Wren didn't sleep that night.
She lay awake in the attic room she'd rented by the week, the broken watch resting on the nightstand beside her like a quiet question. It hadn't made a sound in years. Neither had her mother, not since that final morning—her lips pale, her hands folded, the watch clutched tight as if even death had no right to take it.
Why had the clockmaker reacted like that?
In the morning, despite the echo of his warning, Wren returned.
The city was already humming by the time she reached the crooked shop again. But here, on this street that seemed forgotten by time, everything was still.
The door creaked open with the same resistance as before. The air inside felt warmer, thick with the scent of oil and brass.
This time, Elias Thorne didn't ask her to leave.
He was seated at the bench again, magnifying lens strapped to one eye, fingers dancing through a watch mechanism the size of a coin. He didn't look up when she entered.
"I didn't come to cause trouble," Wren said, brushing rain from her coat. "Just to help."
"You think I need help?"
"No. But maybe I do."
He glanced at her now—just a flicker of recognition behind the lens. "Apprentices don't ask questions. They sweep floors. Polish brass. Wind clocks."
She blinked. "Are you offering me a job?"
He returned to his work. "I didn't say that."
But he didn't tell her to leave, either.
Wren set down her satchel in a quiet corner and picked up a broom.
By the end of the day, her arms ached and her throat tasted of metal dust. She'd swept behind counters, beneath shelves, and in corners thick with spiderwebs and forgotten cogs.
The clocks never stopped ticking.
Each had its own rhythm, like voices murmuring to themselves. One in particular, a tall, skeletal grandfather clock tucked behind a velvet curtain, ticked backward. She stared at it for nearly five minutes, but its hands inched in reverse, defying all logic.
When she asked Elias about it, he only said, "Some clocks are meant to be broken."
That night, she stayed late, polishing the brass on a cracked carriage clock. Elias had gone upstairs to whatever space he slept in—or didn't. The shop was quiet now, and for the first time, she could hear it:
Underneath the ticking, a second rhythm. Slower. Deeper. Like a heartbeat under the floor.
She followed the sound toward the back of the shop, past a curtain she hadn't noticed before. It was heavy, dust-laden, stitched with symbols she didn't recognize.
Behind it: a locked door made of blackened oak, bound with brass. A strange device was embedded in the door—a clock with no numbers, just etchings of moons and gears. It didn't tick.
She leaned closer.
As her breath touched the glass, the hands of the moon-clock jumped forward.
Tick.
Just once.
She stepped back, heart racing.
"Don't go near that again."
Elias's voice was behind her, quiet but sharp. Too sharp.
Wren turned. He stood in the shadows, eyes fixed on the door—not her.
"What is it?" she asked, voice barely above a whisper.
His jaw tightened. "The only clock in this shop that should never tick."