Cedric Thornwick leads a quiet life repairing clocks in the fog-shrouded city of Blackbridge-until a dying stranger stumbles into his workshop with a warning that changes everything. The mysterious brass cog hidden in an old timepiece isn't just unusual clockwork-it's the key to a conspiracy that reaches into the highest levels of power. As bodies pile up and temporal anomalies ripple through the city, Cedric finds himself hunted by a shadowy cabal determined to activate the Eternal Dial, a device that could rewrite reality itself. With only a brilliant archivist named Rosalind and a handful of unlikely allies, he must navigate Blackbridge's steampunk underworld to uncover the truth about his father's hidden past and prevent a plot that would transform their democratic city into a clockwork dystopia. But when the enemy can manipulate time itself, how do you fight back? And when the cost of resistance might be everything you hold dear, how do you choose between individual freedom and collective safety?