Atlas most of all. I had caught him watching the stormglass more than once over those weeks, his attention sharpening whenever the light shifted near me. He never commented on it. Never asked. But the look in his eyes said he was counting the moments the same way I was.
Even the older parts of the castle had begun to stir. Twice I caught the low hum of runestones buried deep in the walls, a sound so faint I might have missed it if I hadn’t been listening. The ward-witches insisted the stones hadn’t been active in generations.
As if the stone itself remembered something the living world had forgotten.
Yet the sound always faded the moment anyone else came near.
The wind moved gently, clouds drifted without urgency, and the rain thinned into a pale mist that clung briefly to stone before disappearing.
I stood at the narrow window of my chamber and watched the sea far below the cliffs. The waves struck the rocks with their usual force, the white spray breaking against the stone. Nothing pressed at my senses, nothing demanded my attention.
That should have been comforting. Instead, it felt like I was being watched.
I turned from the window and crossed the room, my steps unhurried.
Halfway to the door the air shifted, subtle but unmistakable, like the moment before lightning decides where it will strike.
When I reached for the door and set my hand on the latch it resisted for the briefest moment, like a gear catching where it shouldn’t. Then it released too suddenly, the change in resistance forcing me to adjust my grip.
I paused, my hand still on the latch. The latch had answered late, but then, too easily. I frowned, replaying the sensation in my head.
Opening the door the rest of the way and stepping into the corridor, the stormglass flickered along the wall behind me.
Not as I crossed the threshold, but after, a soft pulse that followed my movement. The light brightened and dimmed insequence, a fraction of a second behind my steps, as if it recalibrated too late.
I slowed.
The flicker lagged again, then steadied.
I stopped entirely. The corridor dimmed a breath later, settling into an even glow that would have looked ordinary if I hadn’t just watched it miss its cue.
My attention sharpened.
This wasn’t magic responding to me. I knew what that felt like. Power carried pressure with it, a gathering beneath the skin, a pull in the chest that warned before it answered. There was none of that now. I didn’t feel larger, or heavier or charged, not the way I had when storms bent to my will or when the air thickened with intent.
Instead, the space around me felt almost, miscounted. Like a rhythm that had lost its beat and kept going anyway. Like a system still that was still functioning, but no longer precise. The delay wasn’t coming from me. It seemed to be happening because of me.
That was worse
If it wasn’t responding to me, then it wasn’t something I could correct. It would continue regardless.
I moved again, deliberately this time.
My footsteps echoed down the corridor a breath after I took them. The delay was slight, easy to miss, but once I noticed, it was impossible to ignore.
A servant rounded the corner ahead of me, arms full of folded cloth. She didn’t see me until the last moment, her steps faltering as she corrected her path too late. The stack shifted in her grasp, the top linens slipping.
I reached out and steadied them.
Our fingers brushed briefly, but the woman froze. Her gaze flicked from my hand to my face, then drifted past my shoulder. She blinked once, frowned faintly, and murmured a quick apology before adjusting her grip and moving on.
I watched her go, her steps hurried but not panicked.
It wasn’t fear that had stopped her, it was hesitation. The kind that followed a misjudgment you couldn’t quite explain. As though her body had reacted to something her mind hadn’t yet caught up with.
I continued down the corridor.
The castle moved around me as it always had, stone and light and shadows holding their familiar places, but my awareness stayed fixed on the margins now. On the way the space seemed to settle only after I passed through. On the faint sense that I was arriving a fraction ahead of myself, leaving something behind that the world hurried to catch up to.
