The morning after the storm smelled of rust and something faintly electric.
The clouds had cleared, but the world still felt… wet — not from rain, but from something unseen that had soaked through time itself.
Vyom stood before his school gate, hand brushing the cool metal. Students rushed past him, laughing, chatting, normal. It all felt too fast — like a movie playing a few seconds ahead of his heartbeat.
He tightened his grip on the strap of his bag and muttered, "Just breathe."
The pendant Nareus had given him hung cold beneath his shirt. Every few seconds, it pulsed — a faint mechanical heartbeat, like it was ticking instead of beating.
He tried not to think about it.
The bell rang.
Once. Twice. Then again.
Thirteen times.
Vyom froze.
No one reacted.
Students kept walking, talking, some yawning, others scrolling their phones. Only he had noticed the extra chime — the thirteenth.
"Pretend," Nareus had said.
"Breathe. Stay normal."
He forced himself to move.
---
Inside the Classroom
The day unfolded like a rehearsal.
The teacher's voice blended with the hum of fans. The chalk screeched. The clock above the blackboard ticked softly — except it didn't move right. The second hand would hesitate, then leap ahead too fast, as though skipping moments it didn't want to remember.
Vyom kept his eyes down, pretending to write notes.
But every time he looked up, something shifted.
A student's expression would freeze for half a second before changing. The light through the windows flickered between soft morning and late noon. Once, he blinked — and saw the whole class reversed, everyone facing the back wall, silent, before it snapped back.
No one reacted.
He whispered under his breath, "Why am I the only one seeing this?"
"Maybe because it's your clock that's breaking," came a quiet voice beside him.
Vyom turned sharply.
A girl sat at the next desk. She hadn't been there before.
Her uniform was the same, but she wore it differently — sleeves rolled, collar slightly undone. Her hair was dark, streaked faintly with silver strands that caught the light like threads of mercury. Her eyes — pale grey — were unreadable, but familiar.
And around her neck hung a silver pendant, identical to his.
Vyom's chest tightened. "Who… are you?"
She smiled faintly, like she'd been waiting for that question. "Nara."
He blinked. "Like… Nareus?"
"Names are echoes too," she said softly. "Sometimes shorter."
Vyom's heart pounded. "Did he send you?"
Her gaze drifted to the window. "Maybe. Or maybe I'm what he left behind when time took him."
Before he could reply, the teacher called out, "Vyom, are you paying attention?"
He jerked upright. "Y-Yes, sir."
The class laughed quietly. Nara just smiled, tapping her pen against her notebook in rhythm with the ticking clock.
tick—tick—tick—
But every time her pen hit the paper, the sound doubled — echoing like two clocks out of sync.
Vyom tried to focus on his book. Words twisted on the page — not moving, but rearranging themselves into patterns, forming a sentence only he could read:
"The thirteenth bell marks the start of recursion."
He snapped the book shut.
---
Lunch Break
The hallway buzzed with noise — laughter, shouts, footsteps.
Vyom slipped outside to the rooftop, hoping for silence. The sun was bright, but the light felt… hollow, like it didn't reach the ground properly.
He sat near the railing, running his fingers over the pendant. It pulsed faintly — then matched rhythm with his heartbeat.
He whispered, "The thirteenth bell… recursion…"
"Means this hour will repeat," came a voice behind him.
He turned. Nara was there.
He hesitated, then asked. "You followed me?"
"Not really. The path led here." She sat beside him, swinging her legs over the ledge. "You're seeing the distortions, aren't you?"
He nodded slowly. "Everything feels like it's glitching. Like… time is stuttering."
"It's not time that's breaking," she said. "It's you syncing incorrectly with it."
Vyom frowned. "Syncing?"
"Think of time like a current. Everyone flows with it. But you — you can step out of it. Pause. Reverse. That's not supposed to be possible."
"So Nareus was right," he murmured. "The Devil's Veil…"
Nara's eyes darkened slightly. "He told you about that?"
