The June evening was warm, and the sun was casting its last orange rays on the cobbled Shadow Street. This short, slightly curved street in the old part of town had always seemed a bit peculiar to Kaśka and her pack - not just because of the original crooked street lamps or the hundreds of pigeons nesting overhead. There was another reason why young people kept coming back here after school - Rozencwajg's old, run-down watchmaker's shop. Simon, as he did every day, was the first to appear under the window of the shop. He glanced through the dirty glass at the interior bathed in twilight. Clocks of all sizes hung on the walls, each of which seemed to be counting down a different time. Kasia and Basia joined moments later, carrying the group's ordered chips from a nearby bar. The guys sat on the kerb and the girls whispered amongst themselves, keeping their eyes on the traffic behind the glass. Rozencwajg was regarded as an enigmatic figure - he was rumoured to have had a family in the past, but had been seen alone for years. His face, marred by wrinkles, was perpetually obscured by huge glasses and his movements surprisingly agile for someone so old. Kids from the estate argued that they could see through a crack under the door the blue lights flickering in the shop at night and hear clocks ticking other than those posted on the walls. That day, everything changed. Rozencwajg, on seeing the youngsters, did not close the door as usual, but raised his head and nodded at them. "Do you want to see something you haven't seen before?" - he asked in a husky voice. For a while no one moved; only Simon decided to go in first. Inside, it smelled of dust, old wood and something unidentifiable, cool. Rozencwajg led them to the back of the shop, dodging the pendulums and drums of clocks clattering in an even rhythm. At the ajar door to the basement, he stopped and looked each of them straight in the eye. "You've never been downstairs with me, have you? Just be careful, because time passes a little differently down here," he muttered, then pushed back the heavy curtain. The chill of the cellar immediately enveloped their shoulders. They descended the steep, cracked staircase, whose steps creaked ominously with each step. At the bottom of the stairs, they saw something they had never imagined they would see: hundreds of dismantled clock mechanisms, strange notes written on yellowed paper and plaques full of bizarre symbols. In the middle of the cellar stood a clock - a huge one, looking as if it had come from another world. Instead of classical hands, it had strange, fluorescent spirals that moved in opposite directions. Rozencwajg grunted and said: "This clock doesn't just measure time. It ... collects it." Before he had time to finish the thought, the spiral hands suddenly flashed with blinding light, and the walls of the cellar began to vibrate in a rhythm they had never heard before....