Stories
The storm had no sound in Nareth Hollow that night—only a terrible stillness, as if even thunder feared to disturb the old workshop at the end of the crooked lane. There, behind warped shutters and smoke-blackened panes, the Clockmaster worked.
The stairs spiraled upward like a question Mara could never answer. One hundred and forty-seven steps, worn smooth by decades of footfalls—hers now, her brother’s before, their father’s before that. Each evening she climbed them, hand trailing the iron rail, gulls crying their accusations beyond the salt-streaked windows. The wind pressed against the tower’s stones, a sound like breathing, like the sea itself had lungs.
The cold, metallic air smells of ozone and rust, a scent that has been the constant companion of my thirty years aboard the Argo. I call this vessel a ship, but it is just a drifting tomb now, a colossal, dying sphere of metal suspended in the void. My entire life is measured by the silence of its failing systems and the slow, agonizing count to this single, crucial moment.