Morning came late that day.
The sunlight that touched the window was pale, as if filtered through a fog that wasn't really there. Vyom blinked himself awake, still half-lost in the memory of that voice.
The man inside the reflection. The city under rain.
He rubbed his eyes and sat up.
The clocks had started ticking again. All of them.
But now their rhythm was different—slower, heavier, and strangely off-sync, as though time itself had developed a limp.
He turned to the corner. The doll was gone.
"...Doll?" he called quietly, scanning the shelves. Nothing. Only dust motes floated in the faint light.
From downstairs, he could hear muffled voices—his mother and grandmother talking to the village doctor again. He knew they were worried about his father. He hadn't woken up since last night.
Vyom climbed down the stairs, heart pounding softly with each step.
The house smelled faintly of burnt metal and antiseptic. His mother sat near the bedside, eyes red and sleepless. The doctor adjusted the stethoscope, sighed, and said something that made her cover her mouth.
Vyom froze near the doorway, listening.
"He's breathing," the doctor murmured, "but his body's rhythms are inverted again. It's like his pulse and brain waves are… moving opposite to time."
"What does that even mean?" his mother whispered.
"I don't know," the doctor admitted. "But it's as if his body isn't in the same moment as ours."
Vyom felt his throat tighten.
He looked at his father's still face—the same strong hands that fixed clocks with precision, now lying limp and cold.
And then he saw it: his father's fingers twitched faintly, as though tracing invisible numbers in the air.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
Backwards.
---
Later that evening, when everyone was asleep, Vyom crept into the locked workshop again.
He had stolen the key from the drawer near his mother's table. Something told him he had to go back—something deep and irresistible.
He opened the door slowly.
The room looked normal at first glance. But the moment he stepped in, the faint blue glow from the pocket watch illuminated the shadows again.
He approached it, staring through the cracked glass. Inside, faint lines shimmered like veins of light—and beyond those lines, the reflection had changed.
It wasn't the workshop anymore.
It was a city.
Endless buildings of glass and iron stretched beneath a storming sky. Roads flooded with rain that fell upward, droplets defying gravity as they rose toward the clouds. And in the distance stood the silhouette of a tower—tall, jagged, and somehow familiar.
Vyom's breath fogged the glass.
He could almost feel the wind from that place on his face.
"Is that… my dream?" he whispered.
The moment he said it, the watch responded.
The glass surface rippled like disturbed water—and the voice came again.
"You've seen it before. You've lived it before."
Vyom stumbled back.
"You—who are you? What are you?"
The voice was calm, deep, and carried the echo of countless ticking gears.
"Names fade. But once, I was you."
"That's impossible," Vyom said. "I'm me!"
"And yet, your hands stop time. Your breath slows its rhythm. Your fear makes the world hesitate. Tell me, Vyom—how much more proof do you need?"
He didn't answer.
The glow intensified, casting moving reflections across the walls—shadows of buildings that didn't exist, people walking backward, raindrops rising from phantom puddles.
Then the voice whispered again.
"Touch the glass."
Vyom shook his head. "No…"
"Touch it," the voice repeated. "Or the next hour will never begin."
His hand trembled. But curiosity, stronger than fear, guided him. He reached out slowly and pressed his fingertips to the glass.
Instantly, the world shattered.
---
The air turned cold. The smell of oil and wood vanished. He was standing on wet concrete beneath a sky that churned with lightning.
Rain hit his face, sharp as pins—but when he looked down, the droplets weren't falling. They were rising.
He gasped, spinning around.
The tower from the reflection loomed in the distance. Cars hung mid-air, people walked backward, words from glowing signs ran in reverse.
He wasn't dreaming this time.
And then, across the empty street, he saw the man from the reflection.
He wore a long black coat. Silver hair shimmered under the stormlight, and his eyes—Vyom froze—were the same as his own.
The man smiled faintly.
"So you finally crossed over," he said, voice echoing slightly as if layered with static. "It took longer this time."
Vyom's lips trembled. "Wh-who are you?"
The man tilted his head, as if considering the question. "A fragment," he replied. "A version that fell before you did. You could call me… the one you'll become."
Vyom's heartbeat stuttered.
He wanted to run, but his legs refused.
"Why am I here?" he asked. "Why is everything—wrong?"
The man's smile faded. "Because time was never meant to move forward again. Not after you stopped it once."
Lightning flashed behind him, revealing cracked skies filled with ghostly clock faces suspended in the clouds. Some were broken, some melting like wax. All of them pointed to 3:03.
"This city," the man said, "is built from every second you've denied. Every moment you've reversed. It's where lost hours go to die."
Vyom stared, shivering. "I don't understand…"
"You will," the man murmured. "But not yet. You're still too close to the beginning."
He stepped closer, and Vyom saw faint cracks running across his body, glowing faintly blue like the cracks on the pocket watch.
"Listen carefully, Vyom," the man continued. "They'll come for you soon—the ones who tend to the flow. The Watchers. They'll call you a curse. But you must remember this—"
He raised his hand.
A small, broken gear floated between his fingers.
"The hour that stopped… is the key to the hour that never was."
Before Vyom could ask what that meant, the world trembled violently.
The city lights shattered, the glass towers bent inward, and he felt himself being pulled—backward—like a thread unraveling from reality.
"Wake up!" the man shouted. "And don't forget the hour!"
---
Vyom gasped and opened his eyes.
He was back in his room.
Everything was normal again—the clocks ticking, sunlight spilling through the curtains. The pocket watch sat quietly on the desk, dull and lifeless.
Had it been a dream?
He looked down—and froze.
In his palm lay a small, broken gear.
Wet. Cold. Still dripping with upward rain.
---
End of Chapter 5: The City in the Glass