---
The clocktower's silence, after the final toll was worse than any scream. Lila stared at the broken locket in her hands, its two halves now fused to her palms like cauterized wounds. The tiny replica clocktower inside had stopped its hands at 3:07—a time that meant nothing and everything.
Elias's breathing came ragged behind her. His scars, once silver, now pulsed black in jagged patterns. "You shouldn't have opened that," he whispered. "Not yet."
A drop of the locket's black fluid slid down Lila's wrist. Where it touched her skin, her own scars *reacted*—not with pain, but with *memory*:
- A woman's scream from the churchyard
- The scent of sunflowers burning
- A pocket watch buried under the rosebush
The vision snapped away as something moved in the tower's rafters. Not Clara. Not the clockwork bees.
This was something older.
A single page from the town's ledger fluttered down, landing at Lila's feet. The entry read:
"October 31st, 1987 - Subject: Lila Hart. Status: Acquired."
Elias went very still. "That's impossible. You weren't—"
The page burst into blue flames.
The blue flames licked up the tower walls, burning without heat. The ashes of the ledger page swirled in the air, forming a narrow path leading downward—not toward the door, but to a gap in the floorboards Lila had never noticed before.
Suddenly from nowhere Elias come and grabbed her wrist. His blackened scars left smudges on her skin like charcoal. "Don't follow it," he said. But his eyes kept darting to the hole, his grip trembling.
Lila pulled free. The moment her foot touched the first ash-marked board, the pocket watch replica inside the locket *clicked*.
3:08.
A grinding sound came from below. The gap widened, revealing:
1. A spiral staircase of fused lockets
2. A smell of wet ink and funeral roses
3. A whisper : "She's coming home."
Elias made a sound like a wounded animal. His scars were spreading now, crawling up his neck. "It's not a path," he choked. "It's a *trap*."
Lila took another step.
The staircase shuddered to life, each locket snapping open as she descended. Inside every one—a sunflower petal with a single word inked in what looked like blood:
LIAR
COWARD
KEEPER
Halfway down, the light vanished. Only the petals glowed, forming arrows in the dark.
Then she heard it—the sound of someone *breathing* below her.
Not Elias.
Something with lungs full of ticking clockwork.
The mechanical breathing quickened beneath her, syncing with the jagged rhythm of Lila's pulse. The glowing petals trembled as she descended another step, their faint light revealing the truth of the staircase—each locket-step contained a writhing shadow. Tarnished fingers pressed against the glass from inside, smearing black fluid that matched the ooze from her own fused locket.
A sudden gust carried the stench of oil and rotting roses. The petals swirled violently before forming words in the dark:
"YOU PROMISED TO STAY"
The response came not as speech but as the shriek of grinding gears—a sound that vibrated the staircase's bones. Lila's scars burned white-hot as the trapped shadows began chanting:
"Marianne Voss, 1672"
"Thomas Greene, 1803"
"Clara Hart, 1999"
Her own name slithered through the chorus.
The staircase lurched. Lila grabbed the banister, but the lockets seared her palms, fusing to her skin. Elias's shouts from above dissolved into static. Below, the breathing dissolved into wet, clicking laughter.
Darkness swallowed the petals.
Then—
Cold metal fingers closed around her ankle.
The metal fingers dug into Lila's flesh, their grip colder than winter frost. She kicked back, her boot connecting with something hollow—like striking an empty oil drum. The darkness shuddered, and for one terrible second, she saw it:
A face made of broken clock parts, its eyes twin voids where gears should have been. Its mouth stretched too wide, revealing rows of tiny, spinning cogs instead of teeth.
"Liar," it hissed in Clara's voice.
The staircase collapsed.
Lila fell through a storm of shattering lockets, each one slicing her skin as it burst. The names inside them wailed as they were freed:
"Sarah Whitmore, 1745"
"James Holloway, 1821"
"Lila Hart, 2002"
She landed hard on packed earth. The smell of turned soil and rotting flowers filled her nose. Above her, the hole she'd fallen through sealed itself, leaving her in perfect blackness.
Then—a match struck.
Elias stood across from her, holding a flickering lantern. His scars had spread across his face now, the black lines forming words she couldn't quite read.
"We're in the garden," he whispered.
The light grew, revealing where they truly were:
Not a garden.
A graveyard of sunflowers.
Each one growing from a locket-shaped stone.
And at the center, its roots deep in the earth, stood the rosebush from her visions—its thorns dripping black onto a single, familiar pocket watch.
The hands pointed to 3:07.
The watch began to chime.
---
The pocket watch's chime shook the earth. Each toll sent cracks splintering through the locket-stones, their sunflower heads wilting instantly. The rosebush shuddered, its dripping thorns retracting like scorpion tails poised to strike.
Elias's lantern guttered as the black fluid from his scars began dripping onto the soil. Where it fell, tiny clockwork sprouts pushed through the dirt—gears instead of leaves, springs for stems.
"Don't let it finish chiming," he choked, clutching his chest as the scars carved deeper.
Lila lunged for the watch. The rosebush lashed out, thorns slicing her arms, but her fingers closed around the rusted metal just as it struck the sixth chime—
Silence.
The watch's glass face shattered outward. Not into shards, but into photographs:
Clara as a child, burying the first locket.
Elias screaming as silver threads stitched his lips shut.
Herself, standing over their bodies with shears in hand.
The final photograph showed the truth:
The pocket watch wasn't a timekeeper.
It was a cage.
And inside it—writhing in the shadows—was the First Keeper.
Her own face stared back, mouthing two words before the images dissolved:
"FREE US."
The ground beneath them gave one last shudder...
...then stilled.
The sitting room below smelled of rosewater and wet gears. The Clara-faced woman stood, her joints moving with the stiff precision of a wind-up doll. The key in her hand glinted—not rusted after all, but made of the same silver as Lila's scars.
Elias made a guttural sound. His scar-words now covered half his face, the letters rearranging into a new phrase:
"SHE REMEMBERS NOW"
The woman at the vanity tilted her head. When she spoke, her voice was the sound of a gramophone needle skipping:
"Tick-tock, little keeper. Time to choose."
She pressed the key to the mirror. The reflection—Lila's reflection—stepped forward, its hand breaching the glass.
The reflection's hand grasped Lila's wrist with impossible strength, its silver fingers merging with her scars. The mirror's surface rippled like water as the thing wearing her face began pulling itself through.
Elias lunged forward, his blackened scars peeling off his skin like strips of parchment. They flew toward the mirror, forming a writhing barrier between Lila and her doppelganger. "Look away!" he shouted, his voice distorting as the scars consumed his face.
The sitting room walls pulsed like a living heart. The Clara-doll's head rotated completely around, her smile stretching until her jaw unhinged with a wet crack. From her gaping mouth poured hundreds of tiny silver watch hands that embedded themselves in the floor, forming a spiraling pattern.
Lila's arm burned where the reflection touched her. Memories that weren't hers flooded in:
- A child's hands planting the first rosebush. - A woman sewing names into lockets.
- A man with Elias's eyes burying something alive.
The mirror shattered. The reflection dissolved into liquid metal that crawled up Lila's arm, forming a new, intricate scar:
A perfect pocket watch design, its hands frozen at 3:07.
Elias collapsed as his last scar peeled away, revealing unmarked skin beneath. The Clara-doll crumbled into a pile of gears and sunflower petals. The sitting room walls began dissolving, revealing the clocktower's interior once more.
On the floor where the mirror had been, a single item remained:
A rusted pair of gardening shears, its blades crusted with blackened rose thorns.
The pocket watch scar on Lila's arm ticked once.
Then everything went still.
To Be Continue...