Problems with time. Chapter 2.

Chapter Two.

 

Time is Misbehaving.

 

Calizone kept a firm grip on the reins as her black horse stepped off the narrow path and onto the main forest road.

The Dark Forest usually carried a steady hum of old magic, a quiet pulse in the soil and the air. Today, that hum was gone. The woods felt hollow, as though they had forgotten how to breathe.

Her horse snorted, hooves clacking on the packed dirt. The ancient oaks slid past on either side, yet something was wrong. The world moved, but she did not.

She fixed her gaze on a lightning‑struck birch fifty paces ahead. She urged the horse into a trot. Ten strides. Twenty. The birch did not come any closer.

“So,” Calizone said coolly, pulling the horse to a halt. “Distance has lost its memory.”

This was no illusion. An illusion would have flickered against her senses or yielded instantly to a simple dispelling spell. This was something far more fundamental, the same problem that had plucked King Syldan’s herald from the palace courtyard and dropped him into her garden without a single foot of travel. Space was folding, stretching, and sticking like wet clay.

She leaned forward and stroked her horse’s neck. “We shall have to remind it of its duties.”

Rather than cast anything large, Calizone reached out with her mind, searching for the simple rules that held the road together. They were tangled, knotted like threads in a half‑finished tapestry.

She wove a sharp line of intent between where her horse stood and a patch of ground ten paces ahead.

Snap.

The air made a soft, wet sound, like a boot pulled from mud.

The birch tree was suddenly behind her.

“Better,” Calizone muttered. “Crude, but it works.”

She urged the horse forward once more. By repeatedly stitching the road ahead of her, she forced the land to collapse into proper order, bit by bit. It was tedious, frustrating work for a witch of her stature, but it proved one thing beyond a doubt: the natural laws were not breaking down on their own. They were being unravelled by someone, or something.

Within forty minutes of spell‑stitched travel, the canopy of the Dark Forest began to thin, giving way to the manicured roads and stone boundary markers of King Syldan’s realm.

The guards at the outer gates of the palace were standing rigidly at attention, but as Calizone approached, she noticed a strange anomaly. One guard’s cloak flapped wildly as if caught in a fierce gale, yet there was no wind. A few paces away, a royal banner hung limply in absolute, unnatural stillness. Time and the rules of the world were splintering, no longer matching each other.

When the palace guards saw the Witch of the Dark Forest riding toward them, the relief on their pale faces was instant. They scrambled to open the heavy iron gates, bowing deeply, though neither dared to make direct eye contact.

Calizone dismounted near the royal stables, handing the leather reins to a terrified young groom who looked as though he expected the black horse to turn into a dragon at any moment.

“Keep him well‑fed,” she commanded. “And do not stand too close to the southern wall. The air is two seconds behind the rest of the courtyard over there.”

The groom paled and nodded vigorously, backing away quickly with the horse.

Calizone swept through the grand stone archways of the palace, her dark cloak billowing around her. The corridors were strangely muted. Servants huddled in doorway alcoves, whispering anxiously to one another, while court nobles stood in frightened clusters, glancing at the tapestries as if expecting the woven figures to step right off the cloth.

She did not bother waiting to be announced; she never did. Pushing open the heavy double doors of the Great Council Chamber, she stepped inside.

King Syldan sat at the long oak table, surrounded by scattered maps, half‑drained goblets, and a carved wooden rattle. Beside him stood his chief advisor, looking thoroughly exhausted. When Syldan looked up and saw Calizone, a wave of genuine relief washed over his face. He stood immediately.

“Calizone,” he said, abandoning formal titles entirely. “Thank goodness you came so quickly.”

“Your herald did not spend much time on the road,” Calizone said drily, stepping up to the table. “Though I doubt he enjoyed the trip. Now, Syldan, speak plainly. What is happening in your palace?”

