Morning drifted into noon, and the rain returned — soft, almost apologetic.
Vyom sat at his desk, sketching idly in his worn notebook. The page was covered in circles — clock faces, pendulums, eyes, and strange overlapping symbols that seemed to draw themselves whenever he stopped thinking.
He didn't remember starting half of them.
The window beside him hummed faintly from the wind. His tea had gone cold.
Somewhere in the house, the clocks still ticked — uneven, defiant.
He pressed his pencil too hard and snapped the tip.
"...Damn it."
He sighed, brushing away the graphite dust. His hand trembled — again. Not from fatigue, but from something subtler. Every time he moved, he could feel the space around him — like air that wasn't air, pressing back, bending slightly when he reached through it.
It wasn't supposed to feel like that.
He stood, walked to the wall clock beside his bed, and watched the pendulum.
tick… tock… tick—tock—tick…
The sound staggered, glitched, then caught up again.
He frowned. "Don't start this again…"
When he touched the glass, his reflection warped. For half a second, he saw two of himself — one looking back with normal eyes, the other with a faint red shimmer deep inside the pupils.
He flinched, stumbling back.
The clock shattered.
The sound was sharp, slicing through the quiet. Shards fell like rain, glinting in the pale light. The pendulum split clean in two, one half swaying lazily before clattering to the floor.
"Vyom! What was that?"
Aarika's voice came from downstairs. He froze, unable to answer. His breath came fast, shallow. He looked at his hands — a faint static glow traced his fingertips, like lightning threads trying to disappear.
He hid them behind him as Aarika rushed in.
"Are you okay?" she asked, eyes darting to the broken clock. "What happened?"
"I—I don't know. I was just cleaning it, and it fell."
Aarika sighed in relief, though her brow creased. "Be careful, idiot. These are Dad's favorite."
She began picking up the larger pieces. Vyom crouched beside her, pretending to help. His reflection in the shards didn't match his movements — it blinked when he didn't.
He turned away quickly.
Aarika didn't notice. She hummed under her breath, a soft tune their mother used to sing. It filled the silence like a fragile bandage.
But the silence wasn't gone. It just waited.
---
That evening, the rain deepened. The town faded into silver haze, and the air smelled of iron. Vyom sat in his father's workshop again, surrounded by ticking things — tiny mechanical hearts all whispering in strange rhythm.
His father adjusted his glasses. "Hold the frame steady, will you?"
Vyom obeyed. The clock they worked on was small, a customer repair — but inside, the gears looked wrong. He could see faint red veins pulsing between the brass teeth, like something alive was breathing beneath the metal.
"Dad…" Vyom started, uncertain. "What if clocks could… feel time passing?"
His father chuckled. "Then they'd probably envy us. Or pity us."
Vyom didn't smile. He stared at the pendulum again. The longer he looked, the more he felt it watching back — waiting for something.
When his father turned away to fetch another part, Vyom reached out instinctively.
The moment his finger brushed the metal, everything stopped.
The pendulum froze mid-swing. The workshop went silent. Even the sound of rain vanished.
The dust motes in the air hung still, suspended like stars.
Vyom's heartbeat thundered in his ears. "Not again…"
He backed away, but his foot didn't make a sound. The air was thick — heavy — unreal. His father stood frozen mid-motion, expression calm, glasses catching a sliver of still light.
"Dad?" Vyom whispered.
No answer.
He swallowed hard, chest tightening. The silence pressed on him until he could barely breathe. He waved his hand in front of his father's face — nothing.
Then, faintly, a hum began. Low. Mechanical. Familiar.
It came from the broken clock on the table — the one they had opened moments ago.
The gears were moving. Slowly. In reverse.
Click. Click. Click.
Each tick echoed like a pulse inside Vyom's head. He grabbed his temples, gasping. The workshop around him began to distort — shelves bending, time warping, light refracting through invisible fractures.
And through it all, that voice again — soft, ancient, calm:
"The pendulum breaks when the balance is ignored."
Vyom spun around. "Who's there?!"
No one. Only stillness.
But behind him, the frozen figure of his father flickered — once, twice — then split like a reflection in cracked glass.
Vyom stumbled back, knocking tools off the bench. The vision shattered — and with it, sound returned.
The rain roared again. The clocks resumed. His father turned, oblivious.
