The building seemed calm that morning, almost… ordinary.
I had grown accustomed to the anomalies, but a small part of me still expected the impossible to happen at any moment. And that day, it did.
I was walking through the main hall, my steps quiet against the polished floor. Sunlight streamed through the windows, casting long, ordinary shadows. But then I noticed it—a clock above the staircase.
It shouldn't have been there. Not this clock. Its face was slightly cracked, hands frozen at exactly 3:17.
Curiosity pulled me closer. As I approached, the minute hand twitched, then moved backward. I blinked.
Backward?
I looked at the second hand. Same thing. Each tick reversed the flow of time, tiny, deliberate, almost polite. The hallway outside remained still, as if oblivious to the impossible. But I knew better.
The anomaly wasn't subtle anymore. It was showing itself, demanding attention.
I reached for the clock. The moment my fingers brushed its face, the world shifted.
A gust of wind swept through the hall, though no doors were open. Papers fluttered, chairs tilted, and the shadows—my shadows—stretched and recoiled violently. The building seemed alive, aware, testing me again.
The minute hand spun backward faster now. I watched in awe as the hallway behind me transformed. People I had seen earlier in the day appeared walking backward, repeating actions they had just done. A janitor swept the floor in reverse, dust rising into the broom instead of falling.
I staggered back. My pulse raced.
The key in my pocket pulsed again, warm against my palm. It seemed to hum in rhythm with the clock, as if recognizing its counterpart in the anomaly.
I realized something terrifying: the anomalies were connected. The stretching hallways, the living shadows, the impossible rooms—they all followed patterns, like threads in a larger tapestry. And this clock was one of the threads, pulling reality backward, bending the rules I thought I understood.
I experimented cautiously. A small jump forward, a hand gesture, a glance at the clock—and the world responded. A vase that had fallen in my last visit rose and set itself neatly on a table. A loose tile clicked back into place.
It wasn't just time reversing. The building was rewriting itself, subtly correcting or changing events based on observation.
And then I noticed the reflection.
In the clock's cracked glass, my reflection moved differently than I did. My head tilted, and the reflected version didn't. My hand reached out, but the hand in the reflection moved slightly ahead of mine, like it knew what I would do next.
I shivered.
The room—no, the building—was alive. A sentient entity composed of hallways, rooms, shadows, and even time itself. I was no longer an observer. I was part of it.
A whisper floated to me from somewhere behind the walls:
"Time is never lost… only noticed differently."
I realized I had been so focused on seeing anomalies that I hadn't considered how deeply they affected reality. Each observation, each touch, each glance was a step into something I didn't yet understand.
The minute hand twitched again. I hesitated. I could push forward into the anomaly, explore its effects further… or step away and pretend nothing had happened.
I couldn't.
Curiosity, now sharpened into necessity, forced me forward. Step by step, I approached the staircase. The clock spun backward faster, and I felt the world ripple beneath me. Time was bending, stretching, but also alive, testing my perception, my understanding.
And I understood, finally, a truth that both thrilled and terrified me:
The building wasn't just a location. The anomalies weren't just tricks. The building was a teacher, and I had become its pupil.
Step by step, heartbeat by heartbeat, I moved forward. Each tick backward on the clock echoed in my chest, urging me to notice, to understand, to follow.
At the top of the staircase, a new door appeared—a simple, unmarked wooden door, faintly glowing, almost inviting. The shadows pooled around it, curling like fingers, guiding me.
I reached for the knob. The moment my fingers touched it, the world shifted once more, backward and forward at the same time, as if time itself were folding in on itself.
I took a deep breath, turned the knob, and stepped through.