Subscribe to my Patreon for early chapters and more exclusive stories
patreon.com/Lead_Poison
The sea wind carries the smell of salt and fresh bread, braided together the way mornings always taste in this house. Gulls wheel somewhere beyond the eaves; their calls scrape across the sky in uneven rhythm. Inside, a slower, steadier cadence holds the room together:
Tick.Tick.Tick.
The mantle clock has kept that beat since before Ezriel was born. It runs a half-second slow and refuses to be corrected. His father says that it gives the family "borrowed time." His mother says it's just stubborn, like all Virellis. Ezriel has never liked that it's wrong—but this morning, lying half in shadow, he counts the drift without looking. Fourteen seconds, two breaths, one gull cry off pattern.
He blinks awake.
Sun pools hot and gold across the foot of his bed, whitening the rumpled sheets tangled round his legs. The window latch never sits right; the top pane hangs open a finger's width, letting in salt damp and a distant crash of waves on rock. A breeze slips through and lifts strands of his dark hair so they tickle his cheek.
He rolls to sit, rubs his eyes, and freezes.
In the warped mirror nailed to the wardrobe door, his face is a blur of sleep-puffed angles and black hair—but his left eye flashes. Not color exactly. More like light refracted through brass. A thin ring, a spoke, a suggestion of hands sweeping round some inner circle.
He leans closer. The gold is gone.
Just Hazel. Just morning. Just a trick of the sun through bad glass.
"Not this again," he mutters, pushing hair across that side like he always does when the ache starts. The pressure behind the eye is dull today, not the stabbing pulse that stole his sleep two nights ago. Still, he presses a thumb along the brow bone until it fades.
Floorboards creak as he stands. Bare feet, cool wood, the faint grit of blown sand. He pulls on cuffed work trousers, shrugs into a loose shirt, and pauses to listen—not to the sea this time, but to the house.
Below: the bright tumble of his sister Lina singing something that can't decide if it's a hymn or a sailor's shanty. Pots clatter. Their mother curses the eggs ("They cook too fast when I look away, they sulk when I watch."). Outside, through the thin walls, his father laughs at the stubborn gate hinge he swore he fixed yesterday.
It's loud. It's alive. It's the sound of everything he pretends will always be here.
He lets it soak in.
Hold this. Remember it. Because some nights—more often lately—his dreams end in a kind of perfect silence, a world where clocks don't tick and voices don't answer back. He wakes from those with his heart pounding and his left eye burning, and he lies very still until he can hear the mantle clock again.
Today, the rhythm holds.
"Julian! Breakfast or starvation!" his mother calls up the stairwell, voice bending round the syllables in that half-accent she never lost.
He drags a hand through his hair, lets the messy strands fall to shadow the suspect's eye, and leans into the hallway.
"Coming! Don't burn the town down before bread service!" he shouts back.
Lina answers with a shrieked harmony no human ear requested.
Ezriel grins despite himself, grabs the banister, and heads down into the day—the last ordinary morning before the clock in his head stops pretending to be a clock at all.
The Marek home sat just two streets up from the harbor, its frame old but sturdy, weathered by wind and war. The walls bore the smell of salt, warm bread, and the faint, lingering scent of engine oil that clung to Julian's father like a second skin.
The kitchen was too small for four people, but somehow, they all managed to move around each other like notes in a practiced melody.
Wooden beams creaked overhead. Seaglass jars lined the windowsill—each one catching the sunlight in a different color. The old piano in the corner, chipped and out of tune, hadn't been properly played in years. Lina liked to press random keys when no one was watching, as if it might one day sing the right song.
The Mares always had breakfast together. Not because time allowed it, but because their father insisted.
"One meal a day. Together. No talk of trenches, no ghosts from France," he'd once said.
Julian's father was a broad-shouldered man with a limping gait and arms that had once carried a wounded comrade across a battlefield. His military coat still hung by the door, patched, faded, but never put away. He worked now as a mechanic, mostly on fishing boats and town trucks. But there were nights—long ones, here he would sit by the window and clean a rifle that hadn't fired in years.
Their mother was flour-dusted, sharp-eyed, and faster than any rumor in town. Her bakery opened before sunrise, and yet she still managed to prepare breakfast as if it were a sacred rite.
"Eat while it's hot," she warned, placing a warm basket of bread in the center of the table. "God help you if I see crumbs on the piano again, Lina."
"It wasn't me," Lina said, stuffing a roll into her mouth sideways. "It was Julian's shadow."
"What shadow?" Julian asked, not looking up.
"The one that follows you around like it's not sure you're real."
Their father chuckled. "She's got you there, son."
Julian tried to smile. It didn't quite reach his eyes.
