Problems with time. Chapter 10.

Chapter Ten.

 

Nordon.

 

Walking without magic was like walking blindfolded.

Normally, Calizone could feel the pulse of the earth, the underground hum of water moving through bedrock, the quiet warmth of root systems, and the subtle background tension of the atmosphere. Now, there was only the cold, dull weight of her own boots striking the gravel. She could no longer feel the presence or actions of the human beings around her.

The further into Nordon she walked, the more absolute the stillness became. Time itself had simply stopped.

A high wooden cart sat in the middle of the roadway, heavy with sacks of harvested grain. Beside it stood a massive draught horse, its head lowered toward a pile of dry hay. But the horse was not eating. Its nose hung half an inch above the sweet grass, entirely motionless. A hound was frozen mid‑stride beside the front wheel, one paw lifted in the air, its ears pinned back in a moment of alarm that had never finished happening.

Calizone stepped closer, her hand brushing the Citspal cloth at her hip.

She reached out with a bare finger and touched the dog’s side. The fur was cold, and beneath it, the flank was as rigid as carved oak. The animal was not dead; its heart was simply trapped between beats.

She walked past the cart into the heart of the town.

The centre of Nordon was completely suspended. A young boy stood on a cottage doorstep, mid‑yawn, his mouth stretched wide to the grey sky. A woman leaned out of an upper window holding a rug, but the dust she had beaten from it hung suspended in the air like a cloud of tiny, motionless grey beads.

The dying spell had reached its absolute limit here. It had run out of time to distort, so it had simply locked the entire town in its final breath.

Calizone stood very still. The Citspal dress dulled everything, her senses, her instincts, even her own breathing felt heavier, but she could still see. And what she saw was a realm caught in the last fraction of a second before thought, before movement, before life.

A window shutter hung half‑open, swaying neither inward nor outward.

A chicken stood on one leg in the dirt, the other raised, its beak parted in a silent cluck.

A man carrying a woven basket of wool had one foot on the cobbles and one foot lifted, never completing his step.

Nordon had become a frozen tableau.

Her horse pressed close against her shoulder, blindfolded and trembling. Even without sight, he could feel the terrifying wrongness: the thick, unmoving air, the total absence of sound, the complete lack of a heartbeat in the world around him.

Calizone stroked his neck gently. “We will not stay any longer than we have to,” she whispered.

She walked on, leading him through the suspended market square. The Citspal cloth prickled cold against her skin, reminding her that while she was safe from magic, she was equally powerless to help these people. She could not restart their time. She could not unfreeze their breath. She could not pull them out of the dying spell’s grip.

She could only witness.

A loom stood inside an open workshop, the wooden shuttle caught halfway across the warp. The weaver’s hands were poised above it, fingers curled and ready to strike, but they never would. A potter’s wheel stood motionless, holding a single impossible moment of rotation.

Calizone felt a tight knot in her throat.

This was not death.

This was not sleep.

This was not enchantment.

This was the total absence of next.

She stepped carefully between the frozen townsfolk, her boots crunching on gravel that refused to echo. Even sound seemed reluctant to move. The dead pressure of the spell clung to her skin like a suffocating blanket.

Then she saw him.

At first, she thought he was merely another frozen figure. A man sat beside a narrow gap between two stone‑built houses, resting on a low stool carved from ancient root and rock. His robes were threadbare, his long beard a veil of dust. He looked as though he had been placed there centuries ago and simply never moved.

But as she stepped closer, his outline flickered.

Not the world around him, him.

His hair shifted from black to grey to white in the space of a single heartbeat. His shoulders straightened, then stooped with immense age. His skin smoothed into youth, creased into middle age, and then sagged into antiquity. His clothes hung differently with each sudden shift, as though time were pulling him back and forth like a thread caught in a frantic loom.

Youth.

Middle age.

Extreme old age.

Youth again.

It was a loop, but unlike the town, it was not frozen.

He turned his head. His eyes met hers.

They were the only eyes in Nordon that were truly aware.

Calizone stopped dead. Her horse pressed hard against her shoulder, trembling beneath his woollen blindfold.

The man’s voice came out thin and papery, then strong and deep, then thin again, shifting continuously with his physical age.

“You should not be here.”

Calizone swallowed, her throat dry. “You can move.”

