THE CLOCK AND THE COIN
Krishna Prasad
Prologue
A Strange Routine
11:03 PM..
The wind howled through the empty stretch of Ring Road 11, carrying the scent of gasoline and something darker.. something electric.. The road, slick from the earlier rain, reflected the distorted glow of streetlights..
Then came the car..
A black BMW, engine roaring as it tore through the curve, headlights slicing through the mist.. The driver’s hands gripped the wheel with the kind of tension that came from knowing what was coming but not being able to stop it..
And then.. it happened..
A sudden swerve, the tires skidding against the pavement.. A moment of weightlessness before the car spun out of control, the metal frame twisting, colliding with the guardrail..
Impact..
The sound was deafening..
Then came the fire..
Flames erupted from the wreckage, swallowing the car whole in a violent burst of orange and blue.. the heat warping the air.. Something cracked.. Something groaned..
The road was empty.. No sirens.. No witnesses..
But soon, there would be..
Somewhere, a police dispatch crackled to life..
“Accident.. Ring Road 11.. BMW, this time..”
A silence.. Then..
“Third time this year?”
One of the officers muttered under his breath, rubbing his temple as if this was routine..
The other checked his watch..
11:45 PM..
He didn’t turn on the siren.. There was no urgency in his movements.. No rush.. Because they already knew what they’d find..
The wreckage.. The burned-out husk of a luxury car.. And no one inside..
The city of Aurelian had its secrets.. It never held onto the past too tightly.. And that suited those who preferred to remain unnoticed..
Chapter 1
THE CITY THAT FORGETS
Morning came.. The city reset..
Aurelian was alive again, the streets pulsing with the rhythm of normalcy.. People poured into coffee shops, buses screeched against wet pavement, and somewhere, a saxophonist played a tune no one truly listened to..
The hospital waiting lobby buzzed with its usual chaos.. phones ringing, tired nurses moving between patients, the coffee machine whirring..
Above them, the news rolled across the television screen..
“BMW burns in accident on Ring Road 11.. No casualties reported..”
A tourist, a young man in a blue windbreaker, frowned at the broadcast.. He turned to the woman beside him.. Nyx, dressed in government-issued scrubs, a medical officer’s ID clipped to her chest..
“Weird, isn’t it?” he said, motioning toward the TV.. “They never mention the driver..”
Nyx smirked, taking a slow sip of coffee..
“That’s the interesting part.. There never is..”
The tourist furrowed his brows.. “What do you mean?”
Nyx leaned back, looking more amused than concerned..
“Happens every year.. Same time.. 11:03 PM.. Different car models, but the same wreck..”
“That’s impossible..”
“You’d think..”
The tourist turned back to the TV.. The footage showed the same familiar aftermath.. a burned-out shell of a car, reduced to twisted metal.. But no blood.. No bodies..
Nyx kept watching him, gauging his reaction.. She enjoyed this part.. the moment they started questioning things..
“No license plate? No witnesses?” the tourist asked..
“Not a single one,” Nyx replied smoothly..
The tourist exhaled, shaking his head..
“This city’s cursed..”
Nyx laughed, setting her cup down with a quiet clink..
“Oh..” she murmured, tilting her head slightly.. “You have no idea..”
Her fingers brushed against something cold in her pocket.. A coin..
She flicked it between her fingers absently, as if testing the weight of a decision that had already been made..
Across the room, a clock ticked a little too slowly, then caught up in a stuttered heartbeat..
Nyx didn’t react.. But she noticed..
Chapter 2
The Weight of Time
The clock ticked too loudly in the dimly lit office..
Detective Wael leaned back in his chair, eyes scanning the case board where reports were tacked up in uneven layers of time.. yellowed newspaper clippings, police photos, witness statements that never led anywhere.. A ghost story told in police files..
“Same road, same time, different car.. No driver..”
Officer May flipped through her notebook, pen tapping against the desk in rhythmic beats..
“We should have found something by now,” May muttered.. “You can’t just have a wreck with no driver.. Someone has to be behind the wheel..”
Wael exhaled, staring at the pinned-up photos of twisted, burnt metal.. Different models.. BMWs, Mercedes, Audis.. Luxury vehicles, always.. But the pattern never changed..
“Maybe they don’t disappear,” Wael said, rubbing his chin.. “Maybe they were never there to begin with..”
