In a forgotten alley of an ancient city, there exists a shop where time does not move as it should. The clockmaker, an enigmatic figure known only as Erasmus Valen, crafts timepieces of unparalleled beauty—each one rumored to hold a sliver of something unnatural. When an ambitious young noble seeks to control his own fate, he discovers that time is not meant to be owned. Merlin, the eternal wanderer, tells the tale of The Clockmaker’s Curse—a warning to those who seek to manipulate time itself.

 

 

The Tale Begins…

Ah, traveler, you wish to hear another tale? Then listen well, for this one is about time itself—a force more dangerous than steel, more elusive than shadows.

I have seen men try to outrun time.
I have seen men try to capture it.
And I have seen men become its prisoner.

This is the story of Erasmus Valen, the cursed clockmaker.

The Shop That Should Not Exist

There are places in this world that do not appear on maps. Hidden alleyways, forgotten corridors between the known and the unknown. One such place existed in the heart of Veridane, a city of towering spires and cobbled streets, where merchants and nobles mingled beneath lantern-lit archways.

But in the oldest district of the city, beyond the bustling squares and grand estates, stood a shop with no name.

No sign hung above its door. No customers entered. And yet, when night fell, the dim glow of candlelight flickered behind its narrow windows, casting long shadows against the alley walls.

Those who stumbled upon it did not always return.

And those who did… were never the same.

The Man Who Sought Time

One such visitor was Lord Dorian Kael, a nobleman known for his wealth, ambition, and insatiable thirst for control. He was a man who feared only one thing—the loss of power.

He had heard the rumors.

Whispers of a clockmaker whose timepieces could alter destiny, bending the very fabric of existence. Some said he could craft clocks that rewound the past. Others claimed he could forge timepieces that froze a man in his prime, untouched by age.

Dorian wanted one.

No, he needed one.

And so, on the eve of the winter solstice, beneath a sky heavy with the promise of snow, he found the shop.

Its door was unlocked.

And inside, the air smelled of oil and old parchment, of brass gears and ticking secrets.

At the back of the room, surrounded by hundreds of clocks, sat a man with silver eyes.

Erasmus Valen.

The clockmaker.

He did not look up when Dorian entered. His hands moved with delicate precision, assembling a timepiece that ticked out of sync with the others.

“You seek a clock,” he murmured. His voice was like rustling pages, soft but heavy with knowledge. “But do you understand the cost?”

Dorian smirked. “I can pay any price.”

Erasmus sighed, finally meeting his gaze. And in that moment, something shifted.

The walls of the shop shuddered. The clocks… sped up.

Time was not as it seemed here.

And neither was the man who controlled it.

A Bargain with Time

Erasmus Valen studied Dorian Kael in the flickering candlelight. The nobleman’s fine coat and polished boots marked him as a man of wealth, but it was his hunger—the gleam in his eyes—that gave him away.

He was desperate.

The clockmaker sighed, brushing the dust from an old wooden box upon his workbench. He opened it with care, revealing a clock unlike any other.

It was small, no larger than the palm of one’s hand. Its casing was black as night, its gears an intricate dance of silver and sapphire. But the most unsettling part was its face—a hollow circle where no numbers marked the passage of time.

Instead, it held a single, glowing blue eye.

It blinked.

Dorian took an unconscious step back. “What… is that?”

Erasmus’s silver eyes gleamed. “This is a Chronomancer’s Dial—a timepiece that does not track hours, but rather, the very essence of one’s fate.”

Dorian swallowed. “And it can… alter time?”

Erasmus tilted his head, considering the words. “It does not merely alter time—it chooses.”

The nobleman licked his lips, his greed outweighing his fear. “What do you want for it?”

The clockmaker’s hands hovered over the device, his expression unreadable. Then, in a voice barely above a whisper, he said:

“Your future.”

A pause.

Dorian frowned. “That’s ridiculous. What does that even mean?”

Erasmus finally looked up, his silver eyes locking onto Dorian’s own.

“It means that once you wind this clock, it will consume your fate. From that moment forward, your future no longer belongs to you.”

