In the quiet heart of the city, there existed a lane that appeared only when the night was thick, when the mist hung low, and when the clocks ticked with a sluggish, deliberate patience. Nobody could tell where it began, nor where it ended, but those who had wandered into it claimed that the lane was unlike any place they had walked before. The pavement shimmered faintly under the faint glow of lanterns that floated without poles, and the shadows along the walls seemed to have lives of their own, stretching, breathing, and sometimes whispering. One evening, a man named Quyen left his apartment, restless and sleepless, burdened with thoughts…

In the attic of an old house on the outskirts of the city, a mirror leaned against the wall, draped in a dust covered velvet cloth. No one knew exactly when it had arrived, nor from where. It simply existed, waiting for eyes willing to see more than mere reflections. One rainy afternoon, Linh, a writer struggling with memories she could no longer order, climbed the creaking stairs. She had heard rumors about the mirror that it didn’t reflect the present, but the echoes of what was most precious, or most feared, in one’s heart. Curious and weary, she lifted the cloth. The glass shimmered faintly, not with her image,…

In a town where time seemed fluid, Mr. Dinh lived alone above his small clock shop. The windows were always fogged with condensation, and the scent of aged wood and oil lingered like a whisper from the past. He repaired clocks, but he never sold them. “Time is not for sale,” he would say to the rare visitor who dared to ask. Every evening, as the sun dipped behind the horizon, he wound the grand clock in the corner. Its hands moved with a peculiar rhythm, slightly off from every other clock in the room. And then, inevitably, his shadow would stretch across the floor, longer than it should have…