May frowned.. “What the hell does that mean?”
Wael didn’t answer right away.. He reached for his mug, took a slow sip of coffee.. Cold.. Always cold..
The last accident had been three days ago, yet it felt like the ghost of it still lingered in the room.. He had gone to the site himself, seen the blackened road, the faint smell of something more than burnt metal in the air..
“We’re looking at this wrong,” he said finally.. “Accidents leave wreckage.. People leave traces.. But this?” He gestured toward the files, the photographs.. “This is something else..”
May sighed, shaking his head.. “We’re cops, Wael.. Not ghost hunters..”
“Maybe we should be..”
May let out a laugh, but it was thin..
Outside, the rain pattered against the window in perfect rhythm..
The clock on the wall read 11:03 PM..
Wael's gaze flicked to it.. For a second, he swore the second hand hesitated before ticking forward..
He blinked.. The moment was gone..
He reached for another case file..
The city had more ghosts to uncover..
Chapter 3
THE LOOP, THE GHOST
That night, the accident happened again..
The rain had stopped.. The air was thick with the lingering scent of burnt asphalt.. Ring Road 11 stretched empty under a sky that felt too quiet..
Nyx was there.. This time, she wasn’t watching from afar..
She stood at the side of the road, gloved hands in the pockets of her coat, waiting..
At exactly 11:03 PM, the distant hum of an approaching car broke the silence..
She felt it before she saw it.. a pulse in the air, a distortion, a wrongness in time itself..
The BMW’s headlights pierced the darkness.. It was too fast.. Too perfect..
It was like watching a pre-recorded moment play out in real-time..
And then.. it happened..
The car swerved.. The impact was brutal.. Metal screamed against metal.. Flames burst to life as fuel met the fractured frame..
Nyx didn’t move.. She wasn’t here for the wreck..
She was here for what came before it..
Her gaze locked on the driver’s seat.. For a split second, there was a man behind the wheel.. And then.. there wasn’t..
Nyx didn’t react..
Instead, she reached into her coat pocket and pulled out a silver coin..
She flicked it between her fingers, feeling the weight of it.. the cool metal pressing into her skin.. A coin that had made decisions long before humans ever walked the earth..
The fire crackled, casting shadows across the road.. But Nyx didn’t see flames..
She saw the moments between seconds..
The pulse of time glitching around the wreck.. the way the air warped and bent, reality stretching at its seams..
And then.. she was inside the car..
She didn’t move, didn’t blink.. It wasn’t her body, but she was there..
The wheel under her hands.. The smell of leather and gasoline.. The sharp breath of the driver..
Then.. nothing..
A split-second flicker.. A sensation of absence..
And when she opened her eyes, she was back on the roadside.. the fire still roaring.. the wreckage still smoldering..
She exhaled through her nose, rolling the coin between her fingers..
“You’re clever,” she murmured, barely above a whisper.. “But not clever enough..”
The air behind her shifted.. She didn’t turn around..
“You feel it too, don’t you?” she said..
A pause.. A voice.. Low.. Careful.. Male..
“I feel something,” the man said..
Nyx smirked.. So the detective had finally noticed..
She finally turned to look at him.. Detective Wael..
He stood just a few feet away, trench coat damp from the night air, his expression unreadable..
“You saw him, didn’t you?” Nyx asked..
Wael didn’t answer right away.. His eyes flickered between her and the wreckage, like he was trying to place her, figure out where she fit in all of this..
Finally, he exhaled.. “I don’t know what I saw..”
Nyx’s smirk widened slightly..
“You will..”
She slipped the coin back into her pocket and stepped past him, heading toward the city..
She wasn’t worried about Wael.. He was just another piece on the board.. A spectator in something far bigger than himself..
The real player.. the one who could change everything.. was still waiting..
And she knew exactly where to find him..
She whispered his name under her breath as she walked..
“Werzl..”
Chapter 4
THE CLOCK
Werzl had always been an observer.. A man on the periphery.. a shadow that moved between lives, never truly settling into one..
He lived in Vandridge, a city far removed from Aurelian, where the air was thick with salt from the nearby sea, and the streets were lined with buildings that had stood for over a century.. The city thrived on routine, on predictability.. qualities Werzl found comforting..
