CHAPTER 7: THE TIMEBOUND
363 Words
The creature lunged.
Clara barely dodged, stumbling backward as the clockwork hound’s claws struck the stone floor where she’d stood a heartbeat ago. Sparks scattered. The beast turned with mechanical precision, gears clicking in its joints, and fixed its glowing eyes on her once more.
Elias pulled a wrench from the wall and hurled it. It struck the hound’s shoulder, sending it staggering sideways. “Move!” he shouted.
But Clara didn’t run.
The pocket watch burned in her palm, vibrating like a heart caught in panic—or purpose. It pulsed with a strange rhythm, out of sync with time itself. As the hound advanced again, Clara raised the watch instinctively.
“Stop,” she whispered.
A burst of light exploded from the watch’s face. The chamber trembled. Time… stalled.
Everything around her slowed. The creature froze mid-lunge, its jaws open but unmoving, suspended like a still painting. Even Elias, his mouth open in warning, hung motionless in the haze of warped time.
Clara stood in silence, the air thick and shimmering like heat above fire.
And then, a voice.
Soft. Female. Familiar.
“Clara, the watch bends only what it remembers. Be careful what you rewrite.”
Her breath caught. “Mother?”
But the voice was gone.
The light faded, and time snapped back into motion.
The hound collapsed in a heap, its inner gears melted, the magic spent.
Elias stared at Clara, stunned. “You... stopped time.”
Clara looked down at the watch, its face now cracked faintly across the surface. “I didn’t mean to.”
“No one means to,” Elias muttered. “That power… it takes. And it never gives it back without a price.”
As he helped her up, his hand trembled slightly. “Your father suspected you had the connection. He just didn’t know it would be this strong.”
Clara swallowed hard. “What now?”
Elias looked toward the ceiling, where distant gears still turned slowly above. “Now we find the other timepieces. Before the Keepers do.”
Outside, the city clocks struck three.
Time, Clara realized, was no longer something she followed.
It was something chasing her.
- Writer
