Legend XIV – The Tower of the Falling Clock Hands

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It is said that there is a city where the clocks strike backward. No one remembers when it began. Perhaps it was a mistake, perhaps a curse. All that is certain is that since that day, no one has known exactly when they were born—or when they were destined to die. People lived amidst the sounds of the backward-running bells, and each hour sounded like a retraction of the last. In the center of the city stood the Tower of Hands. Tall, made of white stone, crisscrossed by countless cracks. At its top, a clock without a face turned, its hands beating like black wings against the wind. Sometimes one of them fell, slowly, as if defying gravity, and when it hit the pavement, somewhere in the city, someone began to forget who they were. The inhabitants called this the return—as if memories were returning to where they had come from. They didn't know that all those lost moments sank into the tower itself, down into its very core, where time collected like water in a still cistern.One night, a child named Leorin came to the foot of the tower. He was the last child who still knew when he had been born. His mother had written the day on a small piece of paper and sewn it into his pocket before she, too, forgot the sound of the upside-down bells. Leorin climbed the steps as the hours flowed backward around him. With every step he took, he grew a little younger, his hands smoother, his breath lighter. At the top, he found no door, only an opening through which light fell like a ray of frozen time. In the center of the room hung a clock, its hands falling upward, drop by drop, like rain made of metal. And behind them stood a figure of glass and shadow—the tower's guardian. His voice sounded as if he were speaking through a tangle of gears. "You're late," he said, even though Leorin had only just arrived. "Or early," the child replied. "I just want to know when I was born." The guard was silent, then he opened his hand. In it lay a tiny pointer, black and smooth as obsidian. "Here is your hour," he said. "But if you take it, everyone else will miss it." Leorin looked at the pointer. It was as small as a needle, yet something was turning inside it—perhaps an entire childhood, perhaps a single breath. Finally, he closed his fingers around it. At that moment, the ticking stopped. Down in the streets, all the clocks paused. People looked up as a silent wind swept through the city. Seconds stretched, minutes became memories, hours turned to dust. Then the hands began to fall again—but this time forward, and no one knew what they had lost or gained. Leorin had vanished. Only his shadow remained, burned into the tower wall, like the face of a clock that was never made.