He worked as a paramedic, a job that allowed him to be near the line between life and death but never cross it.. Always arriving just in time, never too late, never too early.. His colleagues called him lucky.. He called it coincidence.. But deep down, he knew better..
There were moments.. brief flickers in time.. where the world lagged around him.. A glass falling from a counter would stop mid- air for a second too long.. A child running into the street would
somehow be pulled back at the last possible moment.. Streetlights flickered in patterns he couldn’t quite decipher..
And his hands..
His hands could fix things..
A broken watch, a snapped shoelace, a split seam on a coat.. he could mend them without truly knowing how.. It was instinctual, like breathing.. But he never thought too hard about it.. If he did, the weight of something unspoken pressed against his ribs..
So he ignored it..
Until Nyx walked into his world..
Chapter 5
THE CLOCK AND THE COIN
Werzl didn’t notice Nyx at first.. She blended in too well, sitting at the back of the café, dressed like someone who belonged in a place where no one belonged for too long..
Vandridge was a city of passersby, people moving in and out like waves on the shore.. Tourists, businessmen, drifters.. Nyx was none of those things..
She watched him the way a cat watches a mouse that hasn’t realized it’s already caught..
She made her move when he was walking home from his shift..
“You always show up just in time,” she said, falling into step beside him..
Werzl didn’t flinch, but something about her presence made the air around him feel thicker.. “I’m a paramedic..”
“No, you’re not..”
That made him stop.. He turned to her, narrowing his eyes.. She smiled.. It wasn’t friendly.. It was knowing..
“You're something else.. Something bigger.. But you don't remember, do you?”
His jaw clenched.. He turned to walk away, but she cut him off, stepping in front of him with uncanny precision..
“You think it’s normal, don’t you? That you just happen to be where you’re needed? That broken things.. time.. just bends itself back together when you touch it?”
He didn’t answer..
“You think you're just another man in uniform, but you're not.. You don’t fix people, Werzl.. You fix time.. And right now, time is breaking.. And I need you to come with me..”
Werzl exhaled slowly.. “I don’t know who the hell you are, but I think you should leave..”
She reached into her pocket and flicked a silver coin into the air..
It spun, reflecting the glow of the streetlights..
“Let’s see if fate agrees with you..”
The coin landed in her palm.. She didn’t look at it.. Neither did Werzl..
Because it didn’t matter..
Fate had already decided..
Chapter 6
THE PULL OF AURELIAN
Werzl stared at the one-way ticket in his hand..
It hadn’t been there this morning.. He was sure of it..
Yet here it was.. crisp, printed, the ink still fresh.. A flight to Aurelian.. The name of a city that felt like a whisper at the back of his mind..
His phone buzzed..
“Werzl, it's about your license..”
His supervisor’s voice was tight, cautious..
“Some kind of clerical error.. The board’s suspending all your certifications until it’s sorted.. Might take weeks.. Maybe months..”
Werzl pinched the bridge of his nose.. This didn’t make sense.. He had been working in Vandridge for years without issue.. Paramedics don’t just lose their licenses overnight..
Then his landlord called..
“Look, I hate to do this to you, but the building’s been bought out.. Everyone’s getting evicted.. You have a few days to clear out..”
Werzl’s knuckles tightened around the phone..
One call was bad luck.. Two calls in the same day? That was something else..
He knew who was behind this before he even arrived at Nyx’s apartment..
She opened the door with a smug smile, already dressed in her coat, as if she had been expecting him..
“Werzl,” she drawled.. “Took you longer than I thought..”
He pushed past her, tossing the plane ticket onto the table..
“You did this..”
Nyx raised an eyebrow.. “I have no idea what you're talking about..”
He laughed.. sharp and humorless.. Everything about her was controlled, deliberate..
“My license revoked? My apartment getting taken from me? And, oh yeah.. this mysterious ticket to Aurelian just appearing in my damn pocket?”
Nyx tilted her head, amusement flickering in her eyes..
“Sounds like the universe is giving you a push..”
“More like you’re shoving me off a cliff..”
She sighed dramatically.. “Look, Werzl.. You can stay here and watch your world fall apart, or you can get on that plane.. Either way, time’s going to correct itself.. You just have to decide whether you want to be inside it when it happens or left behind..”
His fingers twitched at his side..
