Chapter 10: Still went up Friday. Today, the last piece-Chapter 11: The Inheritance-falls into place.
I began The Clockmaker’s Rewind with a single image: a hand turning a key, again and again, to steal time back. I didn’t know yet where it would lead—only that it would have to end somewhere irreversible.
For nine chapters, the clock rewound. It made space for desire, for repair, for denial. But like any mechanism pushed too far, it began to fray. I always knew there would come a moment when they’d stop turning the key—not because they ran out of time, but because they had finally chosen not to escape its flow.
Chapter 10 is where that tension breaks. The prose shortens, the heat rises. It’s both climax and collapse. They’ve used the clock to touch each other, to test themselves. But now they face each other with nothing to buffer the weight of wanting something real.
And then Chapter 11 turns quietly forward.
It felt important that the story end not in tragedy or triumph, but in continuity—a legacy passed, not through magic, but through care. The shop settles into rhythm again. A child learns to listen to gears. The broken clock stays broken, not as a failure, but as a witness.
This story isn’t just about time travel. It’s about what we do when we discover that rewinding is not an option. When memory becomes material. When we choose to stay.
Thank you for the generous gift of your eyes, and comments!
—Eric