He sat at the table, toast untouched, watching the rest of them move like a film in reverse. Lina was humming under her breath—some half-made melody, maybe one she dreamt up. Their mother darted between the stove and the sink like a general commanding her front. His father—who had seen real fronts—tossed glances between his children with the quiet peace of someone who feared he'd never live to see this.
It should have felt comforting. Instead, everything was slightly… off. Like the whole room leaned one degree to the left, and no one but him noticed.
The tick-tick-tick of the fireplace clock grew louder, burrowing between thoughts. He rubbed his temple.
"You've been somewhere else lately," his mother said gently.
Julian blinked. "Just tired."
"You've said that every day this week."
He glanced at Lina. She was stealing jam from his plate, exaggeratedly innocent about it. He forced a laugh, reached over, and swiped some of hers in retaliation.
"I'm fine. Really."
But he wasn't.
Something pulsed behind his eye when he blinked. Not pain exactly—more like pressure. Like a sealed door shaking on its hinges.
He didn't tell them about the dreams. Or the sensation that time stuttered sometimes when he walked past mirrors. Or the feeling that he was being watched—not by someone else, but by some part of himself, waiting to wake up.
Tick.Tick.Tick.
No one else seemed to hear it.
He took a bite of toast to feel like he still belonged in the moment. The jam was too sweet. The bread is too soft. Everything was still good. Still real.
But in his bones, Julian Marek could feel it—
Something was coming undone.
The walk into town was short but winding, narrow cobbled streets that remembered the war in the uneven way they held your feet. Julian walked beside his father, lugging a canvas bag of spare bolts and tools for a customer down by the docks. They didn't speak much. They rarely did during walks like these.
The town was quiet today. Not dead, just... still. Old women swept their steps. A boy kicked a ball against a shuttered store. Somewhere, a church bell rang the hour, but its echo came a second too late.
Julian's father handed him a coin. "Go get the part from Rauther," he said, jerking his chin toward the watchmaker's corner shop. "And don't let him talk circles around you."
Julian nodded and crossed the street.
The bell above the door jingled—not cheerily, but like it had forgotten how to ring properly.
The shop was dim, thick with the scent of copper oil and old paper. Clocks of every shape lined the walls—tall grandfather clocks, pocket watches in velvet trays, strange, skeletal timepieces that ticked sideways or not at all. The sound of them filled the room like a thousand whispering mouths.
Tick. Tick. Tickticktickticktick…
Each one kept time, and yet none of them agreed.
"Back again, boy?" came a voice from behind a curtain of hanging gears.
Mr. Rauther emerged slowly, wiping his hands with a gray cloth that looked older than Julian. He was thin, wiry, with half-moon spectacles perched on a hawk nose and one eye glassier than the other. It didn't reflect light—it absorbed it.
Julian shifted under the man's gaze.
"That eye of yours still twitching?"Rasped, voice dry like old thread.
Julian flinched before he could stop himself. He swallowed.
"It's fine."
"Hmph." Rauther moved past him, hand ghosting over a brass mantel clock. "Clocks only break when they can't bear the truth of time anymore. Most people are the same. You wind them too tight, they shatter."
Julian didn't reply. Instead, he stared at the cluttered counter, where dozens of tiny cogs lay scattered like silver dust. A half-disassembled pocket watch ticked despite having no visible power source.
He caught his reflection in a polished brass clock face.
For a second—just one breath—his left eye shimmered gold. The second hand of the clock twitched as if it recognized him.
Rauther saw it. He didn't speak.
Instead, he turned back to his workbench, adjusting a magnifying lens.
"Be careful," he murmured, almost absently. "Some things, once wound, don't stop."
Julian frowned. "What does that mean?"
"Means you're not the only one who listens when the world ticks sideways."
Julian blinked, but Rauther had already moved on, carefully closing the lid on a small silver watch whose hands spun backwards.
"Tell your father his parts are in the crate. And tell him to oil that wrench before it rusts itself to death."
Julian lingered for a second longer. He thought of asking something—anything—but didn't.
He left the shop without another word.
Behind him, one of the clocks struck the hour. Seven chimes.Then eight.Then five.
Julian Marek walked the winding hill road back toward the sea, the crate tucked under one arm, its weight pulling harder than it should. The wind had picked up. Cold. Sharp. The clouds over the horizon had gathered into a slow-rolling bruise that swallowed the edge of the sky.
He kept his head down, boots crunching over gravel.
"You're not the only one who listens when the world ticks sideways."
Rauther's words echoed in his mind, looping like a melody he couldn't hum. The old man had always been strange, but today there was something… different. The way he'd seen Julian's eye and said nothing. The way his clocks seemed to watch him.
Julian glanced at the ocean. The waves below moved more slowly than they should have. He blinked. It was back to normal.
You're imagining it. You've been imagining a lot of things lately.
He squeezed the crate tighter, jaw clenched. His mother would want the tools dropped in the back. His father would already be working with his sleeves rolled up, pretending the storm didn't exist.