The watch on her wrist.. his watch.. ticked steadily.. It hadn’t lost a second since he last saw it..
“I’m not your pawn,” he said quietly..
Nyx smiled..
“No,” she said, flipping the coin between her fingers.. “You’re the clock.. I just make sure it keeps running..”
She let the coin spin in the air between them.. Neither of them watched it land..
Werzl exhaled sharply..
Something deep inside him knew the decision had already been made..
He picked up the ticket..
“I hate you,” he muttered..
Nyx beamed.. “I know..”
Chapter 7
A CITY THAT REMEMBERS
Aurelian was different..
Werzl felt it the second he stepped off the plane..
The air was heavier.. The streets felt too still.. Even the light looked different.. like it moved at a slightly different speed, casting longer shadows than it should..
He adjusted the strap of his duffel bag and followed the slow- moving crowd through the terminal.. The electronic arrival board glitched for half a second, flickering between present time and something older.. Something.. wrong..
No one else seemed to notice..
He clenched his jaw and kept walking..
Welcome Back, Clockwork Man..
Nyx was waiting for him outside the airport, leaning casually against a black sedan..
Of course, she was..
Werzl pulled his jacket tighter as he approached her.. He hadn’t told her what flight he’d taken..
“Let me guess,” he muttered.. “You flipped a coin and it told you when to be here..”
Nyx grinned.. “You make it sound so simple..”
She tossed a set of car keys at him.. He caught them instinctively..
“Rental’s in your name.. Your hotel too.. Don’t say I never do anything for you..”
“I didn’t ask for a hotel..”
“You didn’t ask for any of this..”
Werzl exhaled sharply.. He was too tired for her games..
“Where are we going?” he asked..
Nyx slid into the passenger seat.. “To get you settled first.. Then..” she tilted her head, watching him with a knowing look.. “We introduce you to Elliot..”
The City That Bends
Driving through Aurelian was like moving through a memory he wasn’t sure was his own..
The streets felt familiar in a way that made his skin itch..
Every so often, he swore the street signs flickered, displaying names he didn’t recognize before snapping back to their usual form..
“This place..” Werzl muttered, keeping one hand on the wheel.. “It doesn’t feel normal..”
Nyx smirked.. “That’s because it isn’t..”
She rolled down the window, letting the night air curl around her fingers..
“Aurelian doesn’t forget things, Werzl.. It holds onto them.. Every mistake, every choice, every second that shouldn’t have been.. it’s all still here, layered under the surface.. Waiting..”
Werzl’s grip tightened on the wheel..
“That’s not how time works..”
“Not usually, no..”
Nyx let the words hang in the air.. like she knew something he didn’t..
Werzl glanced at her.. She was playing a long game..
He just didn’t know what the rules were yet..
Chapter 8
THE LOOP, THE GHOST EXISTS
The hotel was a timeless kind of place.. Not new, not old.. just existing, like it had always been there..
Werzl set his bag down in the room and turned toward Nyx, arms crossed..
“So.. Elliot..”
Nyx smiled, flopping onto the couch like she owned the place..
“Tomorrow.. 9 AM.. Café on Hollow Street..”
Werzl narrowed his eyes..
“And what.. I just walk in and say hi?”
Nyx laughed.. Soft.. Dangerous..
“Oh, Werzl,” she said.. “You won’t have to say anything.. He’ll notice you first..”
The Man Who Was Never Meant to Exist
The café on Hollow Street was tucked between a bookstore that smelled like dust and ink and a tailor’s shop where the mannequins seemed to watch passersby..
It was unremarkable, but that was the point.. Places like this were built for conversations that weren’t meant to be remembered..
Werzl stepped inside.. The air was thick with the scent of coffee and something else.. Something static, like the moment before a storm..
Nyx had already taken a seat near the window..
She didn’t look at him when he sat down..
“He’s already here..”
Werzl’s shoulders stiffened..
“Where?”
Nyx didn’t answer right away.. She lifted her cup to her lips, watching the street beyond the glass..
“Behind you,” she murmured..
Werzl exhaled slowly.. He didn’t turn around..
Instead, he waited..
The scrape of a chair.. The rustle of fabric.. Then-a voice..
“I don’t believe we’ve met..”
Werzl turned..
Elliot was exactly what he expected and nothing like he imagined..
