The copper gears lay scattered across Elias Thornwick’s workbench like fallen autumn leaves, each one inscribed with symbols that seemed to shift when he wasn’t looking directly at them. His weathered hands trembled as he assembled the final mechanism—not from age, though he was well past seventy, but from the weight of what this clock would do.
Outside his shop window, the village of Millhaven buzzed with unprecedented activity. News had arrived that morning via breathless messenger: the Queen’s army was mobilizing against the neighboring kingdom. War was coming, and with it, the draft that would claim every able-bodied man between sixteen and forty. Elias watched young Thomas Baker embrace his sweetheart Sarah one more time before disappearing into the recruitment tent that had sprouted in the town square like a malignant mushroom.
Elias had spent forty years crafting timepieces that measured mortal hours. This one would be different. This one would steal them.
The commission had come from Lady Cordelia Ashworth, draped in black silk and desperation. Her son Marcus, barely eighteen, was set to march with the Queen’s forces in three days. “They say you can work miracles with clockwork,” she had whispered, pressing a purse heavy with gold into his palm. “I’ve heard rumors of your… special pieces. Time moves differently for those who possess them.”
He had tried to refuse. The art of temporal clockwork was forbidden, its practitioners burned as heretics if discovered. But Lady Ashworth’s tears reminded him of another mother, decades ago, who had begged him to save her child from a plague that devoured young lungs. He had been too afraid then, too concerned with his own safety. The boy had died while Elias sat paralyzed by cowardice.
Now, as he fitted the final gear into place, Elias felt the familiar tingle of magic coursing through the brass and crystal. The clock face showed no numbers—instead, phases of the moon marked the hours, and the hands were crafted from meteoric iron that hummed with celestial energy. When wound, it would grant its bearer the ability to step outside the normal flow of time for precisely one hour each day. Enough, perhaps, for Marcus to avoid the fatal musket ball or sword stroke that might otherwise find him.
The workshop door chimed, and Lady Ashworth entered, her pale eyes wide with hope and terror. “Is it finished?”
Elias nodded, wrapping the clock in midnight-blue velvet. “He must wind it each dawn, but never more than once per day. The temporal strain on a mortal body…” He paused, meeting her gaze. “There may be consequences I cannot foresee.”
“Consequences?” She clutched the package to her chest. “What could be worse than losing him entirely?”
Before Elias could answer, the workshop door burst open. Captain Morrison of the Queen’s Guard stood silhouetted against the dying light, his hand resting on his sword hilt. “Elias Thornwick, you are under arrest for practicing forbidden temporal magic.”
Lady Ashworth gasped, but Elias merely smiled. He had known this moment would come eventually. In his desk drawer lay seventeen other clocks, each one destined for a different young man in Millhaven. He had worked through the night for weeks, pouring his life force into each mechanism. The magic demanded a price, and he had chosen to pay it with his remaining years.
“The clocks,” Captain Morrison demanded. “Surrender them all.”
“I’m afraid they’ve already been delivered,” Elias lied smoothly. Tomorrow, before dawn, he would complete his real final work—not the pretty timepiece Lady Ashworth carried, but the master clock hidden beneath his floorboards. One that would slow time for the entire village during the coming battle, giving their boys a fighting chance to return home.
As the guards bound his wrists, Elias caught Lady Ashworth’s eye and nodded toward the back room. She understood. Tonight, when darkness fell, she would return for the others.
The clockmaker’s final hour had arrived, but time, as he had learned long ago, was a more flexible master than most people imagined.
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