The bell above the door chimed a hollow, metallic note as I stepped into Elias’s Clock Emporium. Immediately, the air hit me—a thick, suffocating blanket of lavender-scented wax and oxidized brass. It was a smell that belonged to another century, one where time didn't move in digital leaps but in the slow, rhythmic grinding of gears. I felt a sudden, sharp pang of vertigo. To my left, a wall of mahogany grandfather clocks stood like silent sentinels, their pendulums stilled by years of neglect. Elias emerged from the back, his apron stained with oils that looked like ancient ink. He didn't look up from the tiny spring he was manipulating with a pair of tweezers. 'You're late,' he muttered, his voice as dry as the parchment scattered across his workbench. I hadn't realized I was expected at all. I had only come to return the pocket watch I’d found in the gutter, its glass cracked like a spiderweb, but Elias acted as if my arrival was a scheduled gear shift in his meticulously planned day.