Jonah followed the man back through the bead curtain and into the main shop, where the clocks had resumed their strange, mismatched ticking. The light from outside was dim now—twilight pooling against the windows like fog, turning the glass almost silver.
The man moved with a practiced slowness, running his hand across the counter as if touching memories. He didn't speak at first, and Jonah wasn't sure if he should either.
Finally, the man turned. "Sit."
Jonah slid onto the wooden stool behind the workbench, careful not to disturb the scattered tools.
"My name is Thorne," the man said, leaning his cane against the counter. "And once, a long time ago, I was Bellamy's apprentice."
Jonah blinked. "Bellamy—as in the name on the sign? The Bellamy?"
Thorne nodded. "Elias Bellamy. Clockmaker. Inventor. And, unofficially… the last Watcher of Time before the world forgot what that meant."
He pulled open a drawer beneath the counter and retrieved a thick, cloth-wrapped bundle. Carefully, he untied the strings and revealed an old journal—its cover nearly identical to the one Jonah had found downstairs, but this one was much thicker, and bound with a brass clasp in the shape of an hourglass.
"I've spent decades keeping this shop sealed," Thorne said, his voice low. "Guarding the Heartwind. Making sure no one stumbled across what shouldn't be found. And yet…"
He glanced up at Jonah.
"You found it."
"I wasn't trying to," Jonah said quickly. "I just found the watch in my attic. It had Bellamy's name in it. And the ticking—it never stopped."
Thorne raised an eyebrow. "The silver one. With the etched glass?"
Jonah nodded and pulled it from his pocket, placing it on the counter.
Thorne stared at it for a long moment, then gave a quiet breath. "I thought this was lost."
"What is it?" Jonah asked. "It's not… just a watch, is it?"
"No," Thorne said softly. "It's a tether."
"A what?"
Thorne unlatched the journal and flipped to a section marked with a faded ribbon. Inside were several pages of diagrams—spiraling gear arrangements, interlocking rings, and long strings of symbols like some ancient language.
"Bellamy wasn't building clocks," Thorne said. "He was building anchors. Devices to hold fragments of time in place—moments, memories, decisions. To keep them from unraveling."
"Unraveling?"
Thorne tapped the page. "Time, as we understand it, isn't a straight line. It's a mechanism—a construct. And like any mechanism, it can wear down. It can break. Bellamy discovered that the fabric of time leaks around powerful memories, the same way heat leaks from an old pipe. Too much strain, and the gears fall out of sync."
Jonah's head spun. "You're saying time… breaks?"
"In places, yes. Moments that repeat. Choices that vanish. People who were there, and then… weren't."
A chill crawled up Jonah's spine. "And the Heartwind?"
"It was Bellamy's solution. A machine to collect fractured moments and reweave them into the present. To fix time."
Jonah leaned forward. "Then why did you shut it down?"
Thorne looked at him for a long moment, and for the first time, Jonah saw something behind his eyes—grief. Deep and old.
"Because it worked," Thorne said. "And in doing so, it tore something open."
He turned the journal toward Jonah and tapped a section near the bottom.
> The Mirror Hour—When time reflects what it shouldn't.
"I don't understand," Jonah said.
"You saw a vision, didn't you? A field of clocks. A man with glowing eyes."
Jonah's blood ran cold. "How did you know?"
"Because that's where it begins," Thorne whispered. "The Heartwind doesn't just remember time—it remembers possibility. Things that could have been. Things that should never have been. And when it wakes, it brings those things with it."
Jonah looked down at the watch. It ticked calmly.
Like it was waiting.
Thorne closed the journal. "The man you saw—he's called the Revenant. Not alive. Not dead. A ghost born from a forgotten choice Bellamy tried to erase. And now that you've used the key…"
He looked Jonah dead in the eyes.
"…he knows you exist."
Silence.
The clocks ticked on.
Jonah felt like the floor had dropped out from under him. He wanted to say it was all too much. Too weird. Too impossible. But deep down, he knew—every word of it was true.
"So what do I do?" Jonah asked. "How do I fix this?"
Thorne stepped away from the counter and toward the staircase again.
"You read," he said. "You learn."
He gestured to the shelves. "Bellamy left more than machines. He left clues. Fail-safes. A map through broken time."
Jonah swallowed. "And if I don't learn fast enough?"
Thorne's expression darkened.
"Then the Revenant won't be the only thing bleeding through the seams.