Pandora Heart Oz -

On his fifteenth birthday, the clock lied.

Until a key turned in the lock.

His father’s hatred was not irrational. It was the horror of looking at your son and seeing a monster’s lullaby. Gilbert’s undying loyalty was not just friendship. It was the penance of a soul who had once served the man who committed this sin. pandora heart oz

Oz Vessalius knew the rhythm of the clock better than his own heartbeat. Growing up in the austere mansion of the Vessalius dukedom, the grand clock in the main hall was his only confidant. Tick. Tock. Each swing of the pendulum was a promise—that time was linear, that cause preceded effect, that a boy could grow, change, and eventually earn his father’s approval. On his fifteenth birthday, the clock lied

The last thing Oz saw before the Abyss swallowed him was Gilbert’s horrified face, reaching for him, and Ada’s tear-streaked cheeks. Then, there was only the click of a pocket watch and a fall into an eternity of black. The Abyss was not a place. It was the absence of one. A crushing, silent pressure where thought was agony and memory was a poison. Oz floated in a sea of broken chains, the whispers of the dead coiling around his ears. He lost count of the hours, the days, the years. He was nothing. A discarded doll in a forgotten attic. It was the horror of looking at your

“Oz,” the Duke whispered, as if saying goodbye to a nightmare, “you should have never existed.”

Oz read the words, and the clock in his chest finally stopped.