Clockwork Chronicles

This audiobook is narrated by a digital voice. The brass gears of New Mechanica never stopped turning. From her workshop window three stories above Cogwheel Avenue, Elara Thornfield could hear the eternal symphony of the city—the rhythmic churning of steam engines, the melodic chiming of clockwork carriages, and the deep, resonant pulse of the Great Engine that powered it all. This mechanical heartbeat had been the soundtrack to her nineteen years of life, yet today it seemed different somehow, more urgent, as if the very city itself was trying to tell her something. Elara adjusted the brass goggles perched atop her auburn hair and returned her attention to the delicate mechanism spread across her workbench. The automaton's chest cavity lay open, revealing an intricate network of gears, springs, and crystalline power cells that would soon give life to what appeared to be a mechanical songbird. Her father, Master Clocksmith Aldric Thornfield, had commissioned her to complete this particular creation for the Duke of Steamhaven's daughter, though Elara suspected there was more to the project than a simple toy. The workshop door chimed as someone entered, and Elara looked up to see her father's weathered face creased with concern. His leather apron bore the stains of countless hours working with oils and metals, and his graying beard was singed at the edges from too many close encounters with forge flames. But it was his eyes that caught Elara's attention—they held a worry she had never seen before. "Father? What troubles you so?" she asked, setting down her precision screwdriver.