The world is dying in slow motion.

That’s what the whispers tell us from the last towns still flickering across the continent. Not an apocalypse of fire or plague—nothing cinematic. Just…thinning. Like the world is a painting rubbing off the canvas. The rivers run slower. The birds fly lower. People forget what morning light used to feel like.

And the sky…oh, the sky. 

It grows dimmer every year.

The elders say we still have time. That we always will. That time is the only thing we’ll never run out of, because we can stretch it, twist it, borrow it.

But I’ve heard other whispers too. Quieter ones. Someone is stealing it.

I live in a settlement called Pinehollow, though there are no pines and the hollow is just a basin of brittle grass cracked like an old ceramic bowl. We live near the Hall of Hours, the great silver spire where the Timekeepers work. They’re scholars, they say. Protectors of the world’s remaining hours. They wear long, ivory coats that brush the ground and carry hourglass pendants around their necks. They speak softly.

They look tired. Everyone looks tired these days, but theirs is different—like they’ve skipped to the end of some great book, reading its last line first, mourning the end before they’ve reached the first page. As if their age has worn them down over the years.

I am seventeen. Old enough to know better. Young enough to still be reckless.

At night, I’ve been hearing this strange knocking beneath my bedroom floorboards. Very soft. Like knuckles padded with moss.

When I tell my family, they don’t believe me in the slightest, don’t even spare a glance toward my room. It’s always sort of been that way. Had it been my sister they would have the whole place searched, ensuring its safety. Yet not even my sister believes me, and she believes everything.

Snugly in the hardwood lies a trapdoor. I have never risked opening it, because that feels like giving danger too much of an invitation.

Then came the day where the sun refused to rise.

The sky is purple-gray at the time when light should break over the eastern ridge. I wait an hour. Two. Three. The darkness does not lift. It reminds me of darkened blood bleeding through poorly wrapped bandages, seeping over bruises, like in the leg I broke years ago. People gather outside in the brittle grass, murmuring like restless cattle.

The Timekeepers come into the square. They don’t look surprised, with their stony faces and their slow gait.

I watch their leader step forward. His name is Magistrate Fell. Tall, silver hair, sickly thin. He raises his hand, and the whispers hush.

“It is merely a stalling of the light,” Fell says. His voice is silk pulled over a blade. “We are working to restore the hours. Return to your homes.”

People disperse like fog, but Fell’s eyes meet mine as he turns away. He looks at me like I already know too much.

“How can you be so sure this is something we can fix?” I breathe, lungs tight, but they’re already gone. There’s this sickly feeling in my gut that the Timekeepers bear too much confidence in dealing with something so out of the ordinary.

That night, the knocking under my floorboards begins again. For a long time, I stay under the covers, white-knuckling the wrinkled sheets. Curiosity and fear make war in my head, sending a dull throb through my skull.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Steady. Patient.

And then a voice, faint, like someone speaking through cupped hands underwater: “Let me out.”

My blood turns cold.

I rise from my bed. The floorboards creak underneath my feet like old bones. The trapdoor sits in the far corner of my room—a square cut into the wood, marked by a rusted iron ring. No one’s been down there since the world still had pines.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

“I hear you,” I whisper. I don’t know why.

The voice is small. Almost fragile. “Please. I’m running out.”

My hand reaches for the heavy, silver ring handle of the trapdoor. I hesitate. Time feels thick in the room, like syrup. And then—the handle moves on its own, as if all it needed was permission. The trapdoor creaks open. I step back, heart in my throat.

From the darkness below, something climbs out—but not a monster. Not a beast. A girl.

She pulls herself out of the shadows with her gnarled, needly fingers, bare feet scraping against the wood. Her shoulders stay hunched like a puppet loose on its strings, her glowing violet eyes still like a doll’s. Hair colorless like fog. Skin pale and empty, like paper.

She looks about twelve. Maybe younger.

She blinks at me and gives a thin, trembling smile. “Thank you,” she whispers. “I thought I’d run out.”

“Run out of what?” I ask, barely able to breathe.

She lifts her hand. In her palm she cups an hourglass, and her arm shakes as if she’s too weak to hold it. The sand inside it is black, swirling as if alive.

“Time,” she says sweetly. “I was kept down there so mine wouldn’t spill.”

I take a step back. “What do you mean, spill?” Her smile widens, becoming too many teeth.

The house groans. The walls flicker like fabric caught in wind. My breath clouds in front of me though the air is warm. The girl steps forward, and shadows move with her like loyal pets.

