The Light Stolen from the Sun

The copper fog hadn't truly lifted since morning. London 1889—or something masquerading as London—still steamed from last night's dream, as Elias Thorn stepped through the rusted gates of the Heliotropic District.

He wore a dark brown coat with bronze buttons that caught light like the eyes of a broken clock. His leather boots tapped against the stone streets, disturbing the silence of narrow alleys nestled between curved buildings, where architecture rejected conventional geometry. The silver chain around his neck, bearing an ancient Egyptian key, pulsed faintly, as if reacting to air that squirmed with the whispers of time.

In his hand, yesterday's threatening letter remained neatly folded. Its red....gold letters pulsed dimly…unfading, unchanged, as if freshly written by a pen that knew tomorrow.

Elias Thorn stood outside the iron gates of the Temple of Chronos, studying the upside....down hourglass statue atop it…its sands flowed upward, not down. No bells existed here, no ticking clocks. Only a silence that pressed against the eardrum.

He wasn't entirely sure why he'd come. But everything pointed to this place.

That morning, after opening the threat written in red....gold ink, his long....dead pocket watch had trembled faintly. He had lost many things since Livia vanished…memories, time, trust in reality…yet a small voice within him said the watch was more than an heirloom. Beneath the dull yellow lid, its hands were still frozen at 13:13.

Inside the back cover, scrawled in his father's hand:

"When the wound begins to tick, go to the Temple. They will not answer, but they will take you to the Mirror."

And the wound…that burn shaped like an Ouroboros on his left palm…had felt warm last night. As if time had ignited something inside him.

The temple was hidden behind the wall of an old clock market wrapped in temporal fog. No signs marked it, only a spiral symbol with a suspended second at its center. Before the cracked bronze doors, two robed men stood still like statues of time.

Elias felt his heartbeat sync with the city's pulse. No sound, just a "click" from nowhere. He knocked three times…a ritual he didn't remember learning, but his hand remembered.

The door creaked open. Inside, the sound of a giant clock didn't come from any timepiece—but from the walls themselves. Each stone seemed to remember when it was laid, and by whom.

Then came the Masked Priest.

He was tall, thin but not fragile. His dark purple robe dragged across the floor like night's liquid. On his face…a smooth silver mask identical to Elias's own. Exactly alike, save for the eyes: empty, with two glass clock faces turning slowly.

"Time does not flow here, Elias Thorn," he said. His voice echoed like a future yet to arrive.

Elias didn't respond. His eyes were fixed on the figure—and on himself, unblinking. Behind the Priest, an old monk with golden eyes appeared. The man looked frail, yet his aura froze the air. His eyeballs glowed like twin dead suns.

He spoke without a voice:

"You've stepped too close to the clock's center. You're starting to burn by its seconds."

The Priest explained that the Temple of Chronos was no ordinary place of worship. It was a resonance chamber for the Cult of Kronos—a group that did not worship God, but the Second itself. To them, clocks were prisons, while each second was sacred, fleeting freedom.

Each follower held a single moment from their past…one specific second they most wished to remember, yet were forbidden to. That moment was sealed in a glass capsule and kept in the Unrecorded Room.

"Why?" Elias asked.

The Priest replied, "Because time is not a straight line. It is will, compressed into harmony. If you remember too much, the world will shatter with you."

At the center of the spiral....shaped hall stood the Memory Mirror—an object said to show not what we see, but what we hide from ourselves.

As Elias stood before it, he saw his reflection fragmented. His body split into parts, his face blurred into overlapping versions. One young, one old, one with entirely black eyes. All were silently weeping.

"What is this?" Elias whispered.

The Priest only murmured, "You are not one. You are Fracture."

At that moment, the burn on Elias's left palm…shaped like an Ouroboros…pulsed hot, as if igniting his own memories. He collapsed, breath ragged, and Livia's voice echoed in his mind:

"Brother, I'm…between the clocks. But don't come too soon. Don't remember everything at once."

After Elias managed to calm his thoughts, he spoke with the golden....eyed monk in the garden of time, where trees shaped like sundials grew.

The monk carved words into the air with his fingers:

"This world is not the true one.""Time here is will, not law."

He handed Elias a fragment of a watch from a year that didn't exist: 1994. A year not yet conceived—even in Royal Academia's theories of time.

"You'll need it when clocks become sky and their seconds want to return."

…..

As Elias left the temple, the London sky had changed. Clouds rolled inward, not outward. In the distance, clock towers began showing different times. One read 3:13, another 13:13, and one ticked its hands in reverse.

Elias felt the weight on his shoulders. The world was beginning to reject him…not because he was wrong, but because he was right.

As he walked again through the narrow alley, his own shadow turned before he did.

And in the air, the sound of clocks whispered:

"Remember…the second you forgot."