The old clock tower had stood at the edge of town for over a century, its hands frozen at 3:07. No one knew why it stopped, nor who had wound it last. Some said it was cursed, others claimed it was just a broken relic of a bygone era. But every year on the anniversary of its stillness, a strange phenomenon occurred—shadows moved in the clock’s face, as if something were trying to escape. Elias, a quiet librarian with a habit of collecting oddities, first heard about the clock from an elderly woman in the library. She spoke in hushed tones, her eyes darting toward the window. “You shouldn’t go near it,” she warned. “It watches you, even when you’re not looking.” Curiosity got the better of him. One rainy afternoon, he wandered past the clock tower, his boots crunching on gravel. The air felt heavier here, as though the sky itself had pressed down. He reached out to touch the rusted face, and for a moment, the shadows seemed to shift, like ink spreading across water. That night, Elias dreamt of a man with hollow eyes, standing inside the clock, trying to reach through the glass. When he woke, his hands were covered in dust, and the clock tower was now visible from his window—a detail he hadn’t noticed before. He began to research the history of the clock, digging through dusty archives and forgotten journals. He found references to a watchmaker named Alaric Voss, who had vanished without a trace after completing the clock. His workshop, once filled with intricate gears and ticking mechanisms, had been abandoned and sealed off. No one could explain how the clock had stopped, or why no one had ever managed to restart it. One evening, Elias returned to the tower, this time with a flashlight and a notebook. As he approached, the shadows seemed to stretch longer, and the wind carried whispers that sounded like laughter. He opened the iron gate with a creak that echoed like a sigh. Inside, the air was thick with the scent of old wood and metal. In the center of the tower stood the clock, its hands frozen. But as Elias stepped closer, he noticed a small, silver key lying on the floor. It fit perfectly into the back of the clock, which had never been opened before. With trembling fingers, he turned it. The gears groaned, and for a heartbeat, the clock began to tick again. Then, everything went silent. A cold wind swept through the tower, and the shadows grew darker, swirling around him. Elias stumbled backward, but the door had vanished. The walls closed in, and the clock’s face reflected his own image—but his eyes were different. Hollow, empty, like the man from his dream. He ran, heart pounding, but the path behind him had changed. The tower now stretched endlessly upward, its gears grinding with a sound like a thousand whispers. He reached for the key, but it was gone. The only thing left was the clock, its hands slowly moving forward, counting down to something he couldn’t name. When he finally escaped, the town was unchanged. No one remembered the clock stopping, or the shadows, or the key. But Elias knew what had happened. He kept the key hidden in a drawer, wrapped in cloth, and never spoke of the tower again. Yet, every year on the same day, he would find a new object in his possession—an old locket, a broken compass, a child’s toy with no name. Each one had a story, and each one seemed to whisper to him in the dead of night. The clock tower still stood, its hands frozen, watching. And somewhere, deep in the silence between ticks, something waited.