Chapter 1: The Last Gift of Time

The thing about time, Master Aldric always said, is that it doesn't care about your plans.

I understood what he meant the night I watched him die.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me rewind—though that word would soon mean something far more literal than I could have imagined on that ordinary autumn evening when everything changed.

My name is Iris Blackwood, and I'm a clockmaker's apprentice. Or I was, anyway. At sixteen, I'd spent the last four years learning the trade from Aldric Thorne, the last independent clockmaker in Cogsworth. While the Chronos Guild tightened their brass-knuckled grip on every timepiece in the city, Master Aldric quietly repaired pocket watches and wall clocks in his cramped workshop, staying just invisible enough to avoid their attention.

I loved that workshop. The smell of machine oil and brass polish. The satisfying click of gears finding their rhythm. The way afternoon light filtered through windows perpetually fogged with steam from the city's endless factories, casting everything in a warm amber glow. In a world that seemed increasingly chaotic—where clocks ran backward without warning and people occasionally aged in reverse for terrifying hours—the workshop felt like the only place where things still made sense.

That evening, I was hunched over my workbench, squinting through my magnifying goggles at a particularly stubborn hairspring. My fingers, stained with polish and cramping from hours of delicate work, trembled as I tried to seat the tiny component. Behind me, I could hear Master Aldric at his own bench, his breathing labored in that way that had been getting worse lately.

"Iris," he said, his voice carrying that peculiar mixture of exhaustion and excitement I'd learned to recognize. "Come here. I want to show you something."

I set down my tools and turned, pushing my goggles up onto my forehead where they caught in my perpetually messy dark braids. Master Aldric stood at his private workbench—the one I wasn't allowed to touch—holding something that caught the lamplight and threw it back in prismatic fragments.

A pocket watch.

But not just any pocket watch. Even from across the room, I could see it was extraordinary. The case appeared to be made of some metal that shifted between brass and silver depending on the angle, covered in intricate engravings that seemed to move when I wasn't looking directly at them. When Master Aldric opened it, the exposed mechanism was like nothing I'd ever seen: gears within gears within gears, each one turning at its own impossible speed, some clockwise, some counter, all of them somehow working in perfect harmony.

"Forty years," Aldric whispered, his weathered hands cradling the watch like something sacred. "Forty years I've been working toward this. Even before you were born, even before the temporal decay began, I knew this would be necessary."

I approached slowly, drawn by the watch's strange magnetism. Up close, I could hear it ticking—but the sound was wrong. It wasn't the steady tick-tock of a normal timepiece. Instead, each tick seemed to echo backward, creating an impossible rhythm that made my head spin.

"Master, what is it?"

His eyes, magnified behind his perpetual monocle, found mine. In them I saw something that frightened me: resignation mixed with desperate hope. "Your inheritance, my dear girl. Though I pray you'll never need to use it."

"I don't understand."

"The Chronos Guild believes they can control time by controlling timepieces," Aldric said, closing the watch with a soft click. "They've confiscated every device with even a hint of temporal manipulation, claiming it's for the public good. But they don't want to fix the decay, Iris. They want to monopolize it."

I'd heard Master Aldric's theories about the Guild before—whispered over late-night tea when he thought the neighbors weren't listening. The Guild claimed they were working to repair the temporal anomalies that had been plaguing our world for the past twenty years. But their solutions always seemed to make things worse, and they were getting rich in the process, charging exorbitant fees for their "stabilization services."

"This watch," Aldric continued, pressing it into my hands, "can rewind time. Only seven seconds, but seven seconds is enough to undo a mistake. To take back words that should never have been spoken. To avoid a fate that hasn't quite finished happening yet."

The metal was warm against my palms, pulsing like a heartbeat. "Master, temporal manipulation is illegal. If the Guild finds out—"

"They already know." His voice was flat, matter-of-fact. "I've been careful, Iris, but not careful enough. Captain Crane visited me three days ago. Asked very pointed questions about my current projects. She'll be back tonight with an arrest warrant and enforcers. They'll confiscate everything, tear this workshop apart looking for evidence."

My stomach dropped. Captain Meredith Crane was the Guild's most feared enforcer, a woman who'd once been a clockmaker herself before joining their ranks. Rumor said she'd personally shut down over fifty independent workshops, and that she never left survivors to spread dissent.

"Then we run," I said immediately. "We take the watch and disappear into the lower districts. They'll never find us in the factory slums."

Aldric smiled, sad and gentle. "I'm an old man with temporal sickness, child. My hands shake so badly I can barely hold a screwdriver anymore. I'd only slow you down." He closed my fingers around the watch. "But you—you're young, clever, and you know everything I could teach you about clockwork. If anyone can figure out why time is truly breaking and how to fix it, it's you."

"Master, I can't just leave you—"

The shop door exploded inward.

Later, I would remember this moment in crystalline detail: the way the door's brass hinges shrieked as they tore from the frame. The cold evening air rushing in, carrying the acrid smell of coal smoke and ozone. The silhouettes of three figures backlit by the street lamps, their Guild uniforms unmistakable even in shadow.

But in the moment itself, everything happened too fast to process.

Captain Crane entered first, her mechanical arm whirring softly as she drew her temporal blade—a weapon that could age whatever it cut, turning flesh to dust in seconds. She was younger than I'd imagined, maybe thirty, with severe features and eyes like chips of ice.