"Just enough to scare me."
She looked down at her pendant. "It's more than a curse. It's a seal. There's a heartbeat beneath your own that isn't yours."
Vyom clenched his fist. "Then why help me? Why not stop it?"
Nara smiled faintly. "Because stopping you means stopping the one who can fix what's coming. The world's timeline isn't stable anymore. The cracks are spreading through every clock."
She pointed at the city beyond the school walls. In the distance, faint ripples shimmered through the skyline — like heat haze, except they pulsed in rhythm with the bell tower's sound.
Vyom's throat went dry. "I thought I was imagining that."
"You weren't."
The wind shifted, carrying the faint toll of the bell tower again.
Once. Twice.
Then the sound looped — repeating the same two chimes over and over, like a stuck record.
Students below didn't notice. Time inside the schoolyard folded subtly — people crossing paths twice, conversations repeating in slightly altered words.
Vyom watched, horrified. "It's starting again…"
Nara stood. "Every recursion eats one minute from the world. When the 60th repeats, this hour will vanish."
Vyom's mind reeled. "Vanish?"
"As if it never happened. Everyone but you will forget."
He looked up at her desperately. "How do I stop it?"
"You can't," she said quietly. "But you can survive it."
She reached out her hand. "Come on. We need to reach the clock tower before it resets completely."
Vyom grabbed her hand. The world flickered.
---
The Clock Tower
They ran through the empty corridors, the world glitching in bursts of red light. The walls repeated themselves — one hallway leading back into itself, like they were trapped inside a looped reflection.
Vyom gasped, "It's closing in!"
Nara's voice was steady. "Don't look back. Time eats its own shadow."
They burst through the rooftop door of the old clock tower. Inside, gears turned on their own, rust groaning, light fractured through shards of glass floating midair.
At the center hung a colossal pendulum — cracked, bleeding faint streams of red mist.
Vyom froze. "This… this is—"
"The tower where your seal was first set," Nara said. "When you were born, time marked you here. Every 18 years, the seal thins. Yours began unraveling two days ago — when the storm came."
The pendulum twitched violently. The floor shook.
tick—tock—tick—tock—
The rhythm began to sync with Vyom's pulse again. His vision blurred; symbols crawled across his skin like living tattoos.
"I can't control it—!"
Nara grabbed his face, forcing him to look at her. Her eyes glowed faint silver. "Listen to me. The Devil feeds on fear. You control him by remembering who you are."
Her voice cut through the chaos like a bell strike.
Vyom gasped. "But who am I really?"
Nara whispered, "The clock's heir. The Devil's vessel. And time's mistake."
The pendulum snapped.
A wave of force rippled outward — every window in the school shattered. The sky turned crimson again.
For a heartbeat, Vyom saw it — a colossal shadow beneath the town, shaped like a man with wings made of gears, eyes like dying suns. The Devil's silhouette pulsed beneath the ground, chained to the rhythm of the world's ticking heart.
Then, silence.
Everything froze.
Vyom stood trembling in the center of the ruined clock tower, the broken pendulum swaying weakly. Nara knelt beside him, bleeding slightly from her lip but smiling faintly.
"You did it," she whispered.
Vyom stared at her. "What did I do?"
"You survived the first recursion."
Outside, the bell rang again — once. Only once.
And time began moving normally.
---
Evening
The world forgot.
Students went home. The teachers talked about a minor tremor. No one remembered the distortion, or the sky turning red.
Vyom sat alone in the empty classroom as the sun dipped below the horizon. His pendant glowed faintly, a new crack forming on its edge.
He whispered, "Nara… who are you really?"
Her voice echoed faintly in his mind.
"The hour between bells."
He looked at the classroom clock. It ticked steadily now, perfectly normal. But for a split second, when the second hand crossed twelve — it froze, and a faint reflection in the glass smiled back at him with glowing red eyes.
tick…
…tock.
---
End of Chapter 11 — The Hours Between Bells