But all Julian could think about was the moment the ticking stopped in Rauther's shop.
By dinner, the sky had darkened to slate, and thunder rumbled low, like some ancient creature stirring in its sleep.
Their mother lit candles along the windowsill, just in case the power failed. The flickering flames danced beside jars of dried herbs, paper recipes, and family portraits long faded at the edges.
Julian stood near the fireplace, watching shadows curl against the mantel. The fire crackled and spat embers, warming his legs. The clock above it ticked steadily, a sound that once felt like comfort, now an itch he couldn't scratch.
Lina tugged at his arm.
"Dance with me," she insisted.
"I don't dance."
"You do badly. That still counts."
He rolled his eyes, but let her pull him into the center of the room. Rain had started to fall—soft at first, then harder, tracing lines down the window glass.
Their parents watched from the kitchen. His mother kneaded dough while his father cleaned the storm-damp boots by the back door. The room glowed gold from firelight and laughter.
Julian spun clumsily. Lina twirled like she had no bones in her feet.
"You're awful," she giggled.
"You're worse."
They bumped into the couch. Knocked over a book. Laughed so hard that the dog barked from the hallway.
It was perfect.
And then, the ticking grew louder.
Julian froze.
It wasn't just in the room. It was inside him. Inside his head. Tick. Tick. Tick . Each beat matched his pulse, then overtook it.
His vision blurred for a second. The shadows in the corners of the room shifted. Not moved—shifted, as if the walls themselves hiccupped in space.
He stumbled, catching the side of the table. His hand gripped the edge so tightly his knuckles paled. Sweat broke along the back of his neck.
"Julian?" his mother asked gently.
He didn't turn.
"Just a headache," he muttered.
(Lie.)
Tick.
His left eye burned.
Outside, a single bolt of lightning carved the sky open, bright enough to flash across every reflective surface in the room. The window beside him flared with light.
And in that fleeting moment—
—his reflection stared back with a golden clock for an eye.
Not imagined. Not symbolic. Real. The hands spun gently across the iris. The pupil had vanished, replaced by a circle of celestial mechanics, quiet and infinite.
The ticking stopped.
The silence screamed louder than thunder.
He blinked.
The eye was normal again. The rain continued to fall.
And the clock above the fireplace resumed.
Tick.Tick.Tick.
The storm had passed, but the air still held its breath.
Outside, the wind had gone still—unnaturally still. No gulls cried. No leaves rustled. Even the waves, ever-restless, sounded far away, like they had withdrawn from the coast altogether.
The house slept in soft silence. Floorboards creaked in their usual places, pipes sighed in their old age, but no voices stirred. The fire in the hearth had gone out. Only faint moonlight lit the hallway, casting a pale silver glow across the wooden floor.
Upstairs, Julian Marek lay awake.
Eyes wide open. Body still. Sheets twisted at his waist, forgotten.
He stared at the ceiling with the expression of someone waiting—but for what, he couldn't say. The ticking wasn't coming from the clock anymore.
It was coming from inside his head.
Not even sound, exactly. More like pressure. Rhythm. A deep, unrelenting presence, like the heartbeat of something older than the sea, older than time itself.
His left eye burned. A dull, insistent throb behind the socket. He blinked. It didn't help. The pain didn't dull—it spread, like it was unfolding into something larger than his skull could contain.
The rest of the world was too quiet. So quiet, it felt wrong. As though someone had muted existence with a remote, Julian couldn't see.
And then—
It's almost time.
The words didn't come from anywhere. Not the walls. Not the wind.
They came from within. Felt, not heard. Like a thought someone else had shoved into his chest.
His breath caught.
Slowly, he sat up. The room was cold now. The warmth from earlier was gone, as if it had been stolen by something creeping in while he slept.
He didn't call his parents. Didn't scream. Some part of him knew—they wouldn't hear him anyway. Not right now. Not while this was happening.
Julian swung his legs over the side of the bed. The floor was cold under his feet.
He walked to the mirror.
The cracked glass reflected him in pale moonlight. He looked tired. Hollow. Like the storm had stolen something from his bones.
And then—
The golden eye opened.
Unmistakable.
No flicker. No trick of the light. It was open, fully, completely—an intricate golden clockface where his pupil should be, delicate hands ticking in slow, deliberate motion.
One second passed.
Then another.
The markings around the iris shimmered like etched runes, symbols he didn't recognize but somehow understood. The hands of the clock weren't pointing to twelve. They were pointing at me.
Julian didn't scream.
He just stared.
He didn't know what was happening, or what it meant, but somehow—deep in the marrow of his being—he knew:
This wasn't the beginning. It was the continuation of something much older. Something that had been waiting for him to remember.
And as the eye ticked forward—
Time blinked first.