Dairo, a short-haired seventeen-year-old with bright eyes and a patchwork cloak, has a mystery driving him. He wants to figure out what happened to his big sister Rosa, who disappeared five years back. Every clue so far has led to empty places. Frankly, no light and no wind any time he arrives. There’s not much hope left—what would you do if your whole world was silenced one morning and nobody remembered?
With his friend Myuu, a sly girl who knows the roots and shadows of Bellscale City, and Koji, who has a metal arm and more trust in gears than people, he finally faces the old clock tower. Locals say it’s broken. But Dairo saw a slow light. Myuu snorts when he tells her—it’s past midnight, it’s raining mist, surely the dead keep ghostly secrets on nights like this. Her voice, “Or maybe there’s a back way in, noodles for brains.” Do you think she’d follow the mystery, or run for luck?
Dairo starts small: he wants in. The path up the hill glows cold in rain, machines lying like resting birds in the fields. Each step, there’s less sound. Even Koji is quiet. Myuu checks her knife, lips tight. Under the great gears, roots grow right through metal, shifting in the half-moon light. It’s all wet, old and silent.
Halfway up, Myuu trips and falls in soft mud. “Sleeping spell,” Koji says, looking serious. He’s not joking—roots have looped around her ankles. Dairo cuts them with a bit of glass. Myuu glares. Why does every group always end up saving one friend at the wildest moment?
The thick wood doors won’t move. Dairo fishes in his bag, finds a three-sided mirror rose glass pendant. He lines it with grooves on the door. There it is: gears above shift. The huge hands move, pointing out ten minutes to dawn—the door cracks open, wind rushes. Inside, it smells of old time. “Would you keep going? It’s madness. Would you go back?”
Tall cages hang from the ceiling, each holding only ribbons. White, pale blue—and one gold ribbon drops slow near where Rosa’s keepsake flashes in the light. Dairo stares, tears slip out. He can’t say why it hurts so to see a ribbon: that’s how Rosa wore her hair. Koji coughs sharp. “Careful!” Myuu’s voice, low behind him. Shadows gather on the stone floor.
The clock’s voice is faint, but it’s a sticking-winding series of chimes that crawl upstairs, above their heads. Suddenly: the ribbon snags Dairo’s ear. The stone underneath glows, and below them the spiraling clockwork floods orange and blue. It doesn’t burn. But he sinks down—really falls with no ground, no time for sense.
Dairo snaps awake in another place. Except, it’s fuzzed in fog. A field with no clock tower but hundreds of shadows like himself, all moving with blank faces and quick hack laughs. Is Rosa here—if she is, is she so hard to spot for a reason?
He walks forward. One shadow steps near, opens a painted mouth: “If you pass the test, you win time. If you fail, you wander with us, ten years for each light you forget.” Another memory slips—his old friend whom he wishes to see again. Danger sits on warmth, sight shifts in fog.
Back in the real tower, Myuu mouths “What did he see?” Koji bends close, puts his working hand on Dairo’s chest—”Heartbeat’s good, let him rest.” You might wonder: if you lost someone important, would you walk this far for only memories?
A deep chime spills from below. The clock above leaks sand—real sand, running through cracks in time. Time bends. The city’s lost a year in half a chime, they realize, watching neon signs flick off in nearby windows, and wild weeds spring new leaves fast as rain.
Myuu shakes Dairo awake—”We’re leaving,” she warns, but outside is mist. Doors are gone. Only a wide spiral staircase is there now, curving up, edge lined with gold cords. The tower seems much taller on the inside than it should, rimmed in slow blue light. They climb. What else are you going to do?
By the way, Myuu keeps talking to solve her nerves, reciting codes and clock songs. “At the top, the thing they seek—her last memory before she left!” Koji checks his tools. It’s clear to them now: Rosa tried to fix the clock once, and was trapped when it broke time for the city. If Dairo fixes this, he risks vanishing too.
Dairo stops. On a landing, a set of broken gears: one is Rosa’s brooch fastened as a lock. He picks it up. Turns gently. Time freezes outside; only in the tower does life move. The cold bites, but he steps to the light at the highest window.
There’s Rosa—in the flesh? She stands facing out an airy mirror, talking voice with her back to them. She hears Dairo, but her reply seems trapped in the mist, repeating each word a few seconds over as if echo pulled long. Dairo calls, “I’m here!” Sound fades, then Rosa turns. Her eyes catch gold and blue. She stretches out a hand, a ribbon dangling as before.
Something stops the hope—below, rings of light collapse. Myuu yells: “Now or final time!” Koji throws his arm rope, grabs Dairo’s sleeve. Do they flee, or finish the task? Above, outside, morning cracks the clouds. Rosa holds, not yet letting go as shadows reach for their feet. You’re standing there—a second passes—what do you do, really? Duck or jump forward?
Cliffhanger: As the hour strikes six, Dairo takes Rosa’s hand and leaps from the broken clock face—will they land together, or fade into the empty lights with no one left to see?
