The Pendulum

Tick. That’s a year. Tock. That’s another.

The chain was forged by somebody whose name nobody kept, and it’s the most important thing in the room, because a pendulum isn’t the weight. It’s the length of the string. Change the string and you change the time. The Architects set this string long ago, and every clock in this universe has kept their hours ever since.

The keyholes floating up there are all the doors that were meant to open in time and didn’t, because the swing was set a fraction too slow. On purpose. Always on purpose. It’s never the weight that’s the problem.