient mysteries. He was searching for old documents to create a documentary about the city's forgotten legends. When he stepped into Morthan Manor, having finally secured permission to enter, he was prepared for dust and decay, but he was utterly unprepared for the crushing silence.

The moment he crossed the threshold of Lord Alvin's library, he felt a faint pressure on his eardrums, as if a distant door had been softly closed, followed by an absolute, heavy stillness. It was no ordinary silence; it was the absence of any auditory frequency, the lack of creaking wood or even his own muffled heartbeat.

The room was steeped in Victorian shadows: dark oak shelves stretched floor-to-ceiling, holding thousands of volumes that looked untouched for decades, and the scent of aged books and aromatic oils mingled with the dust. But the strangest element wasn't the opulent furniture; it was the light.

The light filtering through the window was a constant, golden-orange hue, as if the sun had frozen in a moment of eternal twilight. It was the perfect lighting for reading an antique book, yet it was a light that refused to change.

Elias checked the brass pocket watch hanging from a chain on his chest. It read Five past Seven in the evening (5:07 PM). Then, he looked at the grand, bronze, gold-inlaid grandfather clock above the wide fireplace, famous for never having been wrong in the history of the manor. Its hands also pointed to 5:07 PM.

"Odd, they've both stopped at the exact same moment," Elias murmured, adjusting his own watch, assuming the dampness had affected the mechanism.

An hour passed while he meticulously examined the rare manuscripts left by Lord Alvin—writings discussing metaphysical physics and theories of temporal detachment. He felt a fierce thirst, yet he found no sign of the light changing or the shadows lengthening. Not a single mote of dust suspended in the golden window beam had moved.

Elias looked at his watch again, confusion turning to alarm: 5:07 PM.

He couldn't believe his eyes. He was certain he had spent over sixty minutes in the room, yet not a single minute had passed on the dial. He tapped the watch lightly, but it remained stubbornly silent.

He realized the true horror when he pulled out his mobile phone, which had lost all signal. Its screen illuminated with the same etched date and time: November 25th, 17:07 PM.

Time had not passed. Elias was trapped in the perpetual 5:07 PM.

Five more hours were spent in frantic attempts to find an explanation. He realized that the room itself was not moving forward in time. The shadows were static, the clock was still, and even the dryness in his throat from thirst was not developing at a natural pace.

Elias now understood that Lord Alvin hadn't vanished; he was likely still here, having chosen to freeze himself in this specific moment, creating a temporal bubble around his library—perhaps to protect a secret, or perhaps to preserve a cherished instant he desperately wanted to keep.

In his final desperate attempt to escape, Elias pushed aside a thick, old Ottoman rug under the reading table. There was a hidden trapdoor leading to a narrow, dark cellar. Curiosity finally overcame his fear, and by the dim light of his flashlight, Elias descended, where he found a small wooden table bearing: The Diaries of Lord Alvin, The Final Volume.

Elias frantically flipped through the pages. In his later years, the Lord had been searching maniacally for a "Stasis Point" in time. He was obsessed with one particular moment in his life. On the final page, scrawled in a shaky hand, was the sentence that changed everything:

> "I have found the key... the key to remaining in a state of pure bliss that marked the birth of my star, or the birth of my idea. I shall never leave 5:07 PM. I am the Master of Time here, and this is my eternal sanctuary. But wait... who will feed the little black cat, 'Oz,' now?"

>

The instant Elias finished reading the cat's name, he felt a soft, low shudder run through the cellar walls. The grand clock above the fireplace in the library suddenly jolted, and began emitting a loud, resounding "tick-tock," as if drawing a massive breath after a long sleep.

The room's spell was broken. The shadows moved with alarming speed, and the colours rushed back to life. The warm orange light swiftly changed to a cold, blue twilight. Elias looked at his watch... it was now Two past Midnight (2:00 AM). Nearly nine hours had passed in the outside world, while for him, only a single minute had elapsed inside.

Elias bolted out of the manor, clutching the mysterious diary, having narrowly escaped the temporal prison. He realized Lord Alvin had tied his temporal stability to his responsibility for a living creature. When the name of his beloved cat was mentioned, in the Lord's moment of final commitment, this small entity became his unintended point of weakness and his unselfish release.

Lord Alvin had remained stuck in his moment of bliss, but the memory of "Oz" was what shattered the temporal loop, freeing the library, and freeing Elias. Now, Elias wonders: Was Lord Alvin merely trapped in time, or had he been watching the world pass by from the window of 5:07 PM?.

END