The bell above the door chimed, but Elias didn’t look up. His world was entirely contained within the three-inch circle of a tarnished silver pocket watch.

Elias was a horologist—a fixer of time. His shop in the narrow alleys of the city smelled of brass polish, aged wood, and the faint, metallic scent of clock oil. The watch currently on his workbench had been brought in earlier that morning by a young woman. “It was my grandfather’s,” she had said, tracing the engraved initials on the casing. “It hasn’t ticked since he came back from the war. Fifty years.”