The Clockmaster

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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 townsfolk called him that because his name had been lost. Some said he’d long ago traded it for time itself. Others whispered a crueler story—that he had wound the great clock at the city’s heart until it wound him instead, coiling his soul through brass and shadow. Whatever truth existed hid behind his long coat and mirrored spectacles. The Clockmaster spoke to no one, yet every time a clock in town stopped, he appeared—silent as dusk—and with a twist of his key, it beat again.

Even those who hated him left offerings on his doorstep. A clock that stopped for more than three nights in Nareth tended to draw worse things than silence.

The Girl from the River

On the eve of the thirteenth moon, a girl came knocking.

She was small, rag-cloaked, and dripping river water on his stone step. In her hands she carried a pocket watch—its silver face cracked, its hands spinning backward. When the Clockmaster opened the door, the storm around them held its breath.

“My brother,” she said. “He fell into the river three days ago. They say the current took him, but I think…” Her voice broke as the watch spun again, the gears whining. “Time took him. And this—this thing—won’t stop.”

The Clockmaster held out his hand. Long fingers, pale as parchment, waited until she surrendered the watch. He turned it once, twice, then lifted it to his ear. A faint ticking came from within: thirteen beats, then silence; thirteen beats, then silence.

“It’s been marked,” he murmured.

“Can you fix it?”

He looked at the girl without expression. “You can fix only what is broken in time’s eyes. This is something else.”

Still, he stepped back and gestured to the gloom behind him. “Come in.”

The Workshop

Inside, the air was dense with metal dust and oil-lamp haze. Hundreds of clocks lined the walls—pendulums, hourglasses, watches, even strange contraptions with wings of glass and spines of copper. Each ticked in its own tempo, a thousand overlapping heartbeats forming a strange, living pulse. In the center stood a great desk carved from midnight wood, its surface littered with open pocket watches, keyholes, and tiny screwdrivers made of bone.

The girl stared in awe. “Do they all tell time?”

“They tell their time,” said the Clockmaster softly. “Each measures a story, a life, a debt. Time isn’t a river—it’s a collection of cages.”

He set her watch under a magnifying lens and adjusted the lamplight. The gears gleamed red where silver ought to be.

“This watch belonged to your brother?”

She nodded.

“Then his time is still running—just in the wrong direction.”

Her eyes widened. “You mean he’s alive?”

“Alive,” the Clockmaster echoed, “but not here.”

He turned the watch again, faster, until the ticking blurred into a single hum. Somewhere in the workshop, all the other clocks slowed to listen. “He’s crossed into the Hollow Between Seconds. A terrible place. Every beat of your watch draws him further inside.”

“Can’t you reach him?”

The Clockmaster’s mouth twitched—maybe a smile, maybe an echo of pain. “One can step between seconds only by surrendering one’s own.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means,” he said, setting down the watch, “that if I go after him, something—or someone—must take my place.”

The Bargain

The girl hesitated. The storm hissed faintly on the windows. “If it’s a price,” she said, “I’ll pay.”

He studied her for a long moment. “You don’t know what the currency is.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

The Clockmaster’s hand closed around the watch. “Brave words,” he said. “But time is not a forgiving creditor.” He placed the watch upon the great steel clock embedded in the wall and turned a lever. At once, the workshop dimmed to shadow. The thousand clocks began to slow, their ticks falling out of sync until only silence remained.

From the darkness came a low, reverberating tone—like a single heartbeat stretched across forever.

“Then sign,” he said.

“Sign what?”

“The wound in time.” He drew a fine blade from his sleeve, its edge black as old moonlight. “Your blood will seal the contract.”

She stepped forward. “If it brings him back…”

He nicked her palm before she finished. The blood fell onto the cracked silver face of her brother’s watch. The red seeped into its gears, and with a low shriek of metal, the hands stopped spinning.

The Clockmaster breathed once—almost relief, almost sorrow—and then pressed his gloved hand against the watch’s surface.

The world shattered around them.

The Hollow Between Seconds

The girl blinked. She was no longer in the workshop.

The air was glass, and everything moved in fragments. Pieces of sound drifted through the shimmering emptiness—screams, whispers, the faraway toll of bells. She stood beside the Clockmaster on a bridge made of fractured moments, each plank flickering between past and future.

“This is where lost seconds go,” he said. “The Hollow. Nothing dies here—nothing lives, either.”

Below them, time itself churned like a living river made of mirrors. Faces darted under the surface: lovers caught mid-kiss, soldiers frozen in death, children laughing, falling, vanishing.

Her heart seized. “Where’s my brother?”

“In there.” The Clockmaster pointed down. Near the river’s edge, a small figure floated among the mirrors, unmoving.

She ran toward him, but the bridge coiled like a serpent, pulling her back. “Why—why won’t it let me—”

“Because he no longer belongs to your moment,” said the Clockmaster. “He’s become a reflection. To pull him back, you’d have to replace him.”

Her breath caught. “You mean I’d be trapped here?”

“Every exchange has its symmetry.”

She pressed a hand to her chest. “You said you’d go.”

He stood silent. Slowly, she realized what he truly meant: if he entered the Hollow, his body would freeze in her world—another clock stilled forever. It was her blood that now tied them both. Only she could move between the ticking.

“I’ll do it,” she whispered.

“Foolish child,” he hissed. “You will vanish. No one will remember you existed.”

“I don’t care,” she said, eyes blazing. “He will.”

For the first time, something softened in his voice. “Then hold the watch. When the hands strike thirteen, call his name.”