Dorian let out a short, sharp laugh. “I don’t believe in fate.”

Erasmus’s lips twitched, but it was not quite a smile. “Then perhaps it will not believe in you.”

Dorian snatched the clock from the table. “Name your price.”

Erasmus exhaled slowly. “You will not need gold where you are going.”

But Dorian had already turned, his fingers tracing the smooth, dark casing of the clock as he disappeared into the night.

And behind him, in the dim candlelight, Erasmus Valen watched with knowing eyes.

The First Turn of the Dial

Dorian wasted no time.

The moment he returned to his manor, he locked himself away in his study, placing the Chronomancer’s Dial upon his desk. The eye on its face blinked, as if aware of its new master.

He hesitated only briefly before reaching for the winding key attached to its side.

One turn.

The gears whirred, the blue eye pulsing once, a faint glow spilling into the darkened room.

Dorian inhaled sharply. The air felt… heavier. The clock, though small, now seemed to loom, its presence an undeniable weight in the space around him.

And then, something changed.

He felt it before he saw it.

A shift, like stepping between two moments in time.

The flames in his fireplace flickered unnaturally, twisting and stretching before his eyes. The ink on the pages of his books reversed, flowing backward like a film played in reverse. The paint on the walls faded, the wood beneath his desk aged and withered in an instant.

And when Dorian lifted his gaze toward the mirror across the room.

His reflection was gone.

Unraveling Time

Panic seized him.

He staggered back, knocking over an inkwell, the black liquid spreading like a growing void across the floor. He turned toward the clock, its eye now watching him more intently.

And then, a whisper.

“You are no longer bound.”

Dorian froze. “What?”

A cold wind slithered through the room, despite the windows being shut. The voice came again, but this time, it was his own.

“You are free from time. Free from fate. Free from the path you were meant to walk.”

His breath hitched. “No… no, this is a trick. A hallucination.”

He stumbled toward the door, yanking it open.

And what he saw stole the air from his lungs.

The world outside his study was frozen.

The servants in the hall were motionless, their expressions locked in mid-step. The snow outside the window hung in the air, suspended as if time had ceased to move.

And yet, he was still here.

Still breathing.

Still… moving.

He turned back to the Chronomancer’s Dial, realization dawning upon him.

He had not simply altered time.

He had stepped outside of it.

The Cost of Being Unbound

Days passed, at least, he thought they did. It was difficult to tell when time no longer obeyed him.

The world remained frozen, locked in the moment he had turned the dial. He could walk through the city, move among the people—but they were as lifeless as statues, trapped in the stillness of an eternal pause.

And then, something worse happened.

The clock… began ticking backward.

At first, it was barely noticeable. The changes were subtle—the candles growing taller instead of burning down, the spilled ink crawling back into its inkwell. But then, the world itself began to undo.

Buildings reversed their construction, returning to wooden frames and scattered stone. Roads became dirt paths. People, those who had been frozen, faded into nothing, as if they had never existed at all.

Time itself was being undone.

And then… they appeared.

Figures in dark robes, emerging from the unraveling void of history.

Dorian ran.

The Watchers of Time

The figures pursued him through the shifting ruins of his own city, their faces hidden beneath the hoods of flowing cloaks. They did not walk, they glided, as though untouched by the physical laws of the world.

One of them lifted an hourglass, its sands flowing upward instead of down.

A voice, layered and hollow, filled the crumbling streets.

“You have severed yourself from time. Now you must answer to the Keepers.”

Dorian turned a sharp corner, panting. His hands clenched around the Chronomancer’s Dial, fingers digging into the cool metal casing.

And then he saw it—

A doorway.

No, not a doorway. A rift.

A crack in reality itself, leading nowhere and everywhere.

The figures behind him raised their hands—

He leaped through the rift—

And then, Darkness.

The Rift Between Time

Dorian fell.

The sensation was not of descending into an abyss, nor of moving forward, but rather as if he were being unwoven, his very existence stretched into strands and scattered through the unseen fabric of reality.

He gasped for breath, but there was no air. His body contorted, twisted, changed—and then, suddenly, the world snapped into place around him.

