Eve and Michael find an old clock in their great-grandfather's house and are pulled into another time, where a strange boy gives them a map and a warning.
Great-grandfather's house always felt half-asleep. The stairs groaned under every footstep, the windows rattled when the wind picked up, and the attic smelled of dust, old paper, and secrets that had been waiting too long to be found.
On a rainy afternoon, Eve and Michael climbed up there with a torch and a box of biscuits, looking for anything interesting among the trunks and sheets and forgotten furniture. Behind a heavy chest in the far corner, they found an old clock. It was tall and narrow, with a carved wooden frame and a silver pendulum that looked far too clean for something so old.
Michael reached out and touched the clock’s silver hand.
A sharp click cut through the attic. The floor shuddered. The clock began to hum, low and deep, as if something inside it had woken up angry. Eve grabbed Michael’s arm, but the room was already spinning. The walls stretched, the shadows smudged, and the smell of dust vanished in a rush of cold air.
When they blinked, they were no longer in the attic.
They were standing on a cobbled street lined with crooked houses and lanterns glowing in the grey light. Horses clattered past. Somewhere nearby, a baker was pulling warm loaves from a window oven, and people in old-fashioned coats hurried by as if two startled children appearing out of nowhere was the most ordinary thing in the world.
The clock lay on the stones beside them, its face flickering with a thin blue light.
Before Eve could speak, a boy in a dark hat stepped out of the crowd. He was about their age, but his expression was far too serious. Without a word, he pressed a folded map into Michael’s hands and glanced over his shoulder, as if afraid of being seen.
"This is where your journey begins," he whispered. "But don’t trust what the map shows you first."
He was gone almost before they could answer. The map trembled once, then unfolded itself in Michael’s hands. Across the centre was a symbol neither of them recognized, marked in ink that seemed to shimmer as they looked at it.
Then the clock on the ground gave a loud, impatient tick.