The Hour of Ghosts

The ticking... most people think it's the sound of progress. To me, it’s the sound of a shovel hitting dirt. Every second is a burial.

I sat at my workbench, the jeweler's loupe still pressed against my eye. In front of me lay a delicate brass sphere, no larger than a lark's egg. I reached for the small ceramic jar at the corner of my desk. The label was faded, written in my own cramped hand: Glareach. Sector 4. Ash.

I unscrewed the lid. The dust inside didn't just sit there; it swirled, caught in a permanent, microscopic wind of the trauma that had birthed it. It was the residue of a city that had been erased from the map, and it was the only fuel that worked for what I do.

"I sell ghosts, not second chances," I whispered to the empty shop. The words felt like sandpaper in my throat.

Earlier today, a man came in. Lorhud Krauper. He smelled of rain and Alilberry, his eyes two hollow craters of desperation. He didn't want a watch. He wanted an hour. He wanted to go back to a specific afternoon in a city that no longer exists, just to see a girl named Lenia laugh one last time. He offered me a hitman’s fortune, but I saw the twenty-two stars on his beret. I saw a man who was already dead, just waiting for his heart to realize it.

I told him no. I always tell them no, at first.

Then there’s the Sultan. She doesn't want comfort; she wants evidence. She wants to stand in that music festival again, to see the faces of the men who poisoned her world. She thinks the truth will set her free. She doesn't realize that in Craninal, the truth is just another weight to carry.

I carefully funneled a pinch of the Glareach ash into the sphere's core. The gears began to hum, a low, mournful vibration that made my teeth ache.

If I give them what they want, they’ll be trapped. You can’t change the past, Lorhud. You can only watch the knife fall over and over again. You can see her face, but you can’t touch her. The glass of the Chronometer is a wall that even God can't climb.

I looked at my own hands. Covered in oil and the grey soot of a thousand tragedies. People call me a master horologist. A genius. A savior.

But I’m just a scavenger. I build mirrors out of graves.

I snapped the sphere shut. The ticking stopped for a heartbeat, then resumed, heavier than before. The Hour of Ghosts was ready. I wonder which one of them will break first.

I wonder if I’ll even care.