In a quiet village nestled between two hills, there lived an old clockmaker named Elias. His shop was filled with hundreds of clocks, all ticking in perfect harmony. Every hour, a beautiful symphony of chimes echoed through the village, drawing people from nearby towns to witness the wonder.
But what made Elias truly mysterious was that he never aged.
People whispered stories—some said he was a sorcerer, others claimed he had made a deal with time itself. Elias never spoke of his past, and no one ever saw him outside his shop.
One stormy night, a curious teenager named Lila broke into the shop, determined to uncover the truth. Inside, she found a spiral staircase hidden beneath the floorboards. It led to a dimly lit chamber with a single, enormous clock in the center. Instead of numbers, its face bore symbols—planets, stars, and an eclipse at the top.
As she approached, the clock's hands began to spin backward.
Suddenly, the room shifted. The air felt thicker. Lila looked at her hands—they were younger. The clock was a time machine.
Elias appeared behind her. "You weren't supposed to find this," he said calmly.
"Why are you hiding this?" she asked.
"I'm not hiding it. I'm guarding it," he said. "This clock doesn't just travel through time—it changes it. And some changes… can't be undone."
Lila looked into the clock's swirling face, tempted. "Can I just go back one hour?"
Elias shook his head. "Even one hour can rewrite a lifetime."
But Lila had already touched the dial.
In a blink, she was outside the shop, but the village was different—modern, cold, and unfamiliar. The shop was gone. Elias was gone.
The only thing that remained was the faint echo of ticking—coming from the watch on her wrist, now marked with the same symbols
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