Every clock in Echonox runs two minutes slow. You are the only one who notices.

The church tower in Echonox strikes nine while the watch on your wrist already reads seven past — the watch you had the watchmaker on the square fix only last week, because it was running five minutes fast. Fog from the morning still hangs between the roofs, and the square smells of wet cobblestone and fresh bread.

Nobody else on the square seems to notice. The baker sets out her sign, always at nine, always exactly on her own watch, which also reads seven past. So does the display at the bus stop. So does the radio at home, which you switched on this morning specifically to check, because you were not sure you were not imagining it.

Since the storm three weeks ago, every clock in town has run exactly two minutes behind. Not roughly — exactly. You have checked three times now, on three different days, against three different watches.

When you mention it to the baker, she just smiles and says it has always been that way, for as long as she can remember. She has been here forty years. The storm was three weeks ago.

You have a train to catch, at half past five, for an appointment you cannot move. Six and a half hours to find out whether it really is just the clocks — or something else that went missing from Echonox after the storm and never came back.

The baker hands you your bread, two minutes late as every morning, without noticing it herself.

The watchmaker's shop smells of oil and old wood, and seventeen clocks tick on the wall, all exactly matched, all two minutes behind yours.

You ask him about the storm. His hands, halfway through taking a movement apart, go still for a moment.

"What storm?" he asks — too fast, like someone who already knows the answer and wants to buy time.

You describe it: the chestnut tree down outside the church, the power cut that lasted two hours. He nods slowly, as though remembering something he would rather not.

"That chestnut has been down for eight years," he says eventually. "Not three weeks."

He points to an eighteenth clock, smaller than the rest, under a cloth on the back shelf. When he lifts the cloth, it shows the exact right time — your time.

"I've kept that one true since I was eleven," he says. "As long as it matches the world outside, I know the world outside is still there."

"And when it doesn't match?"

"It never has. Until today, with you."

Outside, through the shop window, you watch the baker stop mid-stride on the far side of the street and, for two full seconds, do absolutely nothing. Then she carries on, as though nothing had happened.

The watchmaker saw it too. The hand holding the cloth is shaking, and he lays it back over the eighteenth clock as though that could undo something.

You follow her across the square until you catch up, and she turns as though she has been expecting you the whole time.

"You saw it," she says. Not a question.

You ask her what just happened to her. She looks at you for a long moment before answering, and in that time you notice for the first time that she is carrying the same bread basket as before — except two loaves are missing now, loaves she had just tried to sell you, and there is flour on her apron that was not there a moment ago.

"I don't know what just happened to me," she says. "That's the point of it. It's been happening for years. You only don't notice, because you forget it too."

"But I noticed."

"Yes," she says, and for the first time she does not sound calm. "That's new."

She pushes back her sleeve. On her forearm is a burn scar, old, healed, one she has never mentioned to you before — and one that, as far as you remember, was not there yesterday.

"The storm didn't break anything," she says quietly. "It left something behind. Two minutes, every day, that nobody lives — except something that lives them instead."

Above you the church clock strikes, late as always.

And the whole square — every passer-by, every bird mid-flight, the wind in the trees over your heads — holds itself completely still for one single breath.

Not you, though.

The church is the only place in the village where anything still moves: a small cloud of dust, hanging in the air, motionless, as though someone had stopped time before it could fall.

You walk past the frozen congregation — a woman with her hand raised, caught halfway through a wave, a child whose ball hangs in the air a foot above the ground.

The tower stairs are narrow and dark, and with every step the ticking grows louder — not the tower clock above you, but something underneath, beneath the stones, a second rhythm that does not quite match the first.

At the top, in the bell chamber, the clock mechanism stands open, its back panel removed, and behind it is nothing you recognise. Gears, yes — but also something that looks like roots, worked through the metal, and at their centre a second, much smaller dial, running backwards.

It shows exactly the two minutes the town is missing. Reaching zero right now, as you watch.

A sound behind you — not the frozen village, but something moving in the stillness, though nothing should be able to move at all.

You do not turn around straight away.

"You're early," says a voice that is not the baker's, and not the watchmaker's either. "This one isn't finished for another two minutes."