Page 118 of Magical Moonbeam

This time, it wasn’t an illusion.

It wasn’t the spell-spun shadow cast by us or a training ground dressed in nightmare clothes.

This was real.

I knew it the moment my boots touched the cobblestones. They felt damp. Not metaphorically, not as if painted with a spell, but truly soaked with the moisture of fog that had lived here too long. The air carried weight, brackish, metallic, and spiced faintly with smoke and something acrid I couldn’t place.

And then there were the people.

I froze.

They moved along the narrow sidewalks with their collars pulled up and their gazes low. No one smiled. No one lingered. A woman with a leather-wrapped basket crossed the street and didn’t look up. A man dragging a wheeled cart grunted under his breath at some invisible weight and passed without acknowledgment.

It felt like a different time and place.

The shops were lit. Dimly.

And behind those smudged windows, I saw motion, figures hunched over books, candle flames flickering, silhouettes pacing.

This wasn’t the empty village I’d wandered through in illusions and dreams.

This was Shadowick alive in the shadows.

I turned quickly, expecting to see Keegan or Twobble or someone,anyone, from our group, but the mist was too thick now, curling up from the ground like sea spray. My heart hammered. I should’ve heard someone. I should’ve seen a signal.

But I didn’t.

They were doing what they were supposed to do.

Staying hidden.

I swallowed hard and steadied my breath.

Trust the plan. They’re here. They’ll do what they came to do.

Protect and fight, if need be.

And that meant I had to do the same.

I took a few steps forward, deeper into the street. The air pressed in tighter the farther I walked, like I was moving through something thicker than fog. A low humming began in my chest, faint but persistent, as if the magic here recognized me.

Or maybe recognized what I’d come to do.

The buildings stretched tall and narrow, all slate, iron, and soot. Even the paint on the walls looked tired. But there was a rhythm to this place, a pulse under the gloom. People still lived here, even under this eerie light. They moved in the in-between alleys, forgotten shadows, and hidden feelings.

I passed an apothecary and saw jars of dark herbs lined up in neat rows. A child peeked from behind a curtain in the flat above it, pale-eyed and quiet.

Children. Families.

Every instinct I had screamed that I shouldn’t be seen.

But I’d already been seen. I could feel it.

And then, past the curve of the lane, it rose above the rooftops like a wound in the clouds.

The mansion.

His.