"Vyom? You okay?"
Vyom blinked rapidly, eyes wide. The room was normal again. Nothing broken. Nothing wrong.
Except the pendulum on the table — it wasn't the same shape anymore. The brass had twisted slightly, as though melted and reformed.
He whispered, "You didn't see that?"
His father raised a brow. "See what?"
Vyom forced a smile. "Nothing. Just tired, I guess."
His father chuckled. "Then get some rest. I can finish this one."
Vyom nodded, leaving the workshop — his heart still racing, his reflection still lagging behind him by a fraction of a second.
---
That night, thunder rolled again. Vyom couldn't sleep.
He sat by the window, knees drawn close, watching the lightning paint the world in pale blue flashes. Each strike illuminated something faintly off — the curtain fluttering though the air was still, the second hand on his wristwatch twitching too fast, the reflection of his room in the glass showing him already standing when he hadn't moved yet.
It wasn't just his imagination anymore.
Something was pushing through.
He reached for his notebook again, flipping to the latest page. His sketches had changed — the circles weren't clocks anymore. They were eyes. Interlocking, rotating, fractal patterns of time and sight.
In the center of the last page, he'd drawn a pendulum — shattered in two, bleeding sand instead of metal.
He didn't remember drawing it.
He pressed a trembling hand over it.
Seventeen more hours, my heir.
The whisper returned.
Vyom froze. "No… stop…"
But the clocks didn't stop this time — they all sped up.
Every tick merged into a mechanical roar. The walls pulsed, the floor trembled. His teacup shattered from the vibration.
He covered his ears, shouting, "STOP!"
Everything obeyed. Instantly.
The sound died. The rain paused mid-fall. The lightning outside froze in the sky like a photograph.
Vyom lowered his hands slowly, breath ragged.
"...I did that."
He stood, staring at the motionless storm beyond the window. The world had turned into glass — fragile, unmoving, perfect.
He stepped closer, pressed his palm against the glass. The faint symbol appeared again — the double circle eye — glowing beneath the surface like it had been waiting.
He whispered, "What are you?"
The reflection smiled.
He stumbled back, hitting his table. The symbol pulsed once, then faded.
A loud chime broke the stillness. One of the old clocks — his father's Grand Clock downstairs — had begun ringing violently, the sound echoing through the entire house even though nothing else moved.
Vyom turned toward the door. The sound called to him — rhythmic, deliberate.
He moved slowly down the staircase, the house frozen mid-motion. His sister's teacup hovered above the table, droplets of tea suspended midair. His grandmother's prayer bell was frozen halfway through a swing.
Only the Grand Clock was alive — its pendulum thrashing wildly, faster and faster, until the brass cracked.
Vyom reached the base of the stairs, chest pounding. The pendulum's movement blurred into a solid line of gold.
Then it stopped.
Time rushed back in — all at once. The teacup shattered. The bell rang. The wind screamed through the window.
And the clock's glass face exploded outward, scattering fragments across the hall.
Vyom shielded his eyes. When he looked again, something faint glowed inside the clock's hollow body — a mark, etched in light. The same double circle.
Beneath it, written faintly, were words he could barely make out:
"Time remembers its keeper."
He stepped closer. His reflection appeared again in the shattered glass — but this time, it spoke.
"You've already begun, Vyom."
Vyom's breath hitched. "Who are you?"
"The one who wound your fate. The one sealed beneath your pulse."
"Why me?"
"Because time needed an heir."
The reflection's smile widened — then cracked. The glass around the clock splintered again, bleeding faint threads of red light.
A sudden knock echoed from the front door.
Vyom jumped, spinning around. The reflection was gone. The glow had vanished.
The door creaked open by itself.
Wind rushed in, carrying the faint scent of rain and iron. On the doorstep lay a small, black envelope — unmarked, sealed with a broken gear symbol.
He picked it up slowly. The paper was damp but unnaturally cold. Inside, a note written in looping script:
"The cracks have begun to show. Protect the hour that remains."
"—N."
Vyom read it twice, pulse trembling.
Before he could react, thunder crashed outside — but this time, the light that followed wasn't white. It was crimson.
And somewhere in the distance, an ancient pendulum began swinging again — perfectly in sync with his heartbeat.
tick… tock… tick… tock…
---
End of Chapter 9 — The Shattered Pendulum