"Aldric Thorne," she said, her voice crisp and formal. "By order of the Chronos Guild, you are under arrest for illegal temporal manipulation and possession of forbidden devices. Surrender all timepieces and come quietly."

Master Aldric stepped in front of me, blocking me from view. "Meredith. I taught you better than this."

My mind stuttered. Taught her?

Crane's expression flickered—just for an instant, something that might have been regret crossed her face. "You taught me that order matters more than sentiment, Master. That rules exist to protect people from chaos." Her gaze hardened. "Give me the watch, and I'll make this quick."

"No."

She moved faster than I thought possible. One moment she was standing by the door; the next, her blade was pressed against Aldric's throat. "I'm not asking."

"Iris," Aldric said calmly, as if he didn't have a weapon at his jugular, "the answer isn't in fixing time. It's in remembering why it broke. Do you understand?"

I didn't. I didn't understand anything. My heart was hammering so hard I thought it might crack my ribs.

"I'm sorry," Crane whispered.

The blade flashed.

Master Aldric collapsed.

I heard myself screaming, but the sound seemed to come from very far away. The other two enforcers were moving toward me now, their hands reaching for weapons. Crane was cleaning her blade with a cloth, not looking at what she'd done.

My thumb found the watch's crown without conscious thought.

I turned it counterclockwise.

The world lurched.

It felt like falling backward through water, like every cell in my body was being pulled in the wrong direction. Colors inverted. Sounds played in reverse. For exactly seven seconds, time unwound itself.

Then everything snapped back into place.

I was standing in the same spot, but the door was intact. The enforcers were outside, their boots just hitting the front step. Master Aldric was alive, still standing in front of me, the watch still in my hands.

"Hide," I gasped. "Now. Please."

Aldric's eyes widened with understanding. Without questions, he grabbed my arm and pulled me toward the back wall, where a false panel concealed a tiny storage space behind the workbenches. We squeezed inside just as the door exploded inward for the second time.

Through a crack in the panel, I watched it happen again. Crane's entrance. Her cold proclamation. But this time, when she asked for the watch, Aldric spread his empty hands.

"Search if you must, but you'll find nothing. I'm just a tired old man fixing ordinary clocks."

Crane's eyes narrowed. She gestured to her enforcers, who began tearing the workshop apart. They overturned benches, smashed jars of components, ripped open drawers. I bit my lip so hard I tasted blood, forcing myself to stay silent as they destroyed four years of my work.

But they didn't find us. And they didn't find the watch.

After an eternity, Crane called off the search. "This isn't over, old man. We'll be watching."

Then they were gone, leaving destruction in their wake.

Aldric and I stayed hidden for long minutes after their footsteps faded, neither of us daring to move. Finally, he pushed open the panel.

"You used it," he said quietly. "The watch."

I nodded, unable to speak. My mind felt strange, fuzzy around the edges. There was something I'd been thinking about earlier, something important, but I couldn't quite grasp it. What had I eaten for breakfast? The memory slipped away like water through my fingers.

"What did it cost you?" Aldric asked, his face grave.

"I don't... I'm not sure. Something small. I can't remember what."

He placed his trembling hands on my shoulders. "Listen to me carefully, Iris. Each use of that watch will take a memory. Small ones at first, but they'll get larger. More important. You must use it only when absolutely necessary. Do you understand?"

I understood. I also understood that we'd only bought ourselves time—seven seconds stretched into one evening. Crane would be back. And next time, I might not be clever enough to hide.

Master Aldric seemed to read my thoughts. "You need to leave Cogsworth. Tonight. Head for the Fractured Zones."

"The Zones? Master, that's suicide. Time doesn't work there at all—"

"Exactly. The Guild won't follow you into complete temporal chaos. You'll be safe long enough to figure out what to do next." He pressed a worn leather satchel into my hands. "I prepared this years ago, just in case. Food, money, tools, and my personal journal. Everything you need to survive."

"Come with me."

He smiled that sad smile again. "I'm already dying, child. The temporal sickness has spread too far. But you—you have a chance to make this mean something. To find out what the Guild is really doing. To maybe, just maybe, fix what's broken."

Tears blurred my vision. "I don't know how to do this without you."

"You've always known. You just didn't realize it yet." He kissed my forehead gently. "Now go. And Iris? Whatever happens, whatever you forget—remember that you are loved. That will matter more than you know."

I wanted to argue, to refuse, to somehow make this all not be happening. But the watch in my pocket pulsed against my hip like a second heartbeat, and I knew he was right.

So I ran.

I ran through Cogsworth's steam-choked streets, past factories belching smoke into the perpetual twilight, past citizens who didn't look up from their own struggles. I ran until my lungs burned and my legs trembled, until the orderly streets gave way to chaotic slums, and the slums gave way to the crumbling edge of the city where reality itself began to fray.

At the boundary, I paused and looked back. Cogsworth sprawled behind me, all brass and steam and false order. Somewhere in that maze of streets, Master Aldric was probably already being arrested. Or worse.

Ahead lay the Fractured Zones, where the sky flickered between day and night, where buildings phased in and out of existence, where time had given up all pretense of linearity.

I touched the watch in my pocket one more time.

Then I stepped forward into chaos, leaving behind the only home I'd ever known, and every certainty I'd ever possessed.

The thing about time, Master Aldric always said, is that it doesn't care about your plans.

He was right about that.

But he'd also taught me that even broken clocks are right twice a day.

And I was determined to find out what time it really was.