The city was loud — louder than London, louder than Paris. Neon lights bled into puddles on the cracked asphalt, and the smell mixed with car smoke and roasted food. It was New York — a city built on ambition.
Adrian had been wandering for weeks now. His coat was dark, simple, blending into the shadows of the crowd. To anyone watching, he was just another stranger. But behind his calm brown eyes, the storm never ceased.
He had come to America not for leisure, but because his studies — the forbidden texts he'd unearthed — pointed him toward this continent. There were things here even the old world had forgotten. Fragments of ancient buried beneath cities, hidden in bloodlines, encoded in symbols.
He walked down 47th Street that evening, thinking about nothing in particular, when he felt it — the faint tug of intent, not harmful.
Someone's gaze.
And then, a touch.
He turned his head slightly, catching the wrist of a small boy — thin, ragged, maybe ten years old — his hand frozen inside Adrian's coat pocket.
For a heartbeat, neither moved. The boy's eyes widened, expecting anger. But instead, Adrian just looked at him — really looked.
Dust-streaked cheeks, fear hiding behind defiance, hunger wrapped in pride.
He saw himself.
Not as he is, but as he had been.
Adrian released the boy's wrist gently. "You're sloppy," he said quietly.
The boy blinked. "I—I wasn't—"
Adrian raised an eyebrow. "Don't lie to someone better at it."
The boy's shoulders slumped. "Sorry, mister. I just… I haven't eaten in two days."
Adrian looked at him for a moment longer, then sighed. "There's a diner two streets down. Tell the waitress Mr. Wick sent you. She'll give you a meal."
The boy's mouth fell open. "For real?"
Adrian nodded once. "And next time you try to steal, do it properly."
The boy grinned — a flash of innocence, raw and unguarded. "Thanks, mister!"
And then he was gone, swallowed by the noise of the city.
Adrian watched him disappear into the crowd, something faint and unfamiliar flickering in his chest— nostalgia.
"I used to do that too, a lifetime ago," he muttered, half-amused.
TIP.
TIP.
Rain began to fall — thin, silver, endless.
Adrian found himself standing before a building he had heard of many times but never seen.
The Willow's Rest — a restaurant tucked between two old brick towers in the heart of the magical quarter. From the outside, it looked ordinary: a narrow entrance, warm light spilling onto the wet pavement, a sign carved with an elegant willow tree. But inside, rumor said, the world changed.
Wizards whispered that Willow's Rest was the safest meeting place in America. Assassins, smugglers, and mercenaries whispered that it was neutral ground. A lie, of course — nothing in this world was ever neutral.
Adrian pushed open the door.
The smell of spice, whiskey, and old wood hit him at once. Music drifted softly — a piano playing a tune that felt forgotten.
Every table was full.
Witches and wizards in fine robes spoke quietly, some laughing, others watching the door with the paranoia of predators. The moment Adrian entered, the atmosphere shifted. Conversations dimmed.
Heads turned.
He didn't bother hiding his face.
He simply walked to the bar, coat dripping with rain.
The bartender froze mid-polish. Someone whispered, "That's him…"
Adrian ignored it. He rested his hand lightly on the counter.
A young waitress approached — dark hair in a loose braid, green eyes sharp but uncertain. "What'll it be, sir?"
He looked at her and, in that calm, measured tone of his, said, "Three White Branches."
Her eyes widened. She didn't move for a second, then nodded quickly.
"Of course, sir. Right this way."
She led him through the kitchen — the scent of fire and garlic filling the air — until they reached the far wall. It was black, perfectly smooth, with a painted image of five white branches crossed over each other.
The waitress tapped her wand three times against the wall. The branches glowed — one, two, three — before sliding apart like shifting roots, revealing a hidden door.
"Welcome to the roots of the Willow," she whispered.
Adrian followed her through.
The air changed instantly. The hallway descended in spirals of golden stone, and at the bottom — the world opened.
A vast underground hall, lit by crimson chandeliers. Music pulsed faintly, the air thick with perfume and smoke. Roulette tables, velvet curtains, and wizards in tailored suits mingled with creatures not seen in daylight — veela with eyes like molten gold, vampires in silk gloves, goblins handling ledgers thicker than books.
It was not just a casino. It was the beating heart of the magical underworld.
The Obsidian Den.
Coins glittered, dice rolled, laughter and death deals filled the air. At the far end, beyond the main floor, a private table stood beneath a mirror of black glass.
Two people sat there.
