Legend XXVIII – The Clock in the Dust

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Beneath a desert that knows no end, sleeps a clock whose face is covered in ash. The sun above it is pale, the dunes breathe dust, and no wind remembers the path it came by. The ancients call this place the Valley of Forgotten Hours, but it is erased from the maps of the world, like everything that has waited too long. It is said that once a city stood there—built of white stone, with towers reaching for the sky like the fingers of a dying man. At its heart was a clockwork mechanism as large as a palace, created to bind time itself. Its gears were of glass, its hands of moon metal, and in its ticking lay the breath of the world. But the people, blinded by their own art, stopped the clock one day—to avoid the hour of death. Then time held its breath, and all that lived turned to dust. Since then, the clock strikes only for those who have been forgotten. Deep underground, buried beneath layers of gray ash, it ticks on. Its sound is little more than a whisper, yet whoever hears it loses themselves. Wanderers tell of nights when the sand vibrates as if something lives beneath it. Some swear they have seen the clock face—shimmering like a blind sun, riddled with cracks from which fine light spills like smoke. A man named Serin, a seeker of lost things, once ventured there. He wore a broken pocket watch at his belt, believing it to be the key to a promise. For three days he wandered through storms of dust until his shadow left him. On the fourth day, he found the opening—a shaft plunging into the depths, with walls of glass and dust. And there, in the heart of darkness, he saw it: the clock. It was immense, a cathedral of rusting gears, entwined with veins of sand and bones near roots. Every movement was a sigh, every tick a beat in the eternal stillness. Serin stepped closer, placed his hand on the cold metal—and felt it recognize him. A pulse, faint, ancient, trickled through his fingers. Then the clock began to beat faster. Dust rose. Shadows moved. Faces formed from the gears—shadowy images of people whose names no one remembered. They looked at him, but their eyes were empty, like blown-out stars. A voice whispered, so soft it barely stirred the air: You have come to remember us. Serin didn't understand, but the pocket watch on his belt sprang open—and its hands turned backward. He saw images: a city in sunlight, children laughing, bells ringing. Then dust. And more dust. He wanted to scream, but his voice fell to the ground as ash. When he closed his eyes, he himself had become part of the clock—another beat in the heart of the forgotten. They say that sometimes, when the wind sweeps across the desolate plains, it carries a distant ticking.