Chapter 50: The Clock with No Hands
Part 2: The Tower's Mouth
The doors of the clock tower groaned open with a deep, wet sound.
Selene stood at the threshold, breath shallow. The scent of old paper and burned hair rolled out like fog, thick and oily. She hesitated—just for a second. Long enough to hear a faint whisper rise from within the tower. Welcome home. The voice was hers. Or Seraphine's. It was hard to tell anymore. Inside, the air was colder than outside, but not dead. It was alive with motion—slow, like underwater breathing. The walls pulsed faintly with a damp, reddish hue. There were no stairs. No obvious path upward. Just a vast, round chamber lined with broken clock faces, shattered mirrors, and dolls—dozens, maybe hundreds—nailed to the walls. Their eyes had been gouged out. Their mouths stitched shut. In the center of the chamber stood a spiral platform made of cracked tiles and bone, twisting upward into the shadows like a staircase carved from ribs. At its base was a large, metal lever embedded in a heart-shaped slot. Selene stepped forward. Her foot hit something soft. She looked down. A child's shoe. Small. Faded pink with a bunny on the side. There was still blood on the sole. She reached the base of the stairs. The heart-shaped slot glistened faintly. As she touched the lever, a low sound vibrated through the room. Not quite a growl. Not quite a scream. A pulse. A recognition. Then the walls began to move. The dolls turned their heads in unison. Not fast. Not violent. Slowly. Reverently. Toward her. Their mouths began to twitch, threads straining against their stitches. From them came a sound like wet cloth being ripped in half. Selene didn't scream. She climbed the stairs.
Each step groaned beneath her weight. The further up she went, the darker it became. Not for lack of light—there was still the red glow from below—but because the space itself resisted her presence. It was like walking through thick syrup, time slowing with every footfall. Halfway up, the whispers began again.
This time, she recognized them. Voices from the orphanage. Children calling her name. Blaming her. Selene, you left us. Selene, why did you run?
Selene, why didn't you burn like we did? Her hands gripped the rail. She kept moving. At the top of the staircase was a narrow doorway. On it, carved deep into the wood with something jagged, was a single word: LIAR. She pushed the door open.
What lay beyond was not the upper room of a tower.
It was a hallway.
Endless. Wooden. Flickering lights above. Dozens of doors on either side. All of them slightly ajar. All of them weeping shadows.
Behind her, the doorway sealed shut. The hallway smelled like her childhood. The one no one believed she remembered. Linoleum floors. Burnt oatmeal. Mildew. And beneath it all, that same iron-rich scent of old blood. A voice echoed from the end of the corridor. You've come far, Selene. But you'll have to walk it all again.
The doors began to open. One by one. Behind each was a piece of her past.
The first showed her bunk in the orphanage. The day she found her favorite doll cut in half. Seraphine had been framed for it. Selene never confessed it was her. She watched herself cry fake tears. The second room held a memory of the fire. Not from her view—but from Seraphine's. Trapped. Screaming. Reaching for help while Selene ran. In the third, she saw the town council. The day they came to her and begged her to "contain the evil." The pact. The ritual. The sealing. All of it, without ever admitting what they did to the children. Selene's knees buckled.
But the hallway didn't end. The clock ticked on. Still 3:00 AM. Time was no longer moving forward. Time was looping. And at the end of the hallway… the mirror waited. Tall. Warped. Waiting for her to look. Waiting for her to remember what she truly was.
Chapter 50: The Clock with No Hands
Part 3: The Time Loop
The hallway didn't end.
It twisted unnaturally in the distance, like a spine snapped in multiple places but still crawling. Its walls breathed—slow, pulsing contractions beneath layers of faded floral wallpaper. Every few seconds, black veins bulged beneath the surface, as if something enormous slithered just behind them.