“They call me a thief,” she says. Her voice is horribly childish and lilting. “They say I devour futures. But I don’t. I just…borrow. Everyone borrows. Even the Timekeepers.”

A sharp pain stabs behind my eyes—like something is being pulled out, thread by thread.

The girl watches me, head tilted, delighted. “You have so much time,” she whispers. “Too much. You can spare some.”

I fall to my knees.

And then, suddenly, a bell tolls outside, deep and sonorous. The girl freezes. Her face twists into pure, jagged panic. “No,” she hisses. “No, no, no, no—”

The door to my room splinters inward. Magistrate Fell enters, flanked by two Timekeepers, their coats rippling in invisible wind.

The girl screams. Dark shapes slither along the walls, coiling and uncoiling like restless serpents.

“Keep her away from the citizen,” Fell commands.

The Timekeepers raise their pendants. Light pours out—not bright, but heavy, like gravity made visible. The shadows recoil. The girl thrashes.

“Do not touch him,” Fell snaps as she reaches towards me. “She is not a child. She is an echo of hours already spent.”

The girl snarls—voice like cracking glass.

“You think you can hold eternity in cages and clocks? You think time belongs to you?”

Fell’s expression flickers—grief, old and sharp. “No,” he murmurs. “It belongs to everyone. That is why we protect it from what would devour it whole.” He looks at her. And there is something like apology in his eyes. “I am sorry, Cora.”

In unison, the Timekeepers lift their pendants so that they face toward Cora. The pendants begin to glow brightly, the light writhing in a stream pointed directly at her chest.

The violet-eyed girl collapses with a sound like a sigh being exhaled by the world itself. And the shadows fall still. The room is silent. They carry her with disturbing gentleness to the Hall of Hours.

I follow. No one stops me, though maybe they should.

The Halls are vast—filled with glass and stone mechanisms that whisper and tick like insects.

Hourglasses line the walls, big as coffins, small as thimbles. Sand of every shade moves inside, flowing up or down depending on its owner.

Fell leads me to a chamber lit by a sun I have not seen in months. I’m told it’s only an imitation of the real thing, meant to honor what we lost, but that’s hard to believe. 

They suspend Cora in the chamber’s center, in a column of golden sand. She simply waits, small white nose pointed at the ceiling, her eyes fixed on some unseen spot in the distance.

I look at Fell. “Why was she under my home?”

It takes him a moment to speak, his jaw tense and his eyes slow to meet mine. “Because your house stands on a rift,” he says. “Where time folds back onto itself. She was born there—a mistake. A child made of leftover hours. She does not age, or die. She hungers for the future.”

I shudder. “And the sky? The dying world? Is that her?”

“No,” Fell says softly. “That is us. Humanity has taken more time than was ever promised. We borrowed so much we forgot we were borrowing. The world is not dying because of her.”

He looks at the suspended girl. “It’s dying because of us.”

Outside, the sky flickers. The sun is struggling to shine. Cora’s hourglass is in her open palm, and the black sand inside flashes like it’s being struck by lightning. I step closer to Fell.

“What happens now?”

He closes his eyes. “We return what was stolen.”

I feel a cold weight settle in my bones. “How much?”

He opens his eyes, tired and bright. “Everything we have left.”

The Halls fill with people. Some are crying, some silent. Others still are relieved, like they’ve been waiting for this without knowing. I stand beside Cora, though she does not look at me.

The sky outside the high glass windows begins to lighten. For the first time in years, true morning gold creeps across the world. It’s waking. But the hourglasses lining the walls begin to drain.

I feel the slowing in my blood. The dimming behind my eyes. The taste of endings. We are not dying, but returning what we borrowed. Yet somehow, I can’t bring myself to believe it.

Softly, Cora whispers: “Thank you.”

And for a moment, just a moment, she looks like a child again.

The light grows brighter. The world exhales. Time settles. And I realize we are not out of time. We are simply giving it back.

Inky blackness swallows the sun, and we go with it.

Ava Murbarger

Ava Murbarger is a young author of fantasy and science fiction, passionate about crafting stories that find the light without ignoring the dark. She’s currently working on the Orythian Journeys series. Readers can stay connected and up to date through her newsletter at avamurbargerauthor.com.

Cover art by Levi Matthews
Connect on Instagram @levimatthews.artist or on his website, LeviMatthewsArtist.com.