Arafed man sitting at a table with a red vase in front of him

8k , masterpiece , realphoto , high resolution , break , As the night deepened, the small antique clock shop somewhere in the city was enveloped in silence. The elderly shopkeeper sat in front of his cluttered workbench, surrounded by scattered gears and screws, meticulously repairing an old pocket watch. The occasional ticking of the clocks filled the room, blurring the line between the shop and the outside world. Suddenly, the shop's door creaked open. Though no one was supposed to be there, a gust of wind swept in, and an apple rolled across the floor. At first glance, it looked like an ordinary fruit, but the old man sensed something strange about it. "This... is no ordinary apple," he muttered. He carefully picked up the apple and examined its surface. Tiny, intricate patterns of clock gears were etched into the skin, as if the apple itself held control over the flow of time. As the old man gazed at the apple, it began to slowly rotate. The rotation quickened, and soon the apple hovered in mid-air, filling the shop with the frenzied sound of spinning gears. The apple's surface split open, revealing a small pocket watch inside. The watch, however, was not ticking forward; its hands were spinning backward. As the seconds rapidly reversed, the scene inside the shop began to rewind. The worn and aged objects in the room regained their former brilliance, the old man's own hands restoring the pocket watch to its original condition. In that instant, the old man saw a younger version of himself—full of dreams and passion, untouched by time. But as he held the apple, it began to wither and blacken. The power to manipulate time had come at a cost; the apple was losing its vitality. "This clockwork apple might symbolize the fleeting nature of time itself," the old man whispered. He gently let go of the apple. It floated briefly before stopping its rotation, and the madness that had taken hold of time in the shop dissipated. The apple returned to its original form