Clockwork Zero Novels & Stories

The machine was a colossal clockwork monolith of pure primordial steel, its massive gears grinding together with a deafening, mechanical roar that shook the very foundation of the capital. System Status: Read-Only Memory (ROM). Software injection: Impossible. Logic manipulation: Denied. "It doesn't have an operating system," I whispered through our open-source mind-link, my golden wings beating slowly as I hovered above the smoke-choked plaza. "The commands are physically stamped into the gears. It cannot be hacked, Xander. It only knows one directive: Eradicate." A massive, solid steel piston from the engine violently slammed downward, missing my position by inches and vaporizing a stone to

The clock shows 14:26, which is automatically in Indonesia at 01:26 in the morning. Zeva reflexively patted her forehead. "Oh, Zeva, you're really stupid. How can you disturb someone's sleep hours?" thought Zeva, cursing herself for her stupidity for not checking the clock first. Yeah, it's only natural that Zero didn't pick up the first call from Zeva. Zero was having fun just entering his dreams. "Uh, yeah, Sorry, I bothered you. I forgot that it was still midnight there," said Zeva to Zero. "Well, then I'll turn it off, so you can continue sleeping. Good night," continued Zeva.

I drove the charred, black-emerald key into the very center of the clock’s face, right where the hands met. "I AM THE ETERNAL GLITCH!" I roared, the White Light of the Origin erupting from my skin not as a sun, but as a Stateless Void. The reaction was a Chronological Seizure. The gears of the bone-tower shrieked, their prehistoric teeth grinding against the "Static" of my silence. The pendulum of the Liquidator stalled in mid-air, the blue starlight shattering into useless sparks of data. The bruised violet sky didn't turn gold; it turned a deep, unmoving Indigo-Emerald, the color of a time that refused to pass.

The clock was specially crafted to be driven solely by the enhancement of dimensional time. The clock hand would remain perfectly still with the same flow of dimensional time as the outside world, not moving a single inch. The first contestant emerged from the cubic space completely exhausted. Sweat poured down his face. He could not help but collapse to the ground the moment he stepped out. Then, the second contestant entered the cubic space. He moved the clock hand with his mind, and it moved forward three-quarters of a notch. However, it only retreated by one-quarter of a notch.

she whispered, her porcelain face chiseled with a terrible grin. "Now look at the clock." Through the sky above the copper cables a massive three-story bronze wheel, the central treasury clock of the capital, began to lower itself through the plum-colored clouds. The second hand of the clock was a thirty-foot double-edged steel guillotine that was falling toward the center of the lead registry with every tick. The time was three seconds to midnight. The steel wire inside Elara's palm gave a volcanic thump, the green numbers in her mind turning into a solid column of white zeros.

required to push the universe into the next microsecond. "We are no longer traveling through time, Audrey," Lucas’s voice boomed across the Chronos-Lattice, vibrating through the "Phase-Shifting-Pistons." "We are 'Manufacturing' it. Every tick of this gear is a billion souls choosing to 'Be' for one more second. We have turned the 'Arrow of Time' into a 'Circulating-Pump.' Nothing is lost. Every tear shed in the Soot-Pits is recovered, refined, and used to lubricate the gears of the 'Eternal-Now'."

“And like yours.” I lean closer to the wall. “You are saying we can weaken it.” “Together,” she answers. “But timing matters. The lock resets every six hours with the coordinate shift. If we miss the window, the strain could kill us.” I do not hesitate. “Then we do not miss it.” A faint sound reaches me. Something like a laugh, rough and broken. “You sound like him.” “Ethan,” I say. “Yes,” Subject Zero replies. “He is stubborn.”

Nevertheless, half of the clock seemed to be missing. The clock made Lucas puzzled. 'The mighty treasure that landed… could that possibly be it… 'One of the Ten Legendary Weapons, the Eastern Royalty Clock?' Even though only half of it was there, it still had an aura that made others hold in their breaths. The Rank 9 Mad Ox Dark Race, Rank 9 Undead Skeletal Heavy Swordsman, and Rank 9 King Kong were thinking of moving the clock that only had half of it left. However, even after giving it everything they had, they were still unable to get the clock to budge an inch.

I was the bridge, the one who would ensure the frequency reached its target without tearing us apart first. ​The first of the Clockwork Prophets appeared at the mouth of the pass just as the moon rose. They were terrifying to behold. Massive, multi-legged walkers made of brass and iron, their chimneys belching black smoke into the pristine air. Thousands of smaller, spider-like drones scurried between the legs of the giants, their mandibles glowing with a blue, electrical fire. ​They did not send a messenger. They did not ask for surrender. They simply began to move toward us, a slow, grinding tide of metal that promised only annihilation.

The room seemed to shrink around them as all three stared at the glowing digits. 71:42:18 Tick. Tick. Tick. Lola’s breath caught. “What happens at zero?” she whispered. Silence. Neither man answered. Not because they didn’t want to… but because neither of them knew.