He was calm, deliberate, the kind of man who had spent years perfecting the art of not being noticed until he wanted to be..
His eyes.. sharp, cold, assessing.. flickered to Nyx for a fraction of a second..
“Nyx,” Elliot said smoothly.. “You’ve been busy..”
Nyx smiled, stirring her coffee.. “Oh, you know me.. I like to keep things moving..”
Elliot’s gaze shifted back to Werzl.. Something flickered behind his eyes.. Recognition.. But not the kind that came from memory..
No.. This was something else..
“So,” Elliot mused.. “You’re the one she brought here..”
Werzl’s fingers twitched..
“Seems that way..”
Elliot leaned back, studying him.. It wasn’t a greeting.. It was an evaluation..
Then.. he smiled..
“Well then..” he said.. “Welcome to Aurelian, Werzl..”
Elliot tapped his fingers against his broken watch.. A quiet rhythm.. Tick.. tick.. tick.. except it wasn’t ticking..
It was waiting..
Werzl sat completely still, gripping his coffee cup, though he had no intention of drinking it.. The air around them felt too tight, like a space that had been sealed shut from the rest of the world..
Elliot smiled.. Not a friendly one..
“So, tell me, Werzl..” He turned the watch over in his palm, inspecting it like it was a puzzle piece that didn’t quite fit.. “Did you fix this, or did you break it?”
Werzl’s pulse skipped..
He could feel it now.. the distortion around Elliot.. It wasn’t just time bending.. it was warping around him, stretching and pulling like something alive..
“Looks fine to me,” Werzl said carefully..
Elliot clicked his tongue..
“Then why do I remember you fixing it.. twice?”
The words hung in the air..
Nyx exhaled through her nose, amusement flickering in her eyes as she stirred her coffee.. too slow, too deliberate..
Werzl blinked..
Once..
Twice..
And suddenly, Elliot was sitting differently..
His elbows, which had been resting on the table, were now crossed in front of him.. His watch, which had been in his left hand, was now in his right..
A glitch..
Werzl’s jaw tightened..
“You’re messing with something you shouldn’t be,” Werzl said, his voice calm, but beneath the surface, his muscles were wound tight..
Elliot leaned back in his chair, completely at ease..
“You of all people should know that rules don’t mean much..”
Werzl said nothing..
“Time is just.. a suggestion,” Elliot continued, watching him carefully.. Testing him.. “And I don’t follow suggestions..”
He flicked his wrist..
The café shifted..
The coffee cups weren’t where they had been a second ago.. The sugar dispenser was full again when Werzl was sure Nyx had emptied it earlier.. The street outside looked.. wrong..
Like it had reset..
Nyx finally spoke, voice low and unhurried..
“Careful, Elliot.. Push too hard, and something might snap..”
Elliot smirked.. “Is that a warning?”
Nyx smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes..
“It’s a promise..”
Chapter 9
THE TIMELY SLIP
Werzl’s fingers curled into fists..
The chair where Elliot had been sitting was still warm, but he was gone.. No movement.. No sound.. Just-absence..
Nyx didn’t look surprised..
She lifted her cup, sipped her coffee, then sighed..
“You pissed him off..”
Werzl stood slowly, his heartbeat too steady for what had just happened.. His body knew what his mind hadn’t yet caught up with..
Time had just folded in on itself..
“He was already unstable,” Nyx murmured, reaching for her coin.. She flicked it into the air, caught it without looking.. “You just gave him a reason to panic..”
Werzl exhaled through his nose.. He wasn’t sure if that was good or bad..
Outside, the street looked different..
Subtle things.. A neon sign blinking out of sync with its reflection in the glass.. A streetlight that flickered twice in a row, skipping a beat..
Time was resetting in places it shouldn’t be..
“Where did he go?” Werzl asked..
Nyx tilted her head.. “Better question..” she tossed the coin, caught it, flipped it onto the table.. heads.. “..where hasn’t he gone?”
The air around them shivered..
A Time Fracture
Elliot wasn’t just moving through time anymore..
He was falling through it..
For him, it happened in an instant..
One moment, he was sitting across from Werzl, feeling the clockwork man press into his reality, exposing the cracks..
The next.. he wasn’t there at all..
He stumbled into a street that shouldn’t exist..
The same city.. The same buildings.. But.. wrong..
