His own grandfather, a meticulous horologist, had once owned the cottage, disappearing from it without a trace fifty years ago. All that remained was his grandfather's prized pocket watch, a beautiful, intricate piece of silver, found on the empty mantelpiece, its hands frozen at 3:17.
Aris set up his equipment: atomic clocks synced to global standards, a dozen high-precision wristwatches, and motion-activated cameras. His own sturdy field watch, a gift from his mentor, was strapped to his left wrist, perfectly synchronized. He arrived at precisely 10:00 AM, confirmed by a quick radio signal from his base camp a mile down the beach.
By 10:30 AM, according to Aris's field watch, he was making notes on the cottage’s peculiar chill. He checked his synchronized atomic clock. It read 10:32 AM. A two-minute discrepancy. Interesting, but not unheard of in areas with electromagnetic interference.
He spent the next hour examining the dust-shrouded furniture, the faded seascape paintings, the peculiar, almost heavy silence that seemed to press in from the walls. His field watch read 11:30 AM. He glanced at the atomic clock. 11:38 AM. Eight minutes. The discrepancy was growing.
A prickle of unease started to crawl up his spine, but Aris, ever the scientist, pushed it down. He decided to focus on the fireplace, where his grandfather's watch had been found. As he approached, the air grew noticeably colder, the kind of cold that seemed to drain the sound from the room. On the mantelpiece, amidst a collection of tarnished brass, stood an antique metronome, its pendulum frozen.
His field watch now read 12:00 PM. He checked the atomic clock, his breath catching. 12:15 PM. Fifteen minutes. In just two hours, he had lost fifteen minutes within the cottage's peculiar temporal field. The local stories weren't just folklore.
He placed his grandfather's frozen pocket watch next to his atomic clock, hoping to detect some unique emission. As he did, he heard it—a faint, rhythmic tick-tock, impossibly slow, coming from somewhere within the walls of the cottage itself. It wasn't the sound of a clock. It was too deep, too resonant, like a vast, hidden mechanism grinding through molasses.
Aris felt a sudden, profound disorientation. He closed his eyes for what felt like a second. When he opened them, his field watch read 12:05 PM. The atomic clock, however, now showed 12:28 PM. Twenty-three minutes had vanished. In what felt like a blink, eight minutes had been stolen from him.
Panic began to rise, cold and sharp. This wasn't just interference; it was an active drain. The cottage wasn't just slowing down time; it was consuming it. He looked at the antique metronome on the mantelpiece. Its pendulum began to sway, a single, incredibly slow arc, taking almost a minute to complete. Each clack of the metronome resonated with the deep, slow tick-tock from the walls.
He tried to leave, but his legs felt heavy, as if moving through thickened air. He checked his watch again. 12:06 PM. The atomic clock showed 12:35 PM. Twenty-nine minutes. He was being held, anchored in a temporal eddy, watching the outside world—and his own connection to it—race away.
The rhythmic tick-tock from the walls grew louder, more insistent, vibrating through the floorboards. It was no longer just sound; it felt like a presence, a vast, hungry entity woven into the very structure of the cottage, feeding on the most precious commodity of all.
His field watch read 12:10 PM. The atomic clock: 1:00 PM. Fifty minutes lost. A full work hour, vanished into the ether of the cottage. His grandfather's frozen pocket watch lay beside the atomic clock, its hands still at 3:17, but Aris now noticed something else: a faint, almost imperceptible tremor in the second hand of his own field watch, struggling against the pervasive drag, attempting to keep pace with an outside world it could no longer reach.
Then, a whisper, dry and fragile as old parchment, slithered from the air around him, seeming to come from every direction at once. "He tried to fix it… he tried to… stop it…"
It was his grandfather's voice, not spectral, but echoing with the same impossible delay as the time itself. Aris looked at his field watch. The hands were barely moving now, sluggish, almost stuck. The atomic clock read 1:30 PM. His field watch: 12:12 PM. Over an hour lost.
He realized the horror: his grandfather hadn't disappeared; he was still here, trapped within these walls, his consciousness stretched across decades, trying to warn him. The cottage wasn't just slowing down time; it was collecting it, storing it, perhaps even eating it, and anyone who stayed too long became part of its hoard. The old pocket watch on the mantelpiece wasn't just a relic; it was a timestamp, frozen at the moment his grandfather had finally succumbed, becoming one with the slow, eternal tick of the Chronos Anomaly.
Aris tried to scream, but the sound was thin, stretched, like taffy. His movements were glacially slow. He could feel the outside world accelerating, his base camp now hours ahead, his colleagues wondering where he was, growing concerned. He looked at his field watch, its hands finally still, locked at 12:13 PM, mirroring his grandfather’s fate. The outside world raced on, utterly unreachable, and the cottage sighed around him, settling in to devour his remaining moments, one agonizingly slow tick at a time.
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