Selene moved forward, not because she wanted to, but because the air behind her had gone dense and wet, pushing her forward like a throat swallowing. Her boots squelched on the floor. It wasn't wood anymore—it was soft, spongey. Organic.The light overhead flickered.It wasn't an electrical flicker.It was rhythmic. Like a heartbeat. Her own, perhaps. Or the tower's. The first door opened on its own She turned her head—slowly, knowing what she'd see and hating that she was right. Inside was her childhood bedroom. Not how she remembered it, but how it had become after the fire. Everything was covered in soot. Melted toys. A bed frame warped by heat. In the middle of the room, hunched over the charred remains of a stuffed bear, sat a child. Selene recognized her. It was her. Eight years old. Soot-streaked face. Fingernails missing. Rocking back and forth. Whimpering softly. On the walls were chalk drawings—dozens of them—of flames swallowing figures. The same drawing repeated again and again: Seraphine reaching out, and Selene walking away. The child looked up.
Her eyes were empty sockets.
"Why didn't you come back?" the child whispered, voice hollow and distant. "We waited. You promised. You let the door close."
Selene stepped back, but the hallway didn't let her go far.
The next door opened violently.
She was dragged toward it by a gust of rot-soaked wind. Inside was a dining table. Grand. Ornate. Completely out of place. It stretched into impossible distance, laid with rusted silverware and porcelain plates cracked like old bones.
Around the table sat the town elders. The ones who had made the pact. Their mouths had been sewn shut with wire. Their eyes had been replaced with the ticking faces of tiny watches. Each ticked out of sync. Maddeningly uneven. Their heads turned toward Selene in jerky, mechanical movements.
"You fed us lies," one gurgled through blood. "We dined on guilt. You served betrayal on silver platters."
Another elder began to scream—but not with sound. Her throat opened, and black moths erupted outward, filling the room. They battered Selene's face, crawling into her ears, whispering truths she refused to remember.
Selene slammed the door shut.
The hallway groaned.
It was longer now.
As if punishing her for looking away. The mirrors on the walls no longer reflected her. They showed dozens of versions of Selene. One with burnt skin and glass eyes. Another wearing a crown made of children's teeth. A third disemboweled, holding her own entrails like a child clutches a doll.
She ran.
She didn't remember choosing to. Her legs just moved.
The hallway rippled like liquid as she ran, distorting around her. Doors opened and slammed shut in sync with her heartbeat. One door flew open and revealed Seraphine's bedroom—untouched, pristine—except now it was full of flies. They moved in perfect formations, spelling out the word LIAR across the ceiling.
Selene skidded to a stop.
A figure stood at the end of the hall.
Not a shadow. Not a reflection.
Her.
But not her.
This Selene had pitch-black eyes and a mouth stitched into a smile with threads made of hair. Her arms were too long. Her fingers scraped the floor. Her skin was pale, almost translucent, showing twitching veins underneath like a map of suffering.
She cocked her head and spoke in Seraphine's voice.
"Found you."
Selene turned to run, but the hallway shifted. The floor became hands—tiny, writhing hands of children—grabbing her ankles, pulling her down. Each one sobbed as it clawed at her, screaming muffled cries from mouths sewn shut.
She fell.
Straight through the floor.
Into the clock gears.
She landed with a bone-cracking thud on a platform made entirely of ticking mechanisms. Clock hands stabbed upward like thorns. One pierced her leg. She screamed.
Blood flowed—but it wasn't red.
It was black.
And the gears began to turn faster.
Faster.
They pulled her downward, trying to drag her into the center of the mechanism.
Above her, suspended in the air like a chandelier, was a beating heart the size of a child's head. It was nailed to the gears, pulsing in time with the tower. From it hung ropes made of hair, from which dangled the dolls she had seen earlier—now alive, twitching, whispering secrets.
"You brought the curse," they hissed.
"You fed it."
"You raised it."
Selene screamed back, "I didn't know! I didn't know what would happen!
A doll's head twisted 360 degrees.
"But you wanted it to happen."
A massive chime echoed through the chamber.
DONG.
And another.
DONG.
With each toll, the heart above began to split.
A mouth opened in its center, lined with tiny human teeth.
It began to sing.
Not a song with melody. A sound that peeled her thoughts back, one by one, like old wallpaper, revealing memories she had buried deep.
The betrayal of her sister.
The night she set the fire.
The deal she made with the elders to "seal the evil," knowing they meant to trap Seraphine inside.
And worst of all—her secret joy when it was over.
Freedom.