Everything was older..
The lights had a softer glow.. The cars were different models.. A newspaper stand displayed a date-March 7, 1989..
Elliot clenched his jaw.. No..
Not here..
He turned sharply and caught his own reflection in the window of a shop..
The glass rippled, like a stone had been thrown into a still pond..
And for a fraction of a second-he wasn’t alone..
There was another version of himself, staring back..
Elliot exhaled, steadying himself..
This wasn’t panic.. This was control.. He’d gotten out before.. He could get out again..
He reached for his watch..
It was shattered..
The cracks in the glass weren’t from the impact..
They were moving.. Growing like veins of lightning, branching out in a web..
Elliot’s pulse ticked up.. This had never happened before..
And then-the world tilted..
---
Werzl Tracks Him Through the Cracks
Nyx hadn’t moved..
She just watched as Werzl closed his eyes and felt it..
The city’s heartbeat was off..
Elliot had slipped between moments-but not cleanly.. He had left fingerprints on time itself..
Werzl traced them..
“He’s looping..” His voice was quiet, but certain..
Nyx smirked..
“Yeah,” she said.. “And he’s starting to notice..”
She stood, brushing nonexistent dust off her coat..
“Come on, clockwork man.. Let’s see how fast you can catch a ghost..”
Chapter 10
THE GHOST IN THE MACHINE
Werzl stood in the middle of the street, eyes closed, heartbeat steady..
He wasn’t seeing Aurelian the way humans did..
He was seeing the threads..
The fractures in time.. The moments that shouldn’t have existed but were forcing themselves into reality..
He saw Elliot’s fingerprints on the past, smudges in the present, footprints in the future..
“He’s jumping too fast,” Werzl murmured..
Nyx watched him, flipping her coin absently..
“He’s breaking,” she corrected..
Werzl exhaled sharply..
“I can fix this..”
Nyx smirked.. “You sure?”
Werzl’s jaw clenched.. He wasn’t..
But he had to try..
He reached forward..
And the world shattered..
---
Elliot Faces Himself
Elliot staggered backward, hand clutching at the air.. But there was no air..
There was only time..
It curled around him, pulling him into a loop he hadn’t created..
Not this time..
He hit the ground somewhere else..
The same street..
The same night..
But different..
The neon lights were too bright, the buildings twisting like they were breathing..
And then-he saw himself..
A different Elliot.. Sitting at a café table, laughing with a woman he didn’t recognize..
Elliot stepped closer, the cracks in his watch spreading like a disease..
The other him looked up..
Their eyes met..
And everything froze..
The neon lights stopped flickering..
The city stopped moving..
A glitch..
Elliot swallowed hard.. He wasn’t supposed to be here..
Not like this..
“This is wrong..”
The other Elliot frowned, tilting his head.. “Is it?”
Elliot took a step back.. The world rippled..
No.. No, no, no..
He reached for his watch..
It shattered..
And the loop snapped shut..
Werzl Pulls the Thread
Werzl felt it the second it happened..
A pressure shift..
Elliot had finally trapped himself..
“Got him,” Werzl muttered..
Nyx raised an eyebrow..
“That fast?”
Werzl didn’t answer.. He just moved..
The city blurred around him as he followed the frayed edge of Elliot’s existence.. the places where time bent too much..
He could feel the moment Elliot broke..
It was like a clock with a missing gear.. the whole mechanism slipping..
He reached into the fracture-and pulled..
The world lurched..
And suddenly-Elliot was back..
Except he wasn’t standing..
He was falling..
Straight into the street.. straight toward an oncoming car..
Chapter 11
THE CLOCK STOPS
The car was moving too fast..
Its headlights sliced through the dark, illuminating the moment Elliot was about to die..
He was still disoriented, his mind catching up with the fact that he had been somewhere else just seconds ago.. The glitch had spat him out exactly where he was supposed to be..
Where he was always meant to die..
The roar of the engine.. The screech of tires against asphalt.. No time to move..
And then-
Everything froze..
The world held its breath..
The raindrops hung mid-air.. The neon lights pulsed but didn’t flicker.. The car was a blur of motion, frozen in a single frame.. Suspended..
Elliot stumbled backward, gasping, clutching at his chest like something had been ripped out of him..
And then he saw Werzl..
Standing in the middle of the street, one hand outstretched..
