00:00The clock tower was the heart of our town, and my father was its soul.
00:04Until the day they said he betrayed it. My name is Elias, and I grew up in the shadow of the
00:10great clockwork tower of Viridia, its rhythmic chimes ordering our lives. My father, Alistair,
00:16was the master watchmaker, a man of quiet precision and profound love. He taught me that
00:22every gear, no matter how small, had a purpose. Our family was my whole world, my stern but loving
00:29mother, my charismatic older brother, Julian, and Clara, the girl from the nearby bakery whom
00:34I had loved since we were children. I believed our bonds were as unbreakable as tempered steel.
00:41But the year the main spring failed, and the great clock stopped for the first time in a century,
00:46everything shattered. A costly, rare gear was found to be counterfeit, a shoddy replacement
00:51that had caused the catastrophic failure. The evidence, a fabricated ledger and a hidden payment,
00:57pointed squarely at my father. Accused of greed and treason, he stood before the town council.
01:04And one by one, the people I loved most broke their silence. Julian, seeking to secure his own
01:11political future, spoke of father's financial desperation. My mother, terrified of the shame,
01:17remained silent, her eyes averted. And Clara, my Clara, whose father was the lead investigator,
01:23told me with tear-filled eyes that the evidence was undeniable, and that my blind loyalty was folly.
01:30They didn't just accuse him, they built the prison around him with their testimony.
01:35The night they took him away, he looked not at them, but at me, his eyes holding a message I was
01:40too young to decipher, I am sorry for the world I have given you.
