Some days, the world conspires to trap you inside—with rain at the glass, breath fogging the panes, and nothing left to do but face what’s brewing just beneath the surface.
In Chapter 6, Pressing Closer, the storm presses in as Lira and the clockmaker edge toward a line that refuses to stay still. The antique clock waits nearby, its key pulsing with last night’s charge. But it’s not just the machinery of time that trembles—what passes between them is harder to measure, impossible to rewind.
This chapter leans into tension: the way bodies brush without quite colliding, the weight of unsaid things, the allure of pushing too far. Lira turns the key again. The past buckles. The present stutters. And something in the shop—a clock, a memory, maybe a feeling—starts ticking again when it shouldn’t.
For me, this chapter is about resistance: the kind that flares in the space between a near-kiss and a step back. The kind that makes you wonder which moment will finally tip the scale.
We’re past curiosity now. The clock remembers. But what else is it breaking?
—Eric