Story 1190: When Time Screamed

It began at 2:17 a.m., though no one could remember what day. The clocks didn’t break. They just… stopped knowing how to be clocks.

In the heart of Dreadmoor, time had always moved strangely. But that night, it screamed—a soundless wail that folded the sky like wet paper and sent shadows bleeding from under doors that should never have existed.

The sound came from the Cracked Spire, a ruined tower stitched into the fabric of forgotten calendars. No bell had hung in that spire for centuries. Yet every soul in the city heard its toll—twice. Once in their ears, once in their bones.

People awoke with ashes in their mouths and teeth missing from their dreams.

Time was unraveling.

Clara Veil, the street performer touched by the void, had been watching the city with a third eye painted beneath her real ones. She saw it before the others: the second moon hovering just behind the first, visible only through mirrors.