She clutched the silver watch as he lifted his hand, weaving symbols from shadow. The mirrors below rippled. The river exhaled.

Into the River of Time

The girl jumped.

The cold was not water but memory, crushing and endless. Scenes spun around her: her mother’s wedding, a dying sun, the first clock ever wound. She screamed her brother’s name, but her voice dissolved into the current.

Then—there. His face, pale behind a pane of glass. He looked asleep, unaged, as though time itself had forgotten to breathe.

She pressed the watch to the glass, whispering, “Wake up. Please wake up.”

The hands clicked forward once.

Then twice.

Then thirteen times.

Her brother coughed water and staggered through the shattering mirror, collapsing into her arms. For an instant, everything froze—the river, the light, the pulse of the world.

Then she felt her own heartbeat slow.

He stared at her, terrified. “Anna?”

But her name drifted away, unraveling like thread. The last thing she saw was the Clockmaster standing upon the broken bridge, his mirrored eyes reflecting both their faces.

He raised a hand.

“Her time is mine,” he said softly, and the Hollow swallowed her.

The Price of Time

When the boy awoke, he was in the Clockmaster’s workshop. The great steel clock ticked again, steady and calm. The storm had ended.

“Where’s my sister?” he asked.

The Clockmaster turned toward him. For a moment, the boy saw the faintest trace of sorrow behind those mirrored lenses. “There was no sister,” he said gently. “You came alone.”

“That’s not true,” the boy insisted. “She—she brought me this watch—”

He stopped. The pocket watch lay open on the desk. Its face was whole now, gleaming silver without a single crack. But engraved where the numbers should have been was a name: Anna.

The boy blinked. “That’s my—wait… who—?”

He realized he didn’t remember what name he’d said.

The Clockmaster turned the great key once, and the thousand clocks resumed their rhythm. “Time forgets out of mercy,” he murmured.

He pressed the watch into the boy’s hand and opened the door. Outside, dawn strained weakly through the fog. “Go. You have all your seconds ahead of you.”

The boy hesitated, but the shadows of the workshop frightened him. He stepped into the pale street and never looked back.

The Echo in the Clock

When the door closed, the Clockmaster stood alone. He removed his spectacles, revealing eyes of deep crimson. Something faint stirred within the steel walls—a whisper, soft as rain.

“Is he safe?” It was a voice, but muted, distant, echoing through gears.

The Clockmaster’s expression did not change. “He is home,” he said.

“And me?”

He reached toward the great clock and laid his hand against the glass, where a faint outline—ghostlike and feminine—waited. Her eyes fluttered beneath the surface. “You keep the Hollow closed,” he said. “That is your place now.”

“But… will I ever leave?”

He swallowed. “Perhaps. One day. When the world forgets how to measure itself.”

Her laughter was barely audible. “Then you’ll be here forever, too.”

The Clockmaster smiled faintly. “I always was.”

He turned the key again, sealing the clock’s door. Beneath its ticking, her voice joined the rhythm—not sorrowful, exactly, but part of it, completing the great design.

From that day on, the people of Nareth claimed the clocks ticked differently—more slowly, more tenderly, as though mourning something they couldn’t name.

The Sleepless Years

Centuries slipped across the town like drifting snow. The world changed, but the workshop remained—a relic nestled between newer buildings. No one owned it. No one dared to break in. Yet sometimes, on the thirteenth moon, strange lights flickered behind its shutters, and the faint hum of countless clocks could be heard beneath the stillness of night.

Those who listened closely swore they could hear two tones within the ticking—one deep and steady, the other light and echoing, like a child’s laugh swallowed by distance.

Inside sat the Clockmaster, unchanged. He still wore his long coat and gloves, though dust gathered on his shoulders. Before him stood the great steel clock, and within its face, the shadow of a girl shimmered faintly in the gears.

“Another one’s been taken,” whispered the voice in the clock.

The Clockmaster nodded slowly. “Time always collects its due.”

“Will you save them?”

His hand lingered over the great key. “If I do,” he said quietly, “who will wind me?”

Her reflection smiled sadly. “A clock cannot wind itself forever.”

He sighed. “Not forever. Just until the seconds stop crying.”

Then he rose, towering and silent, gathering his black coat about him. The workshop darkened as he stepped into the storm once more, the ticking fading behind him.

The Thirteenth Tick

In the quiet that followed, the great clock’s hands quivered. For an instant, they froze—then clicked forward thirteen times. Each beat echoed into the dark, spiraling through the hollow streets, down into the buried veins of the earth, where time itself slumbered.

And down there, in that black sea between moments, something ancient stirred—something that remembered when the first gears turned, and the Clockmaster made his first bargain.

It whispered his real name, the one he had buried beneath centuries of ticking.

Up in the workshop, the Clockmaster paused mid-step, eyes widening as the echo reached him. The storm hushed. Every clock in Nareth Hollow stopped.

“Not yet,” he said to the darkness. “I’m not finished.”

But the voice only laughed—a sound like rusted metal breaking.

Then the clocks began to tick again, faster this time, out of rhythm, as if the entire world had begun to unravel.

The Clockmaster gripped the key in his hand. “So,” he said softly, “it begins.”

His mirrored eyes glinted once beneath the lightning. Then he vanished into the storm—time’s servant, its prisoner, its endless keeper.

And behind him, in the workshop’s silence, the girl in the clock opened her eyes.

source: perplexity

prompt:

tell me a story about the clockmaster. 
he's a dark, tall and mysterious figure. it should be about 1500 to 2000 words, in a dark fantasy setting and something brand new and catching.