The Clockmaker Who Stopped Time for No One

Aurelio had built the great clock tower in the center of Veyland himself, forty years ago, and had never once let it stop not for war, not for famine, not for the ***** of a king. The town believed, quietly, that as long as the clock kept ticking, Veyland itself would never truly fall to ruin.

He'd built it for her, originally. A woman named Iris, who'd loved him fiercely for one perfect summer before vanishing into the forest that bordered the town, chasing a story about fae who stole beautiful, brokenhearted things. She never returned. Aurelio built the clock the following spring, telling himself it was simply his trade, his calling never admitting, even to himself, that some small, foolish part of him hoped the ticking might somehow call her home.

Forty years later, on the clock's fortieth anniversary, it stopped.

Not broken Aurelio checked every gear, every spring, with the same careful expertise that had kept it running flawlessly for decades. Simply stopped, the hands frozen at precisely 3:17, the exact hour Iris had disappeared into the forest four decades earlier.

That night, a young woman appeared at his workshop door unmistakably, impossibly, the exact image of Iris as she'd looked the summer she vanished, not a single year older despite the forty that had clearly passed for everyone else.

"Aurelio," she said, voice trembling with disbelief. "You're... you're so old."

"Iris?" He nearly dropped the tool in his hand, decades of grief and longing colliding violently with impossible hope. "How is this possible? You haven't aged a single day."

"Time moves differently where I've been," she said, stepping into the dim workshop light, tears filling her eyes. "I didn't choose to stay away forty years, Aurelio. I was taken. Trapped in the fae realm the very day I entered that forest, held by a bargain I didn't fully understand until it was already binding. I only just managed to escape."

Aurelio reached for her hand, trembling, uncertain if she was real or some cruel trick his grieving mind had finally conjured after decades of quiet longing. "The clock stopped tonight. At exactly the hour you vanished."

Iris's eyes widened with sudden understanding. "The bargain," she whispered. "It must have finally broken. That's how I escaped but it means whoever held me will be looking for what was owed instead."

Before Aurelio could ask what she meant, the workshop door blew open on a wind that smelled of autumn leaves and something older, wilder, entirely unnatural and a tall, elegant figure stepped through, eyes glinting gold in the lamplight.

"Iris," the figure said, voice like rustling leaves. "You know better than anyone that fae bargains are never truly broken. Merely... renegotiated."

to be continued... ⏳🍂