When the river hit the pillars of the Bridge of Bells, the whole of Liszewo trembled softly. Iga Radecka, the seventeen-year-old daughter of a clockmaker, knew this rhythm better than logarithmic tables. In their workshop, the hands slept under glass and the brass dust smelled like thunder. Only one thing kept her awake: the cathedral clock swallowed one minute every twilight. The locals called it the Empty Moment and joked that that's when the ghosts exchange addresses. Not long ago, Iga found her grandmother's letter, dated on a starless night, in an old violin case. The paper rustled like a curtain, and inside rested a tear-shaped key, heavier than it should have been. 'Time has a door you won't see in the mirror,' the grandmother wrote in a round hand. Underneath was a sketch of the tower, with a crack marked where the brass touches the stone. That evening the sky was the colour of a broken plum and the wind carried the scent of juniper. Iga climbed the tower, carrying a key, a torch and a stubbornness that reminded her of her third lung. Nicholas, her friend from class, stayed at the door, counting the steps and muttering under his breath. 'You've got five minutes before they turn off the gas in the streetlights'. - he warned in a half-hearted voice. The echo answered strangely, as if there were other throats waiting inside: 'Five... five...' The walls, hitherto rough, suddenly shone with a thin grid of stars that no one had yet named. Iga found the crack from the drawing, fibrous and cool, like a scar in the rock. She inserted the key into the crack; the metal trembled and warmed, tasting like ozone in the air. Something in the mechanism shifted slightly, as if someone had turned a page in a very thick book. The hands of the clock did not move; instead, a quiet, persistent beating pulsed under the floor. The stone slabs moved away, revealing a narrow descent that should not have existed in the old tower. A stream of pale light stretched to her feet like a ribbon, and dust hung in the air like suspended drops of time. Iga looked down and froze: the corridor led not deep into the foundations but towards the bells, cutting through space at an impossible angle. 'Don't go down alone,' Nikolai whispered, but his voice sounded muffled through the glass. At the end of the corridor, over a dark sheet of what looked like water without a shore, stood a figure in a cloak of shadow. She had her own eyes and held a watch in her hands with no hands. 'You're late,' she said soundlessly, and then all the bells began to toll simultaneously.