Problems with time. Chapter 6.

Chapter Six.

 

The Forest Was Empty.

 

Calizone drew a sharp, cold breath and stilled her hands.

She had been about to reach out with her mind, to cast a scrying thread and trace where the magic was going wrong.

Foolish, she thought sharply, a prickle of ice running down the back of her neck.

Scrying was completely worthless here. Scrying sought out active magic, a spark, a hum, a lingering resonance in the weave. But what was happening to the trees, to the forest road, and to King Syldan’s palace was not the presence of magic.

It was the absolute absence of it.

The dying spell had devoured its own magic simply to stay alive. It had consumed its internal threads, leaving behind a barren pocket of nothingness. Trying to scry for a void using magic was like holding up a lit candle to search for darkness; the bright magic of the scrying spell would instantly fill the empty space, blinding her to the very rift she was trying to locate.

“You cannot smell a hole in the air,” Calizone murmured, her voice flat and even. “You can only notice what has fallen into it.”

She could not use her power to seek. She had to use her eyes, her ears, and the ancient, quiet instincts that predated her spell‑casting.

She turned her back on her cottage garden and looked deep into the Dark Forest.

To a casual observer, the woods looked unchanged. But Calizone began to look for the silences.

She listened, not for the unnatural hum of a spell, but for the places where the wind did not rustle the leaves. She searched, not for a shimmer of light, but for patches of ground where the moss was colourless, drained of vitality because the background magic that sustained all living things in the Dark Forest had been sucked thin.

Yet underneath all the strange happenings, the forest was still itself: old, heavy, and steady. Its own natural magic had not broken; it was merely being squeezed by the dying spell. As far as Calizone could determine, the forest held no actual tears or holes.

She walked slowly, her boots sinking into leaf‑mould that shifted twice before settling. A twig beneath her step snapped, then snapped again a heartbeat later, as if the moment had repeated itself out of sheer stubbornness. She ignored it. She had seen far worse.

She moved through the understorey, pausing often, letting her senses stretch. She was not looking for magic; she was looking for its absence, the places where the forest’s ancient hum dipped, where the moment sagged, where the world forgot itself.

The first hour yielded nothing but minor distortions.

A falling leaf hesitated, then fell again.

A birdcall echoed before the bird even opened its beak.

Her own shadow lagged behind her boots like a sulky child.

The distortions were merely ripples, thrown across the surface by something far away. Calizone pressed her palm against the bark of a massive oak. The wood was warm. The internal hum was faint, but steady.

“Not here,” she murmured.

She moved on.

Another hour passed. She found a patch of forest moss so pale it looked frost‑bitten. When she knelt and touched it, the background hum was still there, thin and strained, but present.

“Bruised,” she said, rising. “Not broken.”

The rooks circled overhead, uneasy but loyal. One dropped a feather that drifted down, paused in mid‑air, and drifted down again, caught in a second that refused to behave.

Calizone straightened, her dark eyes narrowing.

The distortions were growing stronger here. They were not dangerous, her protection spell held the immediate moment around her firm, but they were increasingly insistent.

A third hour passed. A fourth.

The silences grew deeper, but never absolute.

The hum thinned, but never vanished.

The distortions sharpened, but never tore.

The Dark Forest was not the source of the rip.

Calizone stopped at the far edge of a clearing, breathing in the cold, wrong air. The space around her remained stable under her wardings, but the world beyond the trees shimmered like heat‑haze over a summer road.

The forest stretched for miles, but beyond it lay open plains, ancient rivers, human settlements, and forgotten trade routes.

She sighed softly. “The problem is out there,” she said to the trees. “Not in here. Time for another journey.”

She paused at the tree line, feeling the faint, persistent tug of wrong‑time pulling toward the east. She could follow it now, but not without supplies, not without her horse, and not without the practical items that made long travel bearable.

Calizone closed her eyes and pictured her cottage. Every inch of it.

The worn flagstones.

The crooked oak lintel.

The herb‑rack above the hearth.

The iron latch she had repaired twice.

The exact angle of the heavy table.

The precise spot where the morning sun fell across the floorboards.

She knew it so intimately she could have walked through it blindfolded.

The moment around her tightened, obedient to her will. The forest shimmered, folded, and let her go.

She stepped into her cottage as if she had never left.