He was no longer in Veridane.

He was somewhere else.

The rift had spat him into a vast chamber, lined with colossal gears and shifting mechanisms, each one turning in impossible ways. The walls shimmered, as if made from liquid glass, reflecting not just the present but moments from the past and the future, playing like fragmented scenes.

Dorian stumbled forward, gripping his aching head. “Where… am I?”

A voice—calm, patient, yet inescapably ancient—answered from the shadows.

“You have entered the Sanctum of Time.”

Dorian spun around.

Standing before him was a figure cloaked in flowing silver robes, their face obscured by a mask of polished obsidian, carved with intricate symbols. In their hand, they held an hourglass, but its sands did not fall—they floated, suspended between the two chambers, as if deciding which direction they should flow.

Dorian took a step back, gripping the Chronomancer’s Dial tightly. “Who are you?”

The figure tilted its head slightly.

“I am the Keeper.”

Dorian’s throat tightened. “Of… what?”

The Keeper extended a long, slender hand, pointing toward the great gears turning above them.

“Of all that is, all that was, and all that might have been.”

Dorian’s fingers curled around the clock. “If you’re some kind of guardian, why didn’t you stop me sooner?”

A silence stretched between them, broken only by the rhythmic ticking of the unseen mechanisms around them.

Then, the Keeper answered.

“Because time must be witnessed to be understood. And now, you understand nothing.”

Dorian’s heart pounded.

“What… what happens now?”

The Keeper slowly lowered the hourglass.

“Now, you must answer for your choices.”

The Trial of the Unbound

A great ring of light formed around them, symbols burning in the air like celestial fire. The gears halted, the walls of liquid glass reflecting a thousand versions of Dorian—some younger, some older, some that had never existed at all.

And then, the voices began.

From the reflections, they spoke in a chorus of echoes—versions of him from different timelines, different fates, all whispering, questioning, judging.

“You sought to control time, but did you ever seek to understand it?”

“You wished to escape fate, but in doing so, you destroyed your own.”

“Did you ever wonder why Erasmus Valen warned you?”

Dorian clenched his fists, his pulse hammering against his ribs. “I didn’t destroy anything—I took control of what was mine!”

The reflections wavered. The voices deepened, turning into something older, something more vast.

“And yet, you are here.”

The air cracked. The chamber shuddered.

And in the next moment, the scene changed.

The Unraveling of Fate

Dorian was no longer in the chamber.

He stood in his own manor, but it was wrong—the walls were crumbling, his belongings faded as though abandoned for centuries. The paintings on the walls bore his face, but they were warped, his eyes empty.

He turned sharply—his servants stood in the hall, but they were not moving. They were frozen, like statues of glass, locked in expressions of horror.

Dorian’s breath came in ragged bursts. “What… what is this?”

The Keeper’s voice echoed through the empty halls.

“This is what you have become.”

Dorian turned a corner and stopped cold.

At the end of the hall, seated in a chair before a large, ornate clock, was…

Himself.

But this version was aged, withered, hollow—a man who had spent centuries in this manor, untouched by time yet unable to move forward.

The older Dorian’s eyes turned to him, wide with despair. His lips moved, but his voice was no more than a whisper.

“End it… please.”

Dorian stumbled back, horror clawing at his throat.

The Keeper’s voice returned, calm but absolute.

“You did not escape time. You removed yourself from it. You are a man who does not exist in the future, nor in the past. A man unanchored. A man… unmade.”

The manor shuddered, the clocks on the walls reversing their hands at an erratic pace.

Dorian fell to his knees, clutching the Chronomancer’s Dial to his chest. His breath hitched, his mind fracturing under the weight of what he had done.

“You wanted control,” the Keeper continued. “Now, you must choose.”

The hourglass appeared again, suspended before him.

One choice: Destroy the clock, restore his fate, and accept whatever future awaited him.
The other: Keep running. Keep existing outside of time, forever lost.

The reflections around him whispered in unison.

“Choose.”

