He didn't finish. He didn't have to.
Magistra Verin gestured again, and a list appeared in the air above the map. I read it with a growing sense of cold certainty.
Ley reinforcement rituals—failed.
Blood magic anchors—failed.
Cross-species collaboration—failed.
Appeals to the Fae courts—refused.
"We've tried everything," Magistra Verin said. "We're out of options."
The silence stretched. Someone was breathing too quickly. I just sat there, watching the map flicker and dim. Even now, even with this devastation revelation, I couldn’t summon up a strong emotion. I was still numb, cold. Dead inside. The world was ending, but mine had ended two years ago.
The elder shifter spoke again. "We have one theory. One last option."
He glanced at Magistra Verin. She nodded.
"This isn’t news to us. We’ve had a team of internationally renowned magical scientists working on this for years now, and they finally have some findings they can report. The drain didn't start ten years ago," he said. "It started twenty five thousand years ago. Slowly. Imperceptibly. We've been dying for millennia."
Someone inhaled sharply.
"There was an event. A breaking point. Something that severed the deep magic from its source." He leaned forward, his gaze intense. "If we can go back—if we can prevent it—we might be able to stop this."
Three voices started at once:
"That's impossible—"
"Time magic is forbidden—"
"You're ordering us to—"
Magistra Verin raised one hand. The voices cut off immediately.
"We're not ordering," she said. "We're telling you what's at stake. And then we're asking for volunteers."
She let that settle. The air felt thicker somehow. Heavier.
"We need to find the original core, the source of all magic on earth. The team believe that it was compromised twenty five years ago, so we need a team to go back in time and fix it.”
I frowned, then slowly raised my hand.
Magistra Verin's eyes found mine. "Yes?"
"Sorry," I said, feeling heat creep up my neck as everyone turned to look at me. "But—twenty-five thousand years ago? Surely the drain has only been occurring in the last decade. That’s what you said before.”
Magistra Verin glanced across at another shifter, some kind of large cat judging by her golden eyes and thick golden hair. She nodded at Magistra Verin, then looked over at me.
“You’re right. The drain began ten years ago, but the event that caused it happened twenty five thousand years ago.”
“How is that possible?” asked another witch beside me.
The cat shifter sighed. “It’s hard to explain, but you must realise that time isn’t linear. Originally, nothing happened to damage the ley line network, but now something has happened and it happened back in the last Ice Age.”
My brain hurt trying to wrap itself around that concept. Time wasn't linear. Something that hadn't happened had now happened in the past. I glanced around the room and saw my own confusion reflected in several other faces.
The cat shifter's expression softened slightly. "Neither did we, at first. But the research team has been working with temporal theorists, and what they've discovered is... unsettling. Magic exists outside of linear time. The ley network is a living thing, connected across all timelines simultaneously. This, whatever it is, wasn’t supposed to happen. In our original timeline, it didn’t happen. but something outside of time has changed something, and now we’re dealing with the consequences.”