Syldan gestured helplessly to the room around them. “It started yesterday evening in the east wing. A servant walked into the pantry to fetch candles and found herself standing in the royal armoury on the opposite side of the castle. This morning, the grand staircase vanished for three hours, left a sheer drop to the stone floor below, only to return as if nothing had happened.”

He rubbed his temples, looking every bit a young king carrying the weight of an unravelling world.

Calizone folded her arms tight. “Staircases do not vanish,” she said sternly. “Not unless someone tells them to.”

“That is precisely the problem,” Syldan replied. “No one told them anything. And it is spreading.” He gestured to the wooden rattle lying on the table.

Calizone raised an eyebrow.

“It was a child’s toy,” Syldan explained. “Found in the armoury. It shouldn’t have been there. When the steward picked it up, it aged in his hand, turned brittle, crumbled into dust. He brought the pieces to me, but when he set them on the table, it became whole again.”

Calizone’s eyes narrowed. “Time is slipping.”

“Slipping?” Syldan gave a strained, breathless laugh. “Time is behaving like a jester who’s forgotten his routine. Half the east wing is running two minutes ahead of the west wing. The kitchens are stuck half a minute behind. And the royal gardens—” He broke off, looking genuinely shaken. “The gardeners swear the sun rose twice this morning.”

Calizone considered this in heavy silence. The rooks’ unease. The herald’s impossible arrival. The forest road refusing to move beneath her horse’s hooves. Now the palace itself was folding, stretching, and misplacing reality like a careless child misplacing cards.

“Show me,” she said.

Syldan nodded gratefully and motioned for her to follow. As they stepped out into the grand corridor, Calizone felt the air shift around her, as if she had taken a strange step sideways in time.

Syldan noticed her sharp intake of breath. “It’s worse in the east wing.”

“Then that is where we begin,” Calizone said.

They moved past rows of stone arches where the tapestries hung strangely taut, as if pinned down by invisible hands. Every few paces, the temperature plunged suddenly into bitter winter before leaping back to a humid midsummer heat. A servant scurried past, bowing frantically, but to Calizone’s practiced eye the girl’s movements were wrong, jerking forward three strides, freezing for a heartbeat, then snapping ahead as though a thread had been violently pulled.

When they reached the heavy oak doors of the east wing, Syldan paused, his hand hovering over the iron latch.

“Beyond this door,” he warned quietly, “the floorboards remember last Tuesday, but the walls are convinced it is next month.”

“Then let us hope the door remembers how to open,” Calizone replied, stepping past him and pushing the oak panelling wide.

Sunlight poured through a tall, narrow window at the far end, casting long mid‑afternoon shadows across the flagstones. Yet halfway down the passage, those same shadows bent backward, stretching toward the sunrise that had happened hours before. On a wooden shelf sat a lit candle, but the flame was burning in reverse, pulling tiny wisps of grey smoke back down into the unburnt wax.

Calizone stepped over the threshold. The moment her boot touched the stone, a sharp, cold tingle shot up her spine, the taste of unsettled magic.

“This is not a spell, Syldan,” she murmured, kneeling to brush her fingers half an inch above the cold flagstones. “A spell has a heart. It has a beginning, a purpose, and an end. This has no purpose. It is a tear.” “A tear?” Syldan stepped in behind her, placing his boots carefully where hers had landed. “In what?”

“In the weave,” Calizone said, rising and sweeping her cloak behind her. “Someone, or something, has pulled a loose thread at the edge of the world, and now the pattern is unravelling from the hem.”

She marched down the passage toward the grand staircase. It was back now, solid and heavy, carved from dark mountain marble. But as Calizone reached the top step, she stopped dead.

The stone was humming. Not with sound, but with a rhythmic, low vibration that vibrated right through her boots.

Down in the Great Hall below, Queen Bessan sat by the hearth, cradling little Beldan. From this height, Calizone could see them clearly. But as she watched, the Queen lifted her hand to adjust the baby’s blanket, and the motion repeated three times in exact, agonising succession, like a ripple caught in a pond that refused to settle.