The air inside was still warm from the fire she had banked earlier. Her cloak settled around her shoulders without a single ripple of wrong‑time. The rooks arrived a heartbeat later, flapping indignantly through the open window as though translocation offended their sense of avian dignity.

Calizone ignored their muted caws and set straight to work.

Calizone packed spare clothes, a heavy travelling cloak, dried beef, hard cheese, a small pot of healing salve, a coil of sturdy rope, and the battered tin cup she trusted far more than any complex spell. She added a pouch of dried herbs, a handful of simple charms, and the small iron knife that had belonged to her grandmother.

Then she went out to the stable.

Her horse, the great black stallion who was arguably more famous across the realm than she was, snorted at her approach, stamping a hoof as if to say it was about time. He was a steady, sensible beast with zero patience for magic. Calizone saddled him, checked the girth twice, and buckled her saddlebags securely.

She led him outside, the cottage door swinging shut behind her with its familiar, comforting creak.

“Right,” she said, mounting smoothly. “Palace first.”

She nudged the horse forward. The forest rippled, but her protection spell held the space around them steady. She rode through the familiar glades, translocating in short, safe jumps, from one known hollow to another, from one marked boundary stone to the next, until the trees thinned and the wide forest road opened before her.

The distant distortions pulled faintly eastward, but she held her course for now. She had business at the royal seat: warnings to deliver, instructions to leave, and a word for King Syldan if he was still managing to keep his moments in proper order.

She dismounted at a familiar stone marker near the treeline, one she had used for translocation since she was barely more than a girl. She pictured the palace’s outer courtyard: the cracked flagstone near the old well, the iron ring set into the stone wall, the angle of the afternoon light across the main archway.

The moment tightened. The world folded.

She stepped out of the woods and directly onto the courtyard paving. Her horse arrived a heartbeat later, snorting indignantly at the sudden shift in scenery.

Calizone steadied him with a firm hand on his neck. “Easy. We’re here.”

The courtyard, however, was far from right. A palace guard stood near the iron gate, blinking hard as if trying to clear water from his eyes. His shadow lay at an impossible angle. Beside the well, a wooden bucket dripped twice, the exact same drop falling in two separate moments.

The guard noticed her and straightened, though his posture lagged a fraction behind his intention.

“Lady Calizone,” he stammered. “You’re expected. Or—” He frowned. “You were expected. Earlier. Or perhaps later.”

Calizone sighed. “Time is slipping here as well.”

“Yes, my lady.”

She led her horse through the archway into the main hall. The corridors shimmered faintly. A heavy wall tapestry flickered between two positions, hanging straight, then slightly askew, then straight again. A servant carrying a brass tray walked past her twice, the second instance completely oblivious to the first.

None of it was immediately dangerous, but all of it was wrong. Human structures were always far more fragile than ancient forests.

Calizone tightened her warding and strode into the throne room.

King Syldan sat upon his high chair, looking as though he had aged and un‑aged within the same hour. His hair was disordered, as if he had run his hands through it in two different moments at once. A candle beside his seat spluttered, then spluttered again in exact repetition.

He looked up as she approached.

“Calizone,” he said, relief washing over his face. “Good. I’ve been waiting for you. I think… it is getting worse. Is this happening in the forest, or more importantly, at the Gate?”

She bowed her head slightly. “The forest is bruised, but not broken. The Gate is holding for the moment. The root of the problem lies far beyond it, to the east. I am going after it.”

Syldan did not ask for details. He never did. He trusted her judgment far more than he trusted his own palace clocks.

“How long will you be gone?” he asked.

“As long as it takes.”

He accepted the answer without argument. “We’ll manage here.”

“You will,” she said. “But if anything worsens, send word to the cottage. I will check in when I can.”

Syldan gave a weary, thin smile. “Assuming the message arrives in the correct moment.”

Calizone shrugged. “If it doesn’t, I’ll find it anyway.”

She turned, her dark cloak settling around her. Syldan watched her leave with the quiet gratitude of a ruler who knew he was not the one equipped to repair the world.

She stepped back out into the bright courtyard. Her horse stamped an impatient hoof, while high above, the rooks circled in wide, dark loops.

Calizone tightened the protection spell around herself and her mount, feeling the immediate moment lock firmly into place.

“Right,” she said softly, settling into the saddle. “Let’s get on with it.”

She nudged the horse forward and rode out through the palace gates, heading east toward the long road, the thinning hum, and the distant region where the dying spell waited.