The last anyone had seen of him, Santa had stepped confidently into the Lab of Ticking Wonders—a converted annex of the Toyworks, retrofitted with enchanted stone floors and copper-tile walls. The air shimmered faintly with suspended strands of Blue Fairy Dust, drifting like cobweb threads caught in twilight.

The experiment had seemed simple. Chris Kringle intended to compress a five-minute walk—just a quiet, round-trip stroll to the Rootbeer River Bridge—into no more than two seconds of real-world time. Not a leap, not a flight. Just a walk. A proof of concept. The next milestone in his increasingly bold quest: to deliver gifts to every child on Earth in a single night.

He waved to Bernard, chuckled something about “back before the kettle boils,” and stepped inside.

But then…

The seconds passed.
The minutes passed.
And then… the days.

By the end of the first day, concern rippled through the Village like frost under lanternlight.

Blue Fairy Dust, though promising, was unstable. The earlier tests had led to flickering lights, reversed gear trains, and a strange hour in which every cookie tasted faintly like yesterday. But no test had ever erased Santa.

Bernard took charge immediately. He cordoned off the Lab of Ticking Wonders with a strip of enchanted red ribbon, affixed it with sleigh-bell seals, and posted three watch-elves at the door. No entry, no experiments, and definitely no curious apprentices poking around “to help.”

He summoned a closed meeting in the Great Hearth Hall. The room was quiet but tense, filled with the rustle of charts, the clink of empty mugs, and the occasional click of stopwatch hands being checked too often.

“We assume,” Bernard told the gathered team, “that the experiment didn’t fail… entirely. Time is still passing for us—but perhaps not for him.”

“Or worse,” muttered Nolin Threespark from the back, “he’s out of phase. We might not even be able to see him if he was here.”

“Let’s not speculate into madness,” Bernard replied. “Until we see proof of disruption, we stay grounded. No panic. No rumors.”

Trever Inkpot, fresh out of apprentice training and still overly proud of his self-styled notetaking satchel, was assigned to manage public messaging.

His first announcement read:

“Santa is engaged in advanced fairy dust research. All is well. Please do not disturb the laboratory.”

By Day Three, he'd posted six additional bulletins. Each tried a different tone—reassuring, poetic, even playful—but the mood in the Village grew heavier with each passing hour.

On Day Four, the Lab itself began to change.

The clocks started humming. Not loudly—but with a strange disharmony, like multiple metronomes ticking just off-tempo. Then came the anomalies. Several clocks stopped entirely. One reversed. Another began melting slightly, its frame sagging like wax under invisible heat.

The ceiling fan, once enchanted to keep dust circulating evenly, began rotating backward and chimed—accurately—in French.

“I think it’s building to something,” whispered Nolin, who had drawn the dusk watch. “Either we’re about to get Santa back… or we’re about to lose next Tuesday.”

Bernard increased the watch schedule and ordered Merrit Cobbleknock to start timing the gaps between anomalies. “If we’re syncing to a rhythm,” he said, “we’ll find it.”

“But what happens when we sync?” Merrit asked.

Bernard didn’t answer.

Then, on the morning of the fifth day, it happened.

It was precisely 7:42 a.m. The fog was just beginning to burn off from the rooftops. Village bakers were preparing morning batches. A few reindeer in the north fields had just begun their warm-up trots.

There was no crash. No thunderclap. No explosion of time-shattered gears.

Just… a shimmer.

Like a soft breeze rippling through a curtain of starlight.

Blue particles blinked into visibility above the floor—slow at first, then spiraling downward in a tight helix. They spun in a lazy loop, drifted to eye level… and then Santa appeared.