The Final Choice

Dorian’s hands shook. He looked at the aged version of himself, at the empty fate that awaited him if he chose nothing.

And then, his grip on the Chronomancer’s Dial tightened.

His fingers turned the key—

And the clock shattered.

A violent shockwave of light erupted outward, tearing through the halls, through time itself, through everything—

And then, darkness.

The Price of Restoration

The moment the Chronomancer’s Dial shattered, the world collapsed inward.

A deafening roar filled the void, as if time itself had been holding its breath, waiting for release.

Dorian felt himself falling—not through space, but through time, through every moment he had twisted, every fate he had unraveled.

The frozen world began to move again. The ticking clocks in his manor synchronized, the servants who had once stood as lifeless statues breathed once more.

The rift that had cast him outside of existence sealed itself shut.

And Dorian Kael—the man who had severed his own fate—was dragged back into time’s embrace.

A Man Who Never Was

When he opened his eyes, he found himself back in Erasmus Valen’s workshop.

The candlelight flickered. The scent of old parchment and clock oil filled the air. The dozens of ticking clocks, the strange gears that turned in unnatural directions—it was exactly as it had been the first time he entered.

Had it been a dream?

Dorian gasped, his fingers trembling as he clutched at his chest. He was alive, his body whole, but… something was wrong.

He turned to the clockmaker, who was standing behind his workbench, watching him with calm, knowing eyes.

Erasmus sighed. “I warned you.”

Dorian swallowed hard, his mind reeling. “What happened?”

The clockmaker stepped forward, his silver eyes heavy with something ancient. “You destroyed the Chronomancer’s Dial.”

Dorian nodded. “Yes, I… I fixed it. I returned to time.”

Erasmus shook his head. “No. You erased your existence from time.”

A silence fell between them.

Dorian’s pulse slowed. “What do you mean?”

The clockmaker gestured to the mirror on the far wall.

Dorian turned toward it—

And froze.

His reflection was not there.

The realization slammed into him like a falling blade. He turned back to Erasmus, his voice a ragged whisper. “No… That’s impossible.”

Erasmus simply watched him, unblinking. “Time is not kind to those who try to defy it.”

Dorian staggered back, his breath coming in short, desperate gasps.

“No… no, I—I’m still here. I—I can still—”

His words faltered. His body felt light, as though it were slowly drifting away.

And then, the horror set in.

He was fading.

A Ghost in Time

The truth was cruel.

Dorian had not restored his fate. He had erased it entirely.

He was now a man without a past, without a future.

No history.
No presence.
No place in time.

He stumbled toward Erasmus, grabbing at the fabric of the clockmaker’s sleeve. “Fix it!” he gasped. “You have to fix it!”

Erasmus did not move, nor did he flinch. His silver eyes remained impassive. “It cannot be fixed.”

Dorian shook his head violently. “No. No, there has to be a way! There has to be—”

But as he spoke, his hands passed through Erasmus’s arm like mist.

Dorian staggered back in horror. His fingers, his arms, his very form was becoming transparent.

He was disappearing.

The Final Truth

The clocks in the workshop continued to tick.

Erasmus watched as Dorian Kael’s desperate cries faded, his form becoming nothing more than a flickering outline.

And then—

Silence.

Dorian was gone.

No record of his life remained. No memory of his name existed.

It was as if he had never been born at all.

Erasmus exhaled softly, brushing the dust from his workbench. Then, slowly, he turned to the place where Dorian had stood only moments before.

And with the faintest whisper, he murmured:

“Time reclaims all.”

He reached for the remains of the shattered Chronomancer’s Dial, its fragments now little more than grains of dust, slipping between his fingers like sand.

Then, without another word, the clockmaker returned to his work.

And the world moved on.

---

So now you know, traveler.

Dorian Kael was a man who tried to command time, and in doing so, erased himself from it.

His story is one of many—whispers of those who seek to change fate, only to become lost in the spaces between.

But tell me, traveler…

If you were given the chance to hold time in your hands, would you take it?

Would you dare to turn the dial?

Or would you heed the warning of the clockmaker?

Choose wisely.

For time does not grant second chances.