Every evening at exactly 8:17 PM, the clock in the old library on Maple Street would tick one second slower than it should. No one could explain why. The librarians had checked the mechanism, adjusted the gears, even replaced the entire clock face with a new one from a different shop. But still, each night at 8:17, the hands would pause for an extra beat before continuing forward. It was subtle, almost imperceptible, but those who stayed late enough to notice began to feel uneasy. Lena, a quiet college student who often studied in the library after classes, first noticed it on a rainy Tuesday. She had been working on her thesis about forgotten folklore when she glanced up and saw the clock’s second hand hesitate just before 8:17. She blinked, thinking it was a trick of the light. But the next day, it happened again. And the day after that. By the third time, she started keeping track. She wrote down the times in a small notebook, noting how the clock seemed to breathe in that one-second gap. It wasn’t just the hands that paused—it was the whole room. The air felt heavier, as if the world itself was holding its breath. The usual hum of the heating system softened, the pages of books turned by themselves, and the distant echo of footsteps—though no one else was there—would sometimes trail through the aisles. One night, Lena decided to stay until the moment arrived. She sat at her usual desk, surrounded by stacks of old journals and dusty tomes. The library was nearly empty, save for the janitor who occasionally swept the floor. At 8:16 PM, the room grew colder. A faint wind curled through the high windows, though the doors were all sealed. The clock’s second hand moved toward 8:17, then stopped. For a heartbeat, everything was silent. Then, a voice. It was soft, like a whisper carried by the wind. "You're not supposed to be here." Lena froze. She looked around, expecting to see someone, but the room was empty. The voice didn't come from any direction—it simply existed, like a thought that had always been there. She swallowed hard and tried to keep her breathing steady. The second hand twitched, then resumed moving. The temperature returned to normal. The whispers faded. The library was quiet again. The next day, Lena asked the head librarian about the clock. The woman frowned, eyes narrowing slightly. "That clock has been there since the building was built," she said. "No one knows where it came from. It's never needed repair. Just... keeps time." Lena left that day with more questions than answers. But she couldn't stop thinking about the voice. That night, she returned again, determined to find out what was happening. At 8:17, the same thing occurred. The clock hesitated. The air thickened. And the voice spoke again, this time louder. "You shouldn't have come back." Lena stood up, heart pounding. "Who are you?" she asked, her voice barely above a whisper. The room fell silent. Then, from the far end of the library, a shadow moved. It wasn't a person. It was something else—something that seemed to flicker between shapes, like a memory trying to form. The shadows stretched across the walls, twisting into forms that weren't quite human. Lena backed away slowly, her mind racing. She had read about things like this before—stories of places where time unraveled, where echoes of the past lingered. But this wasn't just a ghost. It was something older, something watching. As the clock finally moved forward, the shadow vanished. The library was once again still and quiet. But something had changed. The air no longer felt safe. Over the following weeks, Lena kept coming back, hoping to understand. Each time, the clock would pause, and each time, the voice would speak. It never told her its name, but it always knew hers. It whispered things she hadn't spoken aloud, secrets she had never shared with anyone. One night, she found a book she had never seen before on the shelf near her desk. Its cover was worn, the title barely legible. She opened it and found a page with her name written in the margins. Below it, a single sentence: "You are not alone." She closed the book quickly, her hands trembling. The clock ticked normally now, no longer pausing. But she knew the truth. Something was watching her. Something had been waiting for her to come back. And now, it was ready.