The clock on the wall of Joe William Helsing's antique shop, "The Arcane Index," was always precisely seven minutes slow. Joe wasn't sure why—perhaps a stubborn spring, or maybe the mechanism simply preferred its own pace. It was a fitting detail, as Joe dealt in things that defied time itself.
The air in the shop was thick and sweet with the smell of old paper, polished wood, and something indefinably metallic, like distant ozone. Joe, a man whose tweed vest seemed to absorb every shadow and whisper of the past, was meticulously dusting a brass telescope.
A small, unadorned wooden box sat on the counter. It was the latest acquisition, dropped off by a nervous young man who had only said, "It was my grandfather's, and it just... vibrates."
Joe opened the box.
Inside, nestled on a bed of faded velvet, was a single, tarnished brass key. It looked unremarkable, yet Joe's fingers, which had handled keys to vaults, forgotten kingdoms, and even a single, perfect lie, immediately recognized its unique coldness. This wasn't a key to a lock; it was a key to a concept.
That night, long after the final chime of the seven-minutes-slow clock, Joe sat at his desk, staring at the key. He'd learned a long time ago that the secret to the Arcane Index wasn't finding things—it was knowing where things belonged.
He closed his eyes and touched the key. A sudden, sharp image—a flash of deep green, rough-cut stone, and the sound of wind whistling through vast, empty chambers—jolted him.
"Ah," Joe muttered, picking up a pen and flipping open a heavy ledger bound in leather that felt like dry river rock. Under the heading 'Unlisted/Impossible,' he started to write:
Item: Tarnished Brass Key (Catalogue Index 7.3.2)
Property: Minor Temporal Distortion. Opens... a memory? A path?
Notes: Resonates with the Veridian Cairn (Status: Unlocated)
The Veridian Cairn was an old legend, a monument rumored to exist only at the intersection of a perfect moment and a forgotten longitude. It was a place where things that never fully happened—words left unsaid, journeys never taken, people who chose left instead of right—were finally given form.
The brass key hummed in Joe's palm. He knew what he had to do. He wasn't a hero, a wizard, or an adventurer; he was Joe William Helsing, the Curator of Lost Things. His job was to return this key to the door it was meant to unlock, thereby fixing a wrinkle in the fabric of existence.
He pulled a heavy, canvas bag from beneath the desk, tossing in a fresh apple, a thermos of strong black tea, and the battered copy of Plutarch's Parallel Lives that always accompanied him.
Joe pocketed the key, flipped the sign on the shop door from OPEN to CLOSED (Indefinitely), and stepped out into the damp, ordinary night. The mundane streetlights hummed, but the air around him already tasted like mountain wind and forgotten stone. The brass key was leading him away from the town, away from the clock that was seven minutes slow, and toward a place that was perhaps seven hundred years lost.
Joe smiled, pulling his collar up against the gathering chill. He finally had somewhere new to file a return.