The first was an old man with silver hair slicked back, a cigar burning lazily between his fingers. His eyes were sharp — too sharp for someone pretending to relax. His suit was immaculate, a ring with a dragon crest glinting on his left hand.
The second was a woman.
She was…arresting in beauty.
Tall, poised, every movement deliberate. Her black hair fell like a curtain of midnight silk down her back, and her dress, dark red, tight at the waist, open at the shoulders, shimmered with faint enchantments. Her skin was fair, her lips painted a deep shade of wine, and her eyes impossible blue. Watched Adrian with the calm of someone who had seen everything and still wanted more.
' Beautiful.' He thought, but kept his composure.
When Adrian approached, she smiled slightly. "I was wondering when the ghost of Europe would walk through my doors."
He inclined his head politely. "And I was wondering if your reputation was exaggerated. It seems not." His eye swept over her body without shame.
She chuckled, voice low, smooth as velvet. "Careful, Mr. Atlas. Flattery has a price here."
"I don't flatter, I make observations," Adrian said.
The old man puffed his cigar, smoke curling around his face. "He talks like a scholar," he muttered. "And looks like trouble."
Adrian ignored him. "I came for business."
The woman leaned forward, resting her chin on her hand. "Everyone comes here for business. The question is — whose?"
He met her gaze without flinching. "Yours."
Something flickered in her eyes — interest, maybe amusement. "That's bold."
"I'm not here to waste time."
Her smile thinned. "Then stop dancing, Mr.Atlas. What do you want?"
Adrian reached into his coat and drew out a small folded note. He placed it on the table silently.
The woman hesitated, then opened it. Her expression shifted almost instantly — first curiosity, then disbelief, then something closer to fear.
"You're insane," she whispered. "Half of these don't even exist anymore."
Adrian's tone didn't change. "You asked what I wanted. That's the list. You get it done, and I'll pay in full."
She stared at him. "You don't understand. These items don't have a price. They're… myths. Even if I find them—"
He cut her off gently. "Money is not the problem."
The old man laughed under his breath. "Arrogant little bastard."
The woman ignored him, eyes still locked on Adrian. There was calculation there now, the kind that belonged to someone who had just smelled blood and opportunity.
Finally, she leaned back, crossing one long leg over the other.
"All right," she said slowly. "I'll play your game. I can get you what's on this list… but not for gold. You'll owe me a favor. One, when I call for it."
Adrian considered for a moment — no hesitation, no visible doubt. Then he extended his hand, "Done."
They both stood. Her perfume was faint, cold, almost metallic. She looked up at him — tall, confident, dangerous.
"I have a feeling you're going to be very bad for business," she said softly.
Adrian's lips curved. "That depends on what side you're on."
She smiled, slow and deliberate, before taking his hand. Her fingers were cool, her grip firm.
"Name's Alice," she said. "Welcome to the Den, Mr. Atlas."
Adrian's smile deepened — a quiet, knowing smile that never reached his eyes.
"I'm sure we'll work good, Alice. And please call me, Adrian."
\\
The crowd of the Obsidian Den slowly swallowed Adrian like mist, taking back the shape of a ghost. Only when he was gone did Alice unfold the note again that he had left on her table.
She read it once.
Then again.
Each line made the air around her seem thinner, the ink bleeding like a wound through her thoughts.
Her pulse quickened. Not from fear, but from fascination.
"What kind of man asks for these things?" she whispered.
Viktor Seld, sitting opposite her, drew on his cigar and exhaled slowly. The smoke curled like a serpent between them. "The kind who either wants to save the world," he said, "or burn it to ash."
Alice's lips curved. "Perhaps."
By dawn, the Obsidian Den had changed. Orders rippled outward like invisible waves. From the highest towers of New York's magical quarter to the slums of São Paulo and the canals of Venice, whispers began to move. Every network she had ever built, every favor she had ever bought, every secret she had ever traded, now pulsed with her command.
Messages were written, delivered through enchanted smoke, encoded in music only certain ears could hear.
Each message carried only one sentence: "By the will of the Willow, the Hunt begins."
\\
In the deserts of North Africa, a group of mercenaries gathered under the dying sun. Their leader — a broad man with an eyepatch of silver — received a sealed letter marked with a black willow leaf. No name.
No instructions beyond a single, elegant line: "Bring me what sleeps beneath the blue fire. No questions. No survivors."
By the time night fell, they had vanished into the dunes. Two days later, a contact in Tangier reported a disturbance, an entire dig site erased, reduced to ash.
