Arthur Pendergast, a cynical London watchmaker, is thrust into a temporal war when a woman named Julianne brings him a broken "anchor" that stabilizes reality. Chased through the Great Plague and a sterile future by agents seeking to freeze time, Arthur discovers that the device is his own future invention.
By using the grounded tools of his trade rather than complex magic, Arthur repairs the friction of the universe, defeats his own corrupted future self, and chooses to let time flow naturally into an uncertain but living future. He eventually settles in 1922 to raise the daughter who will one day travel back to save him.
