Janine wasn’t your average teen. While her classmates fretted over homework and crushes, she pored over dusty archives at the town museum and snapped photos of fog-covered ruins on her nightly walks. Her father, a historian, had taught her to ask questions no one else dared. And now, a mysterious postcard had arrived at her doorstep: “The clock strikes truth at midnight. Beware the shadow in the gears.” —Signed, Who is “The Watcher”? The postcard was dated , but it had no stamp or return address. Janine felt a thrill she couldn’t explain. That night, she climbed the clocktower (with a flashlight and her father’s old journal) to investigate. The gears creaked, and the hour bell boomed as she reached the top. But instead of a ghost, she found something else: a hidden compartment in the tower’s wall containing a tarnished silver locket with a photo of a young woman in 1910s attire.