“They do not even know it is happening to them, do they?” Syldan asked softly, gripping the marble balustrade.

“No,” Calizone said, her dark eyes fixed on the repeating picture below. “The world is protecting them from noticing. If a mortal mind saw time snapping around it, it would go mad before the sun set.”

She turned back to Syldan, her face set in lines of hard, unyielding authority.

“You will move Queen Bessan and the boy to the cellar vaults beneath the old keep,” Calizone commanded. “The stone down there was laid before the kingdom was named. It is thick, heavy, and stubborn. It will resist this looseness longer than these upper halls.”

“And you?” Syldan asked. “Where will you go?”

Calizone turned her head, a cold, sharp smile touching her lips.

“I am returning to the Dark Forest.”

“To your cottage?” Syldan pressed. “What will you do there?”

“I am going to find whatever is pulling at the threads of my world,” Calizone said softly, “and I am going to break its fingers.”

Calizone urged her horse back along the forest road, the afternoon light slanting through the high canopy in uneasy, wavering bands. The shadows were behaving strangely, stretching too far across the dirt, then snapping back as though embarrassed.

She was halfway to the Dark Forest boundary when her horse slowed of its own accord.

A deep patch of darkness lay beneath a great ash tree. It was not ordinary shade; it was deeper, thicker, as though the tree were hoarding night under its roots.

The horse snorted, ears flicking back in warning.

Calizone pulled the reins gently. “I know,” she murmured. “I feel it too.”

The darkness beneath the branches shifted.

A tall figure stepped out from beneath the ash tree, keeping one hand pressed firmly against the trunk where the shade was thickest. His cloak drank the light like black ink.

“Calizone,” Jek said softly.

She raised an eyebrow. “You should not be out in daylight, Wraith.”

“I am not,” Jek replied, glancing nervously upward. “The forest is confused. It thinks it is night here.”

Calizone slid smoothly from the saddle. “Then speak quickly.”

Jek’s hood dipped lower. Even within the shadow, she could see the rigid tension in his posture. “The threads are slipping. The deep caves tremble. We do not understand it.”

He kept his face turned away from the stray shafts of sunlight. A single ray brushed the edge of his dark cloak; the fabric smoked faintly before he shifted back into deeper shade.

Calizone stepped closer, staying within the ash tree’s umbrella of shadow so Jek would not have to shrink away. “Tell me what you have seen.”

Jek’s voice was low, urgent. “Echoes arrive before footsteps. The night keeps stopping and starting. Time is going wrong. My people cannot hunt for food. They go out in the dark, and suddenly it becomes light.”

Calizone felt her horse shift uneasily behind her, its ears flicking at the tremor of fear in the Wraith’s words.

“How long has this been happening?” she asked.

“Since last night,” Jek said. “But last night lasted only a little while. Then it folded. Then it came back. Then it slipped away again.” He pressed himself closer to the ash bark, as though the wood itself were safer than the thin air. “We cannot hunt. We cannot move. The forest forgets what time of day it is.”

He flinched as a thin blade of sunlight slid across the dirt near his boots. The shadow under the ash tree shivered, thickening protectively around him.

Calizone rested a calm hand on her horse’s neck. “You did well to come to me, Jek.”

Jek’s hood dipped again. “I had no choice. If the night cannot stay night, my people will starve. If the deep places keep pulling, we will be lost. You saved us once before, Calizone. We need your strength once again.”

He stepped backward into the core of the shadow, letting the darkness swallow him whole. “Hurry, Calizone. Before the light forgets itself entirely.”

Calizone mounted her horse, her cloak settling around her like a gathering storm.

“I will find the source,” she promised the empty shadows.

She turned her horse back toward her cottage, her mind already calculating which spells, which wards, or which ancient boundaries might still hold firm against an unravelling world.