The First Power

Thalir returned to his room, holding the Cursed Clock in his hand as if it were something precious yet dangerous at the same time. He sat at his desk, his heart aching with curiosity and fear at once. He looked at the clock and wondered: could this small masterpiece really control time?

He could not resist the urge to try it. He raised his hand and set the hand of the clock to a seemingly random number, then pressed a hidden button on its side. Suddenly, he felt a strange heaviness envelop the room, as if the air itself had grown denser. Then he watched the event unfold before his eyes: a book that had fallen from the table a moment before returned to stand in its place, exactly as it had been before it fell.

Thalir chuckled softly, unable to believe what he was seeing. "This... it can't be real!" he muttered. But he did not realize that every second he used the Cursed Clock, it left a hidden mark upon time, a mark that had not yet appeared, but had already begun to move slowly, like a hidden current beneath the surface of the water.

After a few minutes, he began to feel a strange headache and a urge to vomit. He felt as though his mind were passing through a wave of confusion, as if the world around him had begun to groan from the power of the clock. Thalir tried to ignore the pain, but he could not; he had to know: what were the limits of this power?

But he was not alone in this discovery. From afar, in the shadows between the moving shelves of the city, there was someone watching him. A mysterious shadow, shining eyes gleaming in the darkness, someone who had known the secrets of the Cursed Clock for a long time.

Thalir remained sitting at his desk, his heart pounding violently and his mind full of questions: if the clock granted me this power, what price would I pay for using it?

The night outside his room's window seemed deeper, as if the city itself were warning Thalir: the game had only just begun, and time would no longer be his friend.