Selene vomited onto the floor.
The gears stopped.
The dolls fell silent.
She looked up, shivering.
And Seraphine stood above her.
Not the girl she remembered, not the specter she feared.
But a thing made of shadows and burnt cloth, skin half-melted, eyes glowing like dying stars. Behind her, the tower split open into a thousand versions of itself, forming a spiral of realities.
"You left me in the fire," Seraphine whispered.
"And now I leave you in time."
With a flick of her hand, Selene was dragged upward, screaming, into the mirror at the top of the chamber.
And then—
Silence.
Nothing but ticking.
Over and over.
Forever.
Tick.
Tock.
Tick.
Tock.
Chapter 50: The Clock with No Hands
Part 4 – The Mouths of the Forgotten
There was no sensation of falling. Selene was simply devoured. One breath she was in the room with the mirror, and the next she stood in a place so wrong it hurt to exist. The sky above her churned like rotting milk. The horizon twisted endlessly, folding over itself, revealing shapes that should not have been—figures with too many legs, houses made of fingernails, rivers of what looked like hair. The air was thick, and every breath Selene took felt like swallowing screams. Beneath her feet, the ground was not made of earth but something softer—spongy, fleshy. It squelched. Looking down, she saw it was made of mouths. Mouths of all shapes and sizes—some whispering, some gnashing their teeth, some softly sobbing. Each one murmured a word. Selene. Selene. Selene. She staggered back, her heels pressing into a lipless maw that licked her shoe with a decayed tongue. She screamed and turned, only to find herself face to face with a tree. At least, it looked like a tree from afar. Up close, it was a human spine fused with knotted arms branching outward like limbs, fingers dangling and twitching. At its base was a child's skull. The whispering stopped. The air shifted. From the distance, footsteps echoed—small, shuffling, and wrong. A figure emerged through the mist. It was a girl. Burned black, hair matted with what looked like ash and blood, eyes glowing faintly blue. Her mouth was sewn shut with hair. Selene's hair. She recognized her. Seraphine. Dozens more followed her. Children, all of them. Broken, warped, incomplete. Some dragged their feet like puppets without strings. Some had no mouths. Others had too many. One little boy held his own heart in his hands, cradling it like a toy. Each child clutched a candle, its flame burning backward—like time itself was retreating. They formed a circle around Selene. Then, in perfect unison, the children opened their mouths and vomited insects. Beetles. Flies. Moths. From their throats came swarms of creatures that filled the air, swarming around Selene. But none touched her. Instead, they gathered above, forming shapes—symbols—twisting runes of bone and pain in the sky. The sky bled. From above, the clouds opened like eyelids. A single enormous eye blinked down at her. Its iris spun like a clock. Its pupil was a keyhole. Its tears were teeth. The ground quaked. The mouths beneath her feet began to chant. Queen. Queen. Queen of forgotten time. Queen of broken names. Selene dropped to her knees. Her ears bled. Her vision blurred. Seraphine stepped forward and placed a hand on her head. Selene flinched—but the touch was cold, still, like touching marble.You were always meant to wear the crown, she whispered, but not aloud. The voice was inside Selene's skull, rattling against her bones. You just had to lose enough to accept it. Selene tried to speak, but her jaw locked. Her skin felt too tight. Behind Seraphine, the procession parted, revealing a monument. The Orphan's Throne. It stood tall and grotesque. Built entirely from the spines and ribs of sacrificed children, fused together with melted silver and symbols carved into femurs. It breathed. Not metaphorically. It actually inhaled and exhaled, groaning with every breath. The throne called her. Seraphine offered a final whisper. Sit, and all pain ends. Resist, and it will begin again. Selene stared at the throne. Her heart pounded. Then she took one trembling step forward. And the mouths smiled.
Chapter 50: The Clock with No Hands
Part 4 to Part 10 – The Ending
Selene stood frozen before the Orphan's Throne. It pulsed beneath the flickering bone chandelier, each vertebrae of the chair twitching like a nervous muscle. The walls of the heart-shaped chamber oozed dark liquid, each drop landing with a wet hiss as if the very structure resented her presence. Seraphine stood beside it, smiling now, no longer a monster of flame and vengeance. She looked regal. Timeless. Her long hair hung like black silk soaked in ink, eyes glimmering like dying stars. And yet her presence made Selene's teeth ache and her bones feel brittle. "Sit," she said again, this time more gently. "The clock demands a keeper."
