The Anatomy of Regret: The Chronometer of Ash

Object Designation: The Chronometer of Ash (Mark IV) Creator: Klaude Barral Status: Functional / Dangerous

Physical Description

The Chronometer is not a watch. It is a prison for a moment in time.

It fits in the palm of a hand, a heavy sphere of tarnished brass roughly the size of a large plum. The surface is etched with geometric patterns that, upon closer inspection, resemble the street map of Glareach before the fire. These etchings are not carved; they are acid-burned into the metal using a solvent distilled from concentrated industrial runoff.

The "face" of the device is a convex lens made of Corundum Glass, a material so dense it is theoretically unbreakable. It feels perpetually cold to the touch, sucking the heat from the user's skin. Under the glass, there are no hands, no numbers. There is only a small, sealed chamber containing a pinch of grey dust.

This dust is the Ash of Glareach. It is psychometrically charged residue from the War of Fourbournes. It does not settle. It swirls in a perpetual, silent storm, driven by the echoes of the screams it absorbed when the city fell.

The Mechanism

To activate the Chronometer, one does not wind it. One bleeds on it. A single drop of blood on the brass casing completes the circuit, binding the user's biological rhythm to the device.

Once bound, the user must focus on a specific memory. The Ash inside the chamber reacts to the neural patterns of the user, aligning itself to the frequency of that specific moment in time. The gears inside—microscopic, clockwork teeth cut from bone—begin to turn. The sound they make is not a tick, but a low, rhythmic thrumming, like a heartbeat under water.

The Experience

The user is not merely shown a projection. They are pulled into the memory.

• Sensory Immersion: You smell the ozone. You feel the rain on your face. You taste the copper of fear in your mouth. The simulation is perfect.
• The Perspective: You view the scene from your own eyes as you were then. You are locked in your own past body.

The Constraint (The Ghost Rule)

This is the device's cruelest feature. You are an observer in your own flesh.

• No Deviation: You cannot move your hand if you didn't move it then. You cannot speak if you stayed silent then.
• The Barrier: If you attempt to fight the memory—to scream a warning to Lenia, to dodge the needle Agent Sprite is holding—the Chronometer punishes you. The cold glass heats up instantly. The more you struggle against the determinism of the past, the hotter it gets, searing the skin of your palm in the present. It is a physical reminder that the past is solid stone, and you are just breaking your hands against it.

The Price

The Chronometer does not run on free energy. It follows the Law of Equivalent Exchange. For every hour spent in the past, the user loses a day of their future. The device feeds on the user's telomeres, accelerating cellular aging. Frequent users, like Lorhud Krauper, often develop grey streaks in their hair and tremors in their hands—symptoms not just of stress, but of time being stolen from their bones.

"It is a machine that turns life into nostalgia," Klaude Barral once wrote. "And nostalgia is the heaviest element known to man."