And yet, from the wreckage, a single object was smuggled into Casablanca, then shipped under false names through five different ports. It arrived in New York under the alias Antique Mirror Components. Alice didn't even need to open the crate to know it was the first one.
In Eastern Europe, a deal was struck beneath a cathedral that no longer existed on official maps. The snow fell silently as Alice sat across from a cloaked figure — one of the few who traded in the invisible economy of lost things.
"It doesn't exist anymore," the figure rasped. "Not even for people like you."
Alice leaned back, her gloved fingers tracing the rim of her glass. "Then stop pretending you haven't already found it."
The figure's breath faltered. "That's— impossible to move. It's bound."
"So unbind it," she said simply.
Her tone carried no threat, no emotion.
Just inevitability. By morning, she left the city with a locked case no bigger than her hand, sealed in charms that hummed faintly like trapped screams.
In Asia, she moved differently, quieter, cloaked in diplomacy and charm rather than gold or fear. In a private tea house in the mountains outside Kyoto, she met with a man whose family had guarded forbidden relics for centuries. They spoke without words, only gestures, a shared understanding of risk and reverence. She left with a small chest wrapped in red silk. None who guarded the mountain saw her leave, though they swore later they heard a song in the wind — one that hadn't been sung in a thousand years.
In South America, her methods grew harsher. There, money meant nothing.
Power was blood.
She found herself in an old colonial manor at the edge of the Amazon — its halls filled with relics and corpses of collectors who had tried to take what was not meant for them. The man who ruled there called himself "El Dio." His smile was wide, but his eyes were cold.
"You want the impossible," he said, sipping wine older than the Republic. "What will you give me in return?"
Alice took a step forward. "A choice."
His eyebrow arched. "Choice?"
"Yes. You can give me what I want," she said softly, "or you can try to stop me."
The lights flickered. When they came back, El Curador's guards were already on the floor — unconscious or worse. The next day, his vault was empty, its contents vanished as if erased by time itself.
Back in New York, the days blurred together. Alice didn't sleep much. She lived in her office above the Den, surrounded by parchment and ash, by half-burned wards that hummed faintly with stolen power. The city outside kept spinning, oblivious.
But in the shadows, something was shifting.
Viktor stood behind her one night, watching her line up sealed containers on the desk.
"Do you even know what you're collecting?" he asked quietly.
Alice's reflection met his in the glass. "I know enough to be afraid. And too curious to stop."
"You've lost good men already."
"Then they were never good enough." Her voice was cold, but there was something beneath it, fatigue, maybe. Or awe.
The last item took her nearly a month to find.
No one even knew where to begin. Every trail she followed ended in death, every map led to nothing. Until one evening, an anonymous message arrived at her window — a single parchment carried by a crow.
No name, no seal. Just a symbol — five white branches interlocked.
And beneath it, a location: Mexico City.
The ruins were vast and silent, breathing heat and decay. Alice moved through them like a shadow, her wand tracing faint symbols in the air to reveal the hidden paths below. Her boots touched ancient stone, her heartbeat steady but fast. At the bottom of the labyrinth, she found a chamber — circular, lit by veins of blue light that pulsed like veins in living skin.
At its center rested nothing but air — thick, heavy, trembling with unseen power.
For a long time, she didn't move. Then she reached out, her hand steady, her eyes calm.
The air recoiled — then folded inward.
And the chamber fell silent.
When she stepped outside again, the jungle was still. The night felt heavier, as if the stars themselves were watching her.
Two weeks later, back in New York, she stood in her penthouse overlooking the River.
On the table before her sat a black briefcase locked with thirteen seals, each humming in its own rhythm.
The air around it was wrong — too alive, too aware.
She stared at it for a long time before whispering, "It's done."
Viktor stood by the window, silent.
"You've done the impossible," he said finally. "You've gathered the un-gatherable."
Alice smiled faintly. "Then let's hope the man who asked for them is worth it."
Her reflection caught in the glass — pale, flawless, her blue eyes glowing faintly from exhaustion and triumph.
"Everything he wanted," she murmured.
A pause.
Then, with quiet satisfaction:
"And now, Adrian Atlas… you owe me."
\\\
The city slept restlessly. Even the lights of New York, proud, unending, seemed dimmer that night. Inside her penthouse overlooking the River, Alice sat alone. The black briefcase rested on the glass table before her, its thirteen wards still shimmering faintly like veins of fire.
Now and then, it breathed.
A pulse.
A whisper.
A reminder that what she'd brought together wasn't meant to exist side by side. The walls around her were filled with trophies, maps, weapons, and portraits from centuries of influence.