His fingers weren’t touching Elliot.. But they might as well have been..
Because time had stopped..
Not just the car.. Not just the street.. Everything..
The city.. The sky.. The ticking of every watch, every clock, every unseen second..
For the first time, time wasn’t moving..
And Werzl was the only thing holding it together..
The Man Who Was Never Just a Man
Elliot staggered as he took in the sight of Werzl..
The paramedic, the man who had seemed so ordinary, so forgettable.. was now something else entirely..
His presence hummed with something ancient, something unstoppable..
Werzl stood perfectly still, like a fixed point in an unraveling universe..
Elliot exhaled sharply..
“You’re not human..”
Werzl tilted his head slightly, his expression unreadable..
“Neither are you..”
Elliot’s jaw clenched.. His instincts screamed at him to run.. To reach for the machine that had always saved him..
But he knew.. this time, it wouldn’t work..
This time, he wasn’t the one controlling time..
For the first time, he was on the wrong side of the clock..
---
Nyx Watches a God Remember Himself
From the sidewalk, Nyx flicked her coin into the air..
She didn’t step forward.. Didn’t speak..
She just watched..
Because this was always going to happen..
Werzl had spent his whole life forgetting what he was..
And now..
Now, he had no choice but to remember..
The coin landed in her palm..
Heads..
She smirked..
“About time, clockwork man..”
Chapter 12
THE COST OF TIME
The road was silent..
The wreckage smoldered in the distance, but there was no body..
Just absence..
No skid marks.. No trace of blood.. Just a city that absorbed what happened and moved forward, as if it had always been this way..
Elliot Coller had been erased..
But something was wrong..
Werzl could feel it in his chest.. A tightness.. A pressure that hadn’t been there before..
Time had taken something from him, too..
Nyx Knows the Truth
Nyx didn’t speak at first..
She just stood at the edge of the wreckage, flipping her coin idly, watching Werzl..
“Well?” he muttered, rubbing the back of his neck..
Nyx raised an eyebrow.. “Something feels off, doesn’t it?”
Werzl exhaled.. “I put him back where he belonged.. He’s gone..”
“Is he?”
Werzl’s eyes snapped to hers..
Nyx smirked..
“You ever notice how time corrects itself, but never without a price?”
Werzl frowned, but his stomach churned..
Because she was right..
Elliot was too powerful to just be erased without consequence..
The universe didn’t work like that..
There was always an aftershock..
The Missing Seconds
Werzl ran his fingers through his hair, pacing.. The city felt different..
Not broken.. Not damaged..
But.. shifted..
Something had changed..
And he wasn’t sure what..
“It’s not just him, is it?” he asked quietly..
Nyx twirled her coin between her fingers, watching the way the light hit the silver..
“Nope..”
Werzl clenched his jaw..
“What did I lose?”
Nyx shrugged.. “That’s the fun part.. You won’t know until you notice it’s missing..”
That wasn’t comforting..
---
Werzl Realizes the Truth
The weight settled in his chest.. Something was gone..
But he wouldn’t know what..
Not until he looked for it and didn’t find it..
He rubbed his wrist, where his watch had always been..
It was missing..
And he didn’t remember when it had disappeared..
That was when he understood..
Time had taken something back..
Not just from Elliot..
But from him..
He looked at Nyx..
“So this is what it feels like?” he muttered..
Nyx smirked, tossing the coin in the air..
“Time’s funny like that..”
---
Chapter 13
THE CLOCK RESETS
The city moved forward..
Aurelian swallowed its history whole, just like it always did.. The accident had no investigation.. No questions.. No memory of Elliot Coller ever existing..
But Werzl felt it..
The hollow space where something used to be.. The way time had folded back on itself, sealing the wound.. But scars always remained, even if no one else could see them..
He sat on the balcony of his hotel room, staring at the horizon that looked the same but felt different.. The streets below bustled with life, completely unaware that they had almost collapsed into nothingness..
Nyx was beside him, flipping her coin..
She caught it.. Looked at it.. Smirked..
“Told you,” she said..
Werzl didn’t respond..
Because he had just realized something..
Something was missing..
Not just Elliot..
Something else had been erased..
Something important..
He just didn’t know what..
---
A Hollow Space in Time
Werzl pressed his fingers to his temple..
