The woman's name was Iris Vale. She carried herself like someone accustomed to secrets, her coat buttoned to the throat, gloved hands folded around a small leather notebook.
"I worked for your master," she said, her voice calm but distant. "Not as a clockmaker. As an observer."
"Observer?" Elias frowned. "Of what?"
"Of time."
Before he could speak again, she produced a pocket watch from her coat. It was almost identical to Quill's final design — the same delicate filigree, the same reversed tick. Only hers glowed faintly beneath the surface, as if each second it counted released a memory.
"Where did you get that?" Elias asked.
"From him," she said. "The first time he broke the hourglass."
He stared. "You're talking in riddles."
"Not riddles," she said. "Instructions. Horatio Quill built more than clocks, Elias. He built gateways. The last one he made for you."
She led him back to the workshop that evening. Rain slicked the stones and turned the lamplight into gold veins on the road. When they entered, the clock on the bench began to hum, the faint backward tick now a steady pulse.
Iris touched the brass key still lying on the table. "This fits a lock inside the tower," she said. "You've seen it — the iron door behind the pendulum housing?"
Elias nodded. He remembered that door from his apprenticeship — locked since before his time, sealed with rust and superstition. Quill used to say that some doors kept more than people out.
"Why would he give me the key?" Elias asked.
"Because he couldn't open it himself."
Her gaze lingered on the backward clock. "That device remembers hours that once were. The door in the tower leads to the place where those hours wait."
She handed him the key. "At midnight, the boundary is weakest. If you wish to understand what your master did, be there. But remember, not everything that is remembered wishes to be found."
Elias spent the hours until dusk pacing the workshop. He told himself he wouldn't go. He told himself he didn't care what secrets Quill had buried. Yet every time he looked at the clock, the memory of the glowing mechanism haunted him — the way it had pulsed like a living heart.
As the evening deepened, the silence of Haverleigh pressed closer. Every lamp seemed dimmer than it should be; every step on the cobblestones sounded half a beat late, as though the world lagged behind itself.
When he could bear it no longer, Elias took his coat and the key and set out toward the bell tower.
The climb up the hill was steep and slick. Fog gathered in the hollows, swallowing sound. The tower rose before him, its stones glistening with damp, its clock face pale and still.
He pushed through the heavy wooden door. Inside, dust motes hung like frozen sparks. The pendulum, a massive bronze rod, stood motionless, yet the air around it trembled faintly.
At the base of the mechanism, half hidden by shadow, he found the iron hatch Iris had spoken of. The key slid into the lock as if it had been waiting.
With a heavy click, the door opened.
A draft of cold air spilled out, carrying the scent of old oil and something older still — the metallic tang of thunder before it breaks.
Stairs spiraled down into the darkness.
Elias hesitated, lamp in hand. For a moment he thought of turning back. Then he remembered Quill's letter: Every gear is a confession.
He descended.
At first, the steps led only to deeper silence. Then, faintly, he heard ticking. Not one clock, but hundreds — a chorus of shifting seconds echoing through the stone.
The stair ended in a chamber lined with glass spheres. Inside each sphere floated tiny images — scenes from the town above: a child chasing a hoop, the baker kneading dough, Mara hanging laundry. But each image moved backward, unwinding itself into stillness.
In the center of the room stood a single, larger sphere connected by filaments to the rest. Within it shimmered the town of Haverleigh itself, time pulsing backward one breath at a time.
Elias stared, unable to move. This was Quill's true workshop — not of brass, but of moments.
When he stepped closer, the spheres trembled. The ticking grew louder. His own reflection stared back at him, older, uncertain — and behind it, another figure: Horatio Quill, smiling faintly.
Elias spun around, heart hammering. The space was empty. Yet a whisper filled the air, warm and familiar.
"You wanted to know what time remembers."
The backward-ticking clock on the bench above began to chime, each note reversed — a song unspooling toward silence.
When he climbed back into the night, the bell tower still stood mute. But somewhere beneath the fog, a single note hung in the air — the sound of a second being born in reverse.
Elias looked down at the key in his palm. The brass was no longer cold; it glowed faintly, as if it remembered the heat of the forge.
And for the first time, he felt that time itself was watching him.