The Watchmaker's Will"
The buildings they passed—old colonial structures with corrugated tin roofs—looked warped, their edges stretching upward into the red sky like frozen flames.
As they neared the main promenade of the Ridge, the clicking sound returned, louder and more aggressive than before. It was no longer coming from behind them; it was coming from the fog ahead. Shadows began to solidify within the amber mist, forming jagged, geometric silhouettes that resembled human figures constructed out of broken clock components and rusted gears.
"The Keepers," Vikram muttered, remembering a scratched-out passage in the watchmaker’s diary. "They are the automated immune system of the temporal rift. They don't want t