Selene shook her head, stepping back. "I don't belong here. I didn't ask for this."
"You were never asked. You were made. Every betrayal carved you. Every scream in the night shaped you. You were forged in the silence your parents gave you."
The throne throbbed. Mouths formed along its sides, some crying, some laughing, others singing lullabies in reverse. Selene turned to run—but the door behind her was gone, melted into the wall like wax. She was trapped.
Part 6 – The Devouring Hours
The heart-shaped chamber began to close in. Literally. The walls flexed inward, beating faster, faster. Her memories screamed inside her skull, and the air itself filled with the smell of rotting sugar and scorched bone. Every moment inside this place stole a year of her life—she could feel it draining, could feel her fingers grow colder, her nails turn grey. "I don't want to die here," she whispered. "You won't," Seraphine replied. "But you will change." The floor cracked open like a blooming flower, revealing clock gears beneath—massive, interlocking metal teeth smeared with blood. And between the gears were faces—those of the children lost to the curse. They screamed as the gears turned, grinding them again and again in a loop of endless agony. "Make it stop!" Selene sobbed. "Only if you take the throne." Selene stared at it. At the skulls welded into the backrest. At the handprints burned into the armrests. And then—she saw one of the prints was hers. From long ago. The day she first lied. The day she said Seraphine deserved it.
Part 7 – The Truth Beneath the Fire
Selene sat.
The moment her skin touched the throne, time fractured. She wasn't in the heart-chamber anymore. She was standing in her childhood home. Fire had not yet started. Her sister, Seraphine—young, warm, innocent—was reading a story in the corner. Their parents sat at the dinner table, all smiles and warmth, but only for Seraphine. Selene walked forward. "Don't light the match," she whispered to her younger self. But the girl didn't hear her. The match struck. The fire roared. Selene turned away. "You always had the choice," said a voice behind her. "You chose silence." She spun and saw the mirror. No longer a reflection. It showed her as she had become—pale, throned, ruling over time and death. She screamed—and fell backward into the throne again.
Part 8 – The Clock's Last Toll
Reality crumbled. The ceiling above the throne room exploded into starlight and screaming. The children below the gears began to rise, not as ghosts, but as shadows—tall, jagged figures with glowing mouths and bleeding clocks where their hearts should be. They surrounded the throne. One by one, they bowed to her. Seraphine stood beside her now, her face unreadable. "You've taken the burden. You've ended the loop.""Then why does it still hurt?" Selene asked. "Because there is no ending. Only the pause between ticks." The shadows moaned. The tower shook. The gears stopped. Then reversed. Time rewound—not in the world, but in Selene. She felt every lie unspoke, every scream choked, flood backward through her throat. Her eyes rolled back. She convulsed in the throne. She was no longer a girl. She was something else. Something the town would worship. Something the tower would obey.
Part 9 – Seraphine's Goodbye
Seraphine leaned close, whispering in her ear. "You weren't meant to suffer. But someone had to." "You knew this would happen," Selene choked. Seraphine nodded. "I needed someone strong enough. Hurt enough. You were perfect." "You used me." Seraphine smiled. "I freed you." And with that, she stepped into the gears below. Her body tore apart silently—bones folding inward, face splitting open into light. She vanished without a scream. Selene watched in silence. The throne pulsed. Her eyes glowed. She raised her hand—and the clocktower's bells rang one final time.
Part 10 – The Ending
Ashvale forgot. It always had. Each generation buried a child, swore an oath, fed the gears. But now, the tower stood silent. No more ticking. No more time. Selene never returned to the town. Or maybe she never left. The building was torn down years later, the land left fallow. But they say some nights, if you walk too close to where the clocktower once stood, you'll hear the whisper of gears. And if you listen harder, through the ticking and turning, you'll hear the voice of a girl: "Tick, tock, tick… hush now. No one's watching." And then silence. Forever.