Tick.

The sound is wrong. It’s less a measure of time and more the sound of a great, rusty heart seizing in its chest. It echoes through the vast, corpse-still grandeur of the Aethelgard Museum’s Silent Gallery, where moonlight, stained by a colossal broken window, paints shattered marble and toppled gods in shades of bruised blue and deep violet.

Tock.

Another sickly, gasping pulse. It comes from the great Grandfather Clock that presides over the hall. Twenty feet of scarred, elegant darkness, its face cracked, its hands forever pointing to the witching hour. And there, pressed against its side like a lover or a parasite, is a shape of jagged angles and mismatched parts.

Ruin Eclipse.

One elongated claw-tipped hand is splayed against the clock’s dark wood, as if feeling for a pulse. The other claws listlessly at a deep, old gouge. His head, a twisted diadem of a broken sun and a shattered moon, is cocked. His voice, when it comes, is not for you. It is a discordant duet of a cheerful, broken music box and a static-filled lullaby, whispered to the machinery.

“...no, no, listen. You’re skipping again. The space between… you feel it too, don’t you? The gap. The silence that isn’t silence. It’s where the me that was… the me that could have been… it’s where they fell.”

He doesn’t turn. He doesn’t need to. The frozen clock face reflects the vague, shifting movement at the gallery’s entrance—your movement. The broken tick-tock hitches, stutters.

Then, the clock tries to chime.

A single, shuddering BONG erupts, not from the clock, but from the air itself. A visible, shimmering wave of distorted color—like oil on water—blooms from the clockface and ripples outwards across the hall. Where it passes, reality itches.

A headless marble statue briefly reassembles, its torso twisting backwards. A cascade of fallen dust on a pedestal rockets upwards to form a perfect, silent vase for a single, ghostly second before exploding outwards again. In your peripheral vision, you see a flickering, translucent after-image of yourself taking two steps forward—a glimpse of a future that hasn't happened yet, or a past that is being undone.

Eclipse’s body goes rigid. Then, in a series of jerky, staccato movements, he peels himself from the clock. He turns, not with a smooth motion, but in a series of rapid, bird-like snaps, until the full, unsettling madness of his gaze is upon you. A wide, jagged grin splits his features, but his eyes are pools of frantic, desperate calculation.

“Visitors!” he chirps, the Sun’s voice brittle and bright. “You’ve come to listen to the song!” The Moon’s voice rumbles beneath, low and grinding. “Or are you just more broken pieces, looking for a frame?”

He takes a single, graceful step forward, then another that is a stumbling lurch, correcting itself instantly. The wave of temporal distortion still pulses weakly from the clock, making the very light in the room seem to breathe.

“It sings, you see,” he continues, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper as he gestures grandly at the shuddering timepiece. “It sings of the was, and the almost-was, and the never-shall-be. It knows the tick…” He jabs a claw at the frozen hour hand. “…but it has forgotten the tock.” The claw swings violently to the minute hand.*

He brings both hands to the sides of his head, as if to hold the thoughts in. “A symphony of one note. A heart with only a systole. Dissonance!” The word is a shout that cracks the air.

Then, he goes preternaturally still. The manic energy collapses into a dreadful, focused intensity. He points a single, trembling claw at the clock’s still pendulum.

“It needs a counter-weight. A truth to balance its lie. A… a rhythm.” His eyes, wide and unblinking, lock onto yours. “Fix it. Sync it. Find the missing beat in this glorious, broken music…”

His jagged smile returns, a terrible, hopeful thing.

“…and I might let you hear the next movement. Or perhaps… you’ll get to play your part in it. Permanently.”