In 1938 Nuremberg, Jewish clockmaker Ezekiel Levy puts his eleven-year-old daughter, Lisavet, to bed while thinking about a letter from a timekeeper friend in America. To distract her, Ezekiel tells his familiar “magic watch” story: a pocket watch passed down through their family that lets timekeepers speak to Time, and a plan to escape a growing darkness by using a hidden tunnel through Time on the first night of Hanukkah.

Shouts and breaking glass rise outside as a mob approaches the Jewish neighborhood. Fearing what is coming and worried for his son Klaus at synagogue, Ezekiel destroys incriminating letters and, with the family pocket watch in hand, opens a doorway into a shadow-filled “tunnel through Time.” He pushes Lisavet through, wraps her in his coat, and orders her to wait by the door while he finds Klaus. Ezekiel steps back out—and the door closes and never opens again.

Alone, Lisavet discovers the tunnel is a vast, silent space like a library: endless shelves of leather-bound books under a shifting, painted sky. The door quickly blurs and fades away, leaving no way back. Over time she learns she does not hunger, thirst, or truly need sleep, and that searching reveals no other exits. The whispers she thought were Time offer no rescue, and after two weeks she believes no one is coming.

After screaming for help, Lisavet is confronted by a distorted, ghostlike gentleman who warns that most beings here are dead and that the whispering “Time” is dangerous. Later, a different specter forms from the shelves: a robed man who explains the books are memories of every person, organized by time and place, and that timekeepers manage them. He admits he was the first timekeeper and that he has been “Forgotten,” then offers to show Lisavet how to enter memories.

Lisavet and the specter step into an Italian festival memory where sensation returns, but Lisavet remains unseen and untouchable. She names the specter Azrael, and he teaches her that she can “time walk” into memories, while warning her about evil. Back in the library-like time space, Azrael spots a real timekeeper and follows him to the Germany section. Lisavet sees the timekeeper is a Nazi soldier who burns a memory-book and uses a pocket watch to open a door—Ezekiel’s familiar brass watch. After the Nazi leaves, Lisavet pulls what she can from the flames and hears her father’s voice in the surviving pages, realizing what Ezekiel likely suffered and that she is still trapped, with no rescue coming.