“Yes.” His form flickered wildly, young, old, young again. “You should be as frozen in time as all these good people.”

Calizone stepped closer, careful not to startle her terrified mount. “Why am I not?”

The man’s eyes, ancient, then youthful, then ancient once more, narrowed sharply. He leaned forward on his root‑and‑stone stool, studying her with a guardian’s long‑trained suspicion.

“What are you wearing?” he demanded.

Calizone touched the dark cloth at her hip. “A dress woven in the Western Mountains. A fabric that stops all magic.”

The man inhaled, young lungs, then old lungs, and nodded once. “Useful.”

His outline flickered sharply, as though the word itself tugged at the magic binding him.

“That is why you are walking,” he said. “It blocks the dying spell. It blocks everything.”

Calizone said nothing, waiting.

He flickered again, settling briefly into middle age. “Who are you?”

“Calizone, Witch of the Dark Forest,” she said, squaring her shoulders.

He blinked, a young man now, visibly startled. “A witch.”

“Yes.”

He looked her up and down, flickering through decades in a heartbeat. “You are not using magic.”

“I cannot. The dress stops it entirely.”

He exhaled, old lungs, then young, and rested a weathered hand against the cold stone wall beside him. “Good. If you were using magic, you would be dead.”

Calizone felt a cold dread settle in her stomach. “Why?”

Only now did he gesture toward the narrow gap between the two tall stone houses. The air within the alleyway shimmered faintly, bending inward as though pulled by invisible, ravenous hands.

He lowered his voice. “Because of what lies in there.”

He flickered again, old, young, old, and for a brief moment, his voice steadied.

“When Azaz came,” he said quietly, “long ago… she stood right where you stand now.”

Calizone’s breath caught. “You knew Azaz?”

“I knew her,” he replied. “She passed through Nordon when the world was far younger. She wore no special clothes, but she carried power enough to make the granite listen.”

He leaned closer, his dusty beard drifting with his movement. “So answer me truly, Witch of the Dark Forest. Why have you come? Why now?”

“Whatever is happening here is spreading through the realm,” Calizone said firmly. “Time is twisting in on itself. If this continues, the entire world will forget what comes next. I have come to find the source.”

The guardian’s eyes sharpened. “Its source.”

He flickered into extreme old age, his voice as thin as parched paper. “Then tell me this: what do you know of the Gate in the Dark Forest?”

Calizone felt her stomach tighten. “Only that Azaz sent two evil beings through it long ago and sealed it shut. It has remained sealed ever since, and it is closely guarded.”

He leaned closer still. “She told me of the Gate in the Dark Forest. She told me what she had done. And she told me what she feared.”

Calizone swallowed. “Feared?”

The guardian’s eyes burned, ancient, youthful, ancient again.

“She feared that sealing the Gate would not be enough,” he whispered. “She feared that the evil she cast out would claw at the boundaries from the other side. She feared that time itself would thin, like cloth worn too long.”

He flickered violently, youth, age, youth, and pressed a trembling hand against the stone wall to steady himself.

“She said that if ever the Gate stirred again, the world would feel it first where time is weak,” he continued. “Places where the hours run thin. Places where the next moment struggles to arrive.”

Calizone’s gaze flicked to the frozen alleyway. “Like Nordon.”

“Like Nordon,” he echoed grimly.

He gestured toward the frozen square behind her, the butcher mid‑pour, the woman with her empty spindle, the hound with its paw raised.

“This is what happens when time forgets how to move forward,” he said. “This is what happens when the dying spell finds a weakness in the fabric of the world.”

Calizone steadied her horse’s reins. “And you? Why are you here?”

The guardian’s outline wavered, thinning into extreme age once more. “Azaz bound me to this passage. She said that if ever the Forest Gate stirred, its tremors would reach me first. I was to watch. I was to warn. I was to hold this place until someone came who could walk through the dying spell.”

His gaze fixed upon her, sharp, aware, unblinking.

“And now you stand here,” he said softly. “Walking when all others are frozen. Carrying no magic. You have come because the world is twisting.”

Calizone nodded once.

The guardian leaned forward, his dusty beard drifting.

“Then listen well, Witch of the Dark Forest,” he said. “What Azaz feared… is happening.”

He pointed his thin finger directly into the narrow stone passage.