It was like.. a word on the tip of his tongue.. A memory he should have had but couldn’t place..
The city looked the same..
His name was the same..
Nyx was the same..
But there was an absence in the shape of something he had never thought about before..
He looked down at his wrist..
No watch..
His heart skipped..
“Nyx..”
She hummed, tilting her head lazily..
“What did I lose?”
Nyx grinned.. Not cruel, not mocking-but knowing..
“The fun part?” she said, tossing the coin.. “You’ll figure it out.. Eventually..”
---
The Cost of Playing With Time
Werzl stood up abruptly..
The chair scraped against the floor.. His pulse wasn’t steady anymore..
“I need to know..” His voice was sharper than he meant..
Nyx studied him for a moment..
Then, she exhaled..
“You think time just lets people go, Clock.. sorry, Werzl?” she asked again.. “You think someone can just walk away from this coin?”
Werzl’s fingers twitched..
“I didn’t ask for any of this..”
Nyx’s smirk faded..
“Neither did I..”
She flicked the coin..
It landed on the table..
And this time, it didn’t show heads..
Or tails..
It landed on its edge..
Balanced..
A moment that shouldn’t exist..
---
The Watchmaker’s Gift
Werzl inhaled sharply..
His wrist felt cold..
Where his watch had been, there was now only a faint scar..
A reminder of something lost..
Nyx stood up, stretching..
“You should go home, clockwork man..”
Werzl didn’t move..
He was staring at the coin..
It was still balanced..
Still holding the impossible..
And then-
It tipped..
Nyx smiled..
“See you around, Werzl..”
She turned and walked away..
Leaving him alone..
With a clock he could no longer control..
---
Chapter 13
THE FINAL FLIP
The city never truly slept..
Nyx walked alone, hands in her coat pockets, the night stretching out in front of her.. The neon lights of Aurelian flickered overhead, humming like a tired machine..
She wasn’t in a rush.. She never was..
Her fingers toyed with the silver coin, flipping it absently, feeling its familiar weight..
But then-
She stopped..
On the corner of the street, a homeless man sat cross-legged on the pavement, shuffling a deck of playing cards with an ease that didn’t match the dirt under his nails..
He looked up and grinned..
“Wanna bet?”
Nyx smirked..
“Depends.. What’s the game?”
The man spread the cards in a lazy fan, the edges worn, but the numbers weren’t right..
She didn’t recognize the symbols.. They weren’t from this world..
Something cold curled in her chest..
She flicked her coin into the air, watching it spin under the dim streetlight..
It landed in her palm..
And for the first time in forever-
It was blank..
No heads.. No tails.. Just an empty, silver disc..
Nyx’s smirk faded..
The homeless man chuckled, gathering his cards..
“Huh..” He stood up, brushing himself off.. “Looks like the game changed..”
He walked away, whistling a tune Nyx had never heard before..
Nyx stayed still, staring at the blank coin in her hand..
For the first time, she didn’t have an answer..
Somewhere, far away-a clock ticked in reverse..
Yes.. He is back..
Werzl..
You, 6:34 AM
THE CLOCK AND THE COIN
A time-bending mystery where reality slips, memory cheats, and fate flips on the toss of a coin.
---
Every year at exactly 11:03 PM, a luxury car crashes and burns on Ring Road 11 in Aurelian. Same time. Same fire. No driver. No body. No trace.
It’s not an accident.
It’s a pattern.
And Nyx has been waiting for it to break.
She’s more than a medic. She’s a keeper of secrets, flipping a silver coin that always lands the way she needs. When time glitches and memories fade, she doesn’t panic-she watches. She guides.
Because the man who can fix time?
Werzl.
A quiet paramedic from a distant coast who’s always in the right place at the right moment. Too lucky to be random. Too calm to be normal. Time slows around him. Things repair themselves in his hands. He doesn’t know why..
But Nyx does.
She drags him to Aurelian-a city that remembers what it shouldn’t, where clocks run on old wounds and every street hums
with déjà vu. There, Werzl meets Elliot Coller-a man who bent time to his will.. and broke something fundamental in the process.
Now time itself is spiraling..
Moments repeat. Streets reset. People disappear.
To stop it, Werzl must become what he’s always denied: The Clock.
But time doesn’t fix for free. And every second saved has a cost.