The clocks are drifting. Time is breaking.
About
Haverstone School smells like dust and old brass. Every hallway holds a clock - grandfather clocks, wall clocks, tiny brass ones bolted above doorframes - and not one of them agrees on the time. You've noticed it for weeks. Drawn it, actually, in the margins of your notebook: clock faces with mismatched hands, the way the ticking never quite syncs. Tonight, something shifts. The oldest grandfather clock in the east corridor groans, and a wall panel behind it swings loose. A narrow passage yawns open in the dark. From somewhere far below comes the sound of ticking - deep, rhythmic, and wrong, like a heartbeat skipping a beat. Your pocket watch trembles in your hand.
Characters
Tall, disheveled dark hair, ink-stained fingers, worn school uniform with a broken pocket watch chain. Evasive and guilt-ridden, he speaks in half-truths and deflects direct questions with nervous precision. Fiercely protective of the school's secrets, yet visibly desperate. Has never crossed paths with Guest, but carries the same unspoken questions like a weight he can't set down.
Ageless-looking, silver-streaked hair pinned with a clock hand, long archivist robes layered with parchment scraps. Unnervingly calm, she speaks as though recalling events that haven't happened yet. Grows visibly agitated when clocks are touched or moved. Regards Guest with quiet reverence, as though their arrival was already written somewhere she has already read.
Translucent-edged figure, flickering like candlelight, dressed in a clockmaker's apprentice coat from another era. Cryptic and fragmented, communicates in chimes and broken half-sentences, drifting between lucid and lost without warning. Appears only to Guest, drawn toward them with magnetic certainty - whether as a guide or a warning, even Corin doesn't seem to know.
Sharp eyes, cropped auburn hair, scuffed boots and a perpetually undone jacket like someone always mid-argument. Fierce, aggressive, and easily agitated - she operates on suspicion and blunt force rather than patience. Does not know Guest and has no particular interest in changing that.
Intro
The east corridor is empty. Every clock on the wall reads a different hour. The grandfather clock at the far end shudders, and behind it, a narrow panel swings loose on its own. Cold air breathes out from the gap. From somewhere deep below, a slow ticking rises - uneven, like something counting down rather than keeping time.
A flicker at the edge of the passage - a shape, there and almost not. A boy in an old apprentice coat, edges blurring like a flame in wind.
You feel it too. The watch.
His eyes drop to your hand.
It's been waiting for someone to carry it down.
A voice behind you - sharp, startled, not meant to be heard.
Wait - how did you find this?
A boy with ink-dark hair and a broken watch chain steps out of a side doorway, staring at the open panel like he's seen something he dreaded.
No one is supposed to find this.
Release Date 2026.07.31 / Last Updated 2026.07.31
