We stood at the base of the clocktower one final time.
It loomed over Gravesend like a lung filled with centuries of breath it never exhaled.
The gears inside had grown quiet.
But I knew they weren't still.
They were listening.
Waiting.
---
"I think it's not just a tower anymore," Mara whispered.
"No," I said. "It's a tomb."
---
The streets were almost normal again.
Families setting out candy bowls.
Teenagers in masks.
Fake skeletons and rubber bats draped over porches.
But beneath it all… the cracks still showed.
A child blinked and forgot where he was.
A dog barked twice—then backwards.
The wind carried whispers, then numbers, then silence.
Like the skipped minute hadn't died.
It had just nested inside Gravesend.
And it was hatching.
---
We descended into the tower's foundations—below the mechanism room.
Below the anchor vault.
Below the mirror chamber.
Into the root.
A place Mara had only read about once in her brother's journals.
"The Silence Archive."
---
At first, it was just a tunnel.
But soon we reached a door made of warped wood and melted brass.
No handle.
Just a phrase scratched into the surface.
> "Every version is a prayer.
Some gods just answer slower."
---
I placed the cracked pocket watch against it.
It clicked.
And opened.
---
The Silence Archive was not a library.
It was a graveyard.
Twelve stone aisles lined the chamber, each filled with totems, books, rusted watches, photos of people who no longer existed—versions of Gravesend that had been overwritten, lost, looped, or devoured.
Each row ended in a chair.
And in each chair sat a Riley.
Some slumped forward.
Some still breathing.
One sat with a smile and a knife in his chest, stuck in the moment of death for eternity.
---
Mara's breath caught in her throat.
"They never escaped."
---
I walked the aisle.
Each me whispered.
> "You're lucky."
"Don't waste it."
"We all thought we'd make it, too."
---
At the center of the archive stood a pillar.
On it: a book.
Leather-bound.
Locked shut.
No title.
Just another engraving.
> "The Story the Tower Refused to Forget."
---
Mara opened it.
The pages were blank.
But as she flipped through them, our steps began to appear—words carving themselves into paper.
—Mara touched the book, knowing this was where her brother had vanished.
—Riley watched the tower listen.
—The silence prepared to offer a choice.
And then the pages turned themselves.
Dozens flipped until we reached the last one.
One sentence burned into the parchment:
> "Only one anchor may remain."
---
"What the hell does that mean?" Mara said, voice cracking.
"I think…"
I stepped closer to the pillar.
"…it wants one of us to stay."
---
Suddenly, the lights flickered.
The whisper-song returned.
And around us—the stitched ones began to gather.
No longer illusions.
Not echoes.
They stepped out from between the shelves.
Out from behind the dead Rileys.
Tall.
Thin.
Unblinking.
Their mouths sewn shut with time-thread.
Their hearts ticking visibly beneath translucent skin.
And they all faced the book.
---
One stepped forward—taller than the rest.
It wore my face.
But older. Tired. Broken.
The final version.
The one who'd tried every ending and failed.
> "The loop ends when someone writes the final second," it said—not with its mouth, but from the air around us.
> "One of you must stay here and hold it."
> "Or the song begins again."
---
Mara looked at me.
Her hands clenched into fists.
> "Then I'll stay."
"No."
> "Don't argue—"
"I'm not arguing."
I stepped back.
> "But it won't let you."
She flinched. "Why?"
> "Because the book is still writing me."
I showed her the pages.
Her name had stopped.
Only mine remained.
It was choosing me.
Because I was still the anchor.
---
She stepped forward anyway.
Tears welled in her eyes.
> "You deserve to leave."
I smiled.
> "So do you."
---
The tower above us began to groan.
The stitched ones trembled.
The gears in the sky began to move again.
Faster.
Harder.
The archive started collapsing.
---
"I don't want to forget you," she whispered.
"You won't."
> "Everyone else did."
> "Then write me in."
I placed her hand on the book.
Her name returned.
---
And then I turned to the final version of myself—the one that had waited in the Archive longest.
I reached into his chest and pulled out his watch.
It didn't tick.
But it still counted.
And I strapped it to my wrist.
---
Mara screamed my name as I sat on the chair at the center of the archive.
The book pulsed.
The stitched ones bowed.
And the last thing I saw was the sky folding into itself—
the tower howling—
and time resetting one final time.
---
---
🕰️ One Year Later – October 31st
Gravesend held its first real Halloween since the skips began.
Children ran in costumes through real time.
The town's clocks ticked in perfect rhythm.
Mara Thatcher ran the café again.
And every night, she lit a candle in the window.
She kept one watch on the mantle.
Cracked.
Stuck.
But not forgotten.
And sometimes, when the wind was calm…
She heard a whisper from the bell:
> "Still holding."