When the Clock Strikes Fear

In a snowbound 19th-century town, love isn’t a gift. It calls to you. Mia returns after years away, hoping to bury the life she once shared with Rafael, the boy she never stopped missing. But the town greets her with one old whisper: couples who kiss beneath the clock tower at midnight disappear. No traces. No answers.

Mia tells herself she won’t believe superstition. The tower doesn’t care. Its bells echo through streets coated in frost, carrying the names of those who vanished and the quiet grief carved into stone archives. Neighbors warn her to avoid Rafael, to leave the past where she left it. They say he once defied the curse and came back changed scarred by a sacrifice he won’t describe.

Their reunion is slow, unsure, heavy. A single candle flickers in the window of her childhood room as the pull between them deepens. The tower waits. When Mia uncovers missing records and the truth Rafael keeps locked away, she learns the curse isn’t folklore. It moves. It remembers. It takes what lovers abandon.

Mia has never been the type to run from a storm. As midnight inches closer, she must decide whether to guard her heart or face the tower that has taken so many before her.
How far would you go to save the one person the world intends to steal?

***

As the clock counts down in this story, its forbidden passion and creeping terror echo the haunting heartbeat that binds the entire Fireworks and Shadows series.

On the final night of the year, the line between longing and fear blurs. Fireworks flare overhead while something restless moves beneath the surface lovers drawn together by desire, timing, and the darkness that lingers after the light fades. From haunted houses to towns that remember too much, Fireworks and Shadows unravels what happens when connection turns into invitation, and love insists on surviving what should be left behind. Each story burns briefly, beautifully, before midnight falls and nothing is the same again.