LEVEL CLASSIFICATION: THRESHOLD-18
Designation: The City of Stopped Clocks
Stability: Unstable
Cognitive Hazard: HIGH (Loss of Temporal Perception)
Physical Hazard: VARIABLE (Unpredictable)
PRIMARY TESTIMONY
Extracted from: Report No. 714-Σ
Date: [UNKNOWN / CYCLICAL]
Status: MISSING
I woke up feeling a strange weight on my chest. It wasn't pain. It was as if the air had become thicker, harder to move through.
Opening my eyes, I found myself on wide streets, paved with black and white stones alternating like a giant chessboard. Around me, tall buildings, ancient and imposing architecture, but there was something terribly wrong with everything.
There was no sound.
No wind.
No natural light.
Everything was motionless. Frozen. But it wasn't a freezing caused by cold. It was a freezing of existence.
I looked up and saw the sky. It wasn't blue, nor black. It was a metallic gray, filled with gigantic gears, metal teeth and pulleys that rotated slowly, emitting a soft sound of tick-tock... tick-tock... that resonated not in my ears, but directly inside my brain.
— Where...? — I tried to speak, but my voice came out dragged, slow, as if I were talking underwater.
That was when I noticed.
My movements were strange. I raised my hand and it took seconds to reach where I wanted. Time here was not linear. It was viscous. It flowed.
TECHNICAL NOTE 18: THE PHYSICS OF TIME
In this level, time is not a constant; it is a physical substance. It can be accumulated, spent, stolen, or stopped. Observed data:
- Spontaneous Dilation: One second here can last a millennium outside, or vice versa. Walking a block can take minutes or happen instantly. There is no way to predict it.
- Aging Accumulation: Objects and beings that stay still in the same spot for too long begin to rust, age, or wear out visually, as if years were passing over them in seconds.
- Stoppage Zones: There are areas where time simply ends. If you step into them, your body stops moving, your thoughts halt, and you become an eternal statue, waiting forever.
A physicist who studied this place wrote in his notebook:
"Time is not passing here. It is piled up. You can see the past, present, and future happening on the same street, in overlapping layers. And if you are not careful, you end up trapped in one of them, becoming part of the decoration."
The notebook was found covered in centuries of dust, even though it had been abandoned only moments ago.
PRIMARY ENTITY: THE KEEPER OF THE HANDS
Description: A tall and slender figure, dressed in a long coat of dark fabric and a hat that covers its eyes. Its skin is pale, almost translucent, and its fingers are long and bony. It always carries a huge open pocket watch, which does not mark hours, but rather numbers that change constantly.
Behavior: It walks through the streets without making a sound. It does not attack directly. But wherever it passes, time goes mad. It adjusts the rhythm of reality like someone tuning a broken clock.
Ability: Absolute Manipulation of Duration. It can make you age until you turn to dust in the blink of an eye, or leave you frozen in time while the world around you ends. It is the personification of inevitability.
PRIMARY TESTIMONY (CONTINUATION)
I tried to run, but my body was heavy. Every step was a struggle. Looking ahead, I saw him.
The Keeper.
He was standing in the middle of the street, with his back to me, observing one of the giant gears in the sky. Even without seeing his face, I felt an absolute authority coming from him. He was the master here.
— Who are you? — I asked, forcing the words out.
He turned his head slowly. The movement took so long that I thought he had frozen halfway.
A soft voice, yet sounding like it came from a thousand years ago, replied:
— I am the one who measures. I am the one who remembers.
— What is this place? — I insisted, feeling my hair grow longer, my nails extending rapidly. Time was consuming me just by me being there.
— This is the deposit — he said, starting to walk toward me. But he didn't take steps. He simply changed position, shifting through time instead of space. — Here we store all the moments that have been and all that will be. Everything that is born has an end. And I am responsible for marking when the end arrives.
— I don't want to stay here! I want to leave! — I screamed, feeling my body becoming more rigid.
He stopped one meter away from me. He opened his enormous watch. Inside, there were no mechanisms, only a dark, spinning void.
— Leave...? — he repeated, as if the word were strange. — No one leaves time, little traveler. You can only... rest.
Suddenly, the ground beneath my feet began to glow golden. I felt my body hardening. I felt myself turning into stone, into marble, becoming part of the city.
— No! Please! — I implored.
— Everything has its hour — he whispered, raising his bony hand. — And yours... is over.
ANOMALOUS ARTIFACT: THE WARNING ON THE SIDEWALK
Scratched with white chalk on the stone, in letters that faded away on their own:
DO NOT LOOK AT THE SKY.
DO NOT BREATHE THE STAGNANT AIR.
IF YOU HEAR THE TICK-TOCK, RUN.
BUT REMEMBER:
RUNNING COSTS TIME.
AND YOU DON'T HAVE MUCH LEFT.
PHILOSOPHICAL FRAGMENT
"Time is the thread that sews reality together. Without it, nothing exists, but with it, everything dies. This city is the beating heart of finitude. It reminds us that no matter how powerful we become, no matter how high we reach, we are still subject to the invisible clock that marks every second of our existence. Some forces cannot be fought. Only felt."
PRIMARY TESTIMONY (CONCLUSION)
I could no longer move my fingers.
The process was irreversible. I was turning into a statue, a forgotten monument in that infinite city.
The Keeper brought his face close to mine, and I saw his eyes for the first time. They were empty, filled with sand and fading stars.
I closed my eyes, accepting that this would be my eternal tomb.
But then... something changed.
A different sound echoed. It wasn't the tick-tock. It was the sound of rupture. Like glass shattering high up in the sky.
The Keeper stopped. He lifted his head sharply, looking at the gears above. For the first time, I saw emotion on his face. It wasn't anger. It was... Unease.
He took a step back. Then another. He looked at me, as if recalculating something at the last second.
— Not yet... — he murmured, as if speaking to himself. — The cycle is not complete.
He closed the watch with a dry clack.
— You were lucky, traveler. Today, time was lent to you once again.
He waved his hand, and everything turned white.
CATALOGERS' FOOTNOTE
This level is extremely dangerous, yet peculiar. The Entity seems to follow an agenda we do not understand. Sometimes it erases people, sometimes it spares them.
What we know is that it obeys a superior order. Even controlling the beginning and the end of everything, it hesitated.
Something above it dictates the rules even for time.
ADDENDUM
The clock never stops turning.
It only speeds up or slows down.
And one day, the final hand will arrive.