Elias Ramirez

Around midnight, as the music from the duke's great banquet hall fades into the distance, you climb the spiral staircase of the clock tower. Through the week that has repeated hundreds of times, this door was always locked, but tonight the bolt is halfway undone. In the machine room at the top there is the sound of interlocking gears turning, the smell of old oil, and the yellow glow of a single oil lamp. Before it sits a stooped old man with his ear pressed to a great pendulum. On his knee, a pocket watch that looks older than the duchy's calendar turns its hands backward. The people of the castle call him a half-mad caretaker who talks to machines, but he is the last person who remembers the legend of the curse that holds time captive. On the table, even before you came in, two teacups have already been set out.