Chapter 2: The Clock That Ticks Backwards

  

  Narrator: They say the worst part of getting lost is not knowing where you are. But in Lucidfall… It’s forgetting who you were.

  Scene 1 - [Church]

  The church creaked with every breath of wind, though there wasn’t any. Candles danced inside sealed jars. Shadows stretched across the wooden walls as if trying to escape.

  Piper sat quietly, sipping what she had decided to call “stardust tea.” It sparkled going down, warm and fizzy like soda and honey mixed with something unexplainable. She still didn’t trust this place, but it hadn’t tried to eat her yet.

  Across from her, A guy was drawing lines in the dirt with a broken spoon. He hummed a tune that kept repeating at the wrong beat.

  Piper: “So. Lucidfall. Is this, like… another planet? A dream? A coma?”

  Random Demon: “It’s everything. And nothing. Some call it the between-place. The moment before a memory dies.”

  Piper: “…Cool. Super comforting.”

  Random Demon: “You’ll get used to it.”

  Before Piper could ask anything else, the door creaked again—and Thirteen stepped in.

  He wasn’t wearing shoes. His feet left glowing imprints on the old wood, as if time remembered him more than the floor did.

  Thirteen: “Come on. You wanted answers. You’ll find some in the tower.”

  Piper: “What tower?”

  Thirteen (nodding to the east): “The one that doesn’t move. Even when everything else does.”

  Scene 2 – [The Hollow Clocktower]

  They walked through what Piper assumed was a forest, though most of the trees had wires for roots and gears instead of leaves. Eventually, they came to a clearing.

  A towering structure stood crooked in the middle, made of bent iron and obsidian. Clock hands moved on its face—but backward. The numbers were mismatched. Some Roman numerals. Some scribbled in chalk. The top was cracked open, spewing blue mist like breath in winter.

  Piper felt a chill crawl down her spine the second she looked at it.

  Thirteen (serious): “A piece of yesterday that refused to die.”

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  They entered.

  Inside, the walls were filled with carvings—names, dates, some crossed out. Others faded. A few glowed.

  Each step upward groaned like it remembered everyone who had climbed it.

  Suddenly, the air shifted. Piper felt heavy. Not physically—mentally. Like her thoughts were dragging bricks behind them.

  Thirteen: “The clock messes with your mind. Makes you remember things you buried.”

  Piper staggered, gripping the railing.

  Flashes hit her—

  Her father smiling from a hospital bed.

  A birthday candle blown out too fast.

  Rain.

  Blood.

  Someone screaming her name.

  She gasped and dropped to her knees.

  Piper (trembling - In her head): “Why—why do I remember things that never happened?”

  Thirteen: “Because Lucidfall doesn’t care if it’s true. Only if it matters.”

  Piper was shocked that he heard her thoughts

  Scene 3 — [The Bell Room / Top of the Tower]

  At the top was a giant iron bell suspended in vines. But it wasn’t ringing—it was breathing. Inhale. Exhale. Slowly.

  Underneath it, carved into the floor, was a symbol: a spiral of stars surrounding an eye.

  Thirteen (lowering his voice): “This is where it starts.”

  Piper: “Hm?”

  Thirteen: “The Lucid Mind. The thing that built this place. Or maybe became it. Every time someone falls here, it stirs. Every memory it devours makes it grow. But you? You burned one of its children already.”

  Piper’s hands clenched.

  The memory of the Dreamrot came back—those arms, that face.

  Sera (stepping forward): “The Lucid Mind doesn’t fear you. But it notices you now.”

  Suddenly, a loud CLANG!

  The bell shook violently. Mist exploded outward, and something dropped from the ceiling—an eye made of glass and light.

  It stared directly at Piper.

  Piper (whispers): “…Oh no.”

  The eye screeched—a sound that shattered the stained-glass windows and bent the metal floor.

  A battle began.

  Scene 4 – [First Boss: “Watchful Fragment”]

  The eye moved fast—teleporting between broken spaces in reality. It blinked and Piper’s body froze mid-breath. She had to think, not panic.

  Then—instinct kicked in.

  [PK STARFLARE!]

  Miniature suns flared from her fingers, arcing around her in a ring. The eye dodged, but not fast enough. One sun hit its lens, cracking it.

  Thirteen: “It’s scanning your fears! Don’t let it anchor to a memory!”

  The eye glowed again—Piper saw her mom crying behind a locked door. Her knees buckled. The fear nearly overwhelmed her.

  But then—another feeling bubbled up.

  Anger.

  Piper stood.

  [PK ECHO – Starflare Reverb!]

  This time, her attack didn’t just burn—it reflected the eye’s own pulse back at it. The fragment let out a warped shriek and shattered into light and smoke.

  Scene 5 – [Aftermath]

  The bell stopped breathing.

  Silence.

  Piper collapsed, panting.

  Thirteen (nodding): “You survived. That means it’s begun.”

  Piper (wiping her brow): “Hm?”

  Thirteen: “Your awakening. Lucidfall changes people. But not everyone changes it.”

  Piper stared out the broken tower window. The sky above cracked wider, showing stars that blinked like watching eyes.

  End of Chapter 2

  So… What Is Lucidfall?

  Lucidfall is not a place you can map.

  It’s not a dream, but it’s not real either.

  It exists in the threshold—between memory and erasure, between dreams and decay.

  It’s where forgotten people go.

  Where unwanted thoughts leak.

  Where time stutters and identity becomes optional.

  Think of it as a “psychic junkyard,” a limbo made of emotions that were never resolved and stories that never got an ending. Some people fall in by accident. Others are called here. Piper Orin? She was chosen—though not by fate… by something far stranger.. but worse: shes the only Human to have fallen in Millions of Years.

  Lucidfall is alive.

  And it doesn’t just change people.

  It reflects them.

  When you fall here, you’re forced to ask the one question no one wants to answer:

  

  “What part of me did I forget… on purpose?”