The Clockmaker's Curse

Chapter 5 – A Dangerous Curiosity

Clara had never been one to leave a locked box unopened, or a secret unexplored. The gear she had stolen from the clockmaker’s workshop burned against her side wherever she carried it, a constant reminder that she now held something far beyond her usual spoils.

Ordinary thieves stole coins, rings, the occasional silver goblet from a careless gentleman’s table. But Clara, she had stolen time.

And she could not resist the temptation to see how far its power stretched.

The first time she used it on purpose was in a back-alley brawl.

It began, as most things in Clara’s life did, with trouble. She had been walking through the fog-drenched market near Shoreditch when she bumped shoulders with a cutpurse named Briggs, a hulking man who had always hated her quick tongue and quicker hands.

“Well, if it isn’t the little fox,” he sneered, grabbing her by the arm. “I heard you’ve been meddling in things too big for you.”

Clara wrenched her arm free, glaring up at him. “And I heard you couldn’t steal bread without crying for your mother.”

The words stung, as she meant them to. Briggs swung at her, heavy and slow. Normally, Clara would have ducked, relying on her speed. But tonight she had the gear in her hand. She clutched it, heart hammering, and willed the world to falter.

And it did.

The punch slowed midair, moving like molasses. The shouts of onlookers warped into drawn-out echoes. Clara stepped aside easily, almost lazily, as the fist brushed past her cheek in slow motion. She shoved Briggs hard in the chest, and when she let go of the gear, time snapped forward.

To the crowd, it looked as though Briggs had missed wildly and stumbled into a pile of crates, splintering wood and sending apples rolling across the cobblestones. Laughter erupted. Clara smirked, slipping the gear back into her satchel.

But her heart raced. It wasn’t just a trick. It was power. A kind of power no one else in London had ever touched.

That night, Clara sat on the roof of an abandoned brewery, staring at the gear under the moonlight. She turned it over in her hands, watching the strange etchings shimmer and shift.

She thought of all the possibilities. She could rob a jeweler’s safe without fear of being caught. She could outrun any constable, any rival thief. She could freeze the world and walk through it as though it belonged only to her.

The thought thrilled her, but fear tugged at the edges of her mind. Each time she used the gear, her chest tightened, as if her lungs resisted the unnatural stillness. And there was something else, something darker.

The night she first touched it, she felt the world stutter. Not just freeze, but falter, as though reality itself had nearly torn.

She tried to ignore it. Curiosity had always been her curse, but it had also been her salvation. Curiosity had kept her alive when the streets threatened to swallow her whole. So why stop now?

But Clara wasn’t the only one paying attention.

On the third night, when she slowed time to slip past a police officer who had cornered her near London Bridge, she noticed something strange. The fog shifted, not with the natural flow of wind, but deliberately. Figures moved within it, masked and cloaked, their eyes glinting unnaturally. They didn’t move like ordinary men. Even when she let the gear’s power go, they kept their gaze fixed on her, as though they could still see the trace of what she had done.

Clara darted into the shadows, heart pounding. She had lived her life hunted by constables, rival thieves, even debt collectors. But this was different. These figures weren’t ordinary. They carried themselves with a purpose sharper than blades.

For the first time, Clara wondered if stealing the gear had been less of a triumph and more of a death sentence.

Meanwhile, Adrian grew restless in his workshop.

The clocks no longer ticked in harmony. Some were too fast, others too slow. It was as if the rhythm of the world itself had begun to fray. He could feel the disturbances echo through the gears he still kept locked away. Each time Clara used the stolen piece, Adrian sensed it.

And worse, he wasn’t the only one.

He knew the Order of Timekeepers would have noticed. They always noticed when the balance shifted.

Adrian sat at his bench, staring into the glow of a lantern, wrestling with dread. Clara was reckless, bold, too curious for her own good. He should have forced the gear from her the night he confronted her. But he hadn’t. Something had stopped him.

Her defiance? Her laugh? Or perhaps the unshakable truth that she lived when she shouldn’t?

Whatever it was, Adrian knew time was running out. If the Order reached her before he did, she wouldn’t survive the curse.

Clara, for her part, tried to bury the unease gnawing at her. She told herself she was invincible now. With the gear in her hand, the world bent to her will.

But late at night, lying awake in her attic hideout, she couldn’t ignore the strange sensations. Sometimes she thought she heard whispers when she held the gear too long, faint voices speaking in languages she didn’t know. Other times, her reflection in a shard of glass seemed a beat too slow, her lips moving just after she spoke.

She shook it off. London was full of tricks of the light, of weary minds. She had lived through worse.

Still, when she heard footsteps in the alley below, heavy, purposeful, too many to belong to ordinary drunks. Clara’s blood ran cold. She peered through a c***k in the boards.

Masked figures moved through the fog, their cloaks brushing the cobblestones, their steps silent despite the weight of their boots. They carried no lanterns, but their eyes glinted faintly, as if lit from within.

Clara clutched the gear in her chest. Whoever they were, they were looking for her. She could feel it.

She thought of the clockmaker’s warning, his gray eyes burning with urgency:" That gear is cursed." It is tied to my bloodline, and anyone who touches it pays the price.

But she was alive. Alive, and for the first time in her life, powerful. She told herself she wasn’t afraid.

Yet as the masked figures disappeared into the fog, Clara’s breath trembled. Curiosity had led her to the gear. But now, curiosity might have set London’s shadows on fire.