But none of it mattered now.
None of it felt real.
Viktor entered quietly, removing his hat as he stepped closer. His eyes went to the case immediately.
"So it's done," he said softly.
Alice nodded. "All of it."
He exhaled through his nose. "Do you even know what you've brought into this room?"
"I know enough," she replied.
"That's not an answer."
She smiled faintly. "No. It isn't."
The silence stretched. Somewhere far below, the muffled hum of the city sounded like the ocean. Finally, Viktor said, "They're talking, Alice. Everyone. The Den, the Ministry, even the shadow guilds. You've shaken the tree, and they all want to know what fell from it."
Alice leaned back in her chair, eyes fixed on the glowing case. "Let them talk."
"This isn't gossip, girl. The Vatican branch has already put a price on your name. The Russians froze your accounts. The Japanese want to take your money." He paused, his tone darkening. "And Grindelwald's men have started asking questions."
At that, her gaze finally lifted.
"Grindelwald?" She asked.
Viktor nodded. "He's raising an army again. He's hunting someone. The same man who hired you."
Alice's lips parted in a silent exhale. "Adrian Atlas."
Viktor leaned closer. "You're standing on the edge of something you don't understand."
She rose to her feet and walked to the window. Rain streaked down the glass, cutting the city lights into ribbons. "I've been on the edge my whole life," she said. "That's where the real view is."
Viktor snorted. "And when the ground gives way? Huh, what will you do then?"
"Then I fly." Her hand brushed over the black case — the wards flared, faint runes blooming across her wrist. She didn't flinch. The pain was a promise, a bond sealed tighter than blood.
"You're going to deliver it to him?" Viktor asked.
"Yes. He'll come for it soon enough."
Viktor hesitated. "And what then? You think a man who is viewed like a god by many will remember a debt to you?"
Alice turned to him, her eyes catching the faint reflection of the relics' light. "I don't expect him to remember, Viktor. I expect him to need me again." There was something in her voice, a quiet hunger that wasn't about power or wealth, but curiosity. A fascination with the abyss she'd seen.
Later that night, she poured herself a glass of wine and sat at the edge of the balcony. The air was cold, the rain light now.
From a distance, the hum of magic brushed the edge of her senses — faint, steady, familiar.
A smile touched her lips. "He's coming."
She didn't need to look to know it was true. Somewhere in the web of the world, Adrian Atlas had felt the pull of her message; now it was only time.
Inside the case pulsed once more — the glow merging, threads of gold and black intertwining.
Alice leaned closer to the sound, her blue eyes glinting with fascination. She ran her fingers lightly along the metal locks.
"Tell me, Adrian," she whispered into the rain, "what kind of man needs those things? Just what are you planning… "
The wards flickered again, and for just an instant, she thought she saw movement in the reflection of the glass — a figure in the shadows beyond her balcony, silent, watching.
But when she turned, there was nothing.
Only the storm.
"Haven't you heard of the phrase 'Curiosity got the cat'?" She felt it, no, him, behind her.
"Haven't you heard that sneaking up on a lady is a bad sign of character?" She fired back. Her face was still froward, and a smile involuntarily appeared on her face.
"Well, here I thought that chivalry was dead in the 20th century." As he said those words, she turned to face him.
He was tall, she thought, taller than her; he stood above 1.9 meters tall, his hair black as the night, it was messy, but it gave him a strange charm. His eyes, though, were deep and calm like the moon. His clothes, she noted, were different; he wore blue jeans, a pair of black boots, and a black hoodie.
" Chivalry, Adrian, will never be dead, at least as long as there are women." She said, her body now dangerously close to Adrian's.
The silence between them was electric.
Rain whispered across the balcony, glinting like molten silver under the city lights. Alice's perfume — faint, dark, with a note of jasmine mixed with the scent of magic.
Adrian stood inches away from her now, his presence steady, unhurried, "curious."
Alice tilted her head, a teasing smile playing on her lips. "And what does the mighty Adrian Atlas do with curiosity, I wonder? Dissect it? Or seduce it?"
He smiled. "Depends which is more… educational."
She laughed — low, genuine, the sound warm enough to cut through the rain. "You don't talk like most men I meet in this business."
"That's because most men you meet," he replied, "don't survive long enough to finish the conversation."
Alice's blue eyes gleamed. "Fair point."
Her gaze flicked to the black briefcase still pulsing faintly on the glass table. "You came for this," she said. "It wasn't easy."
Adrian's eyes followed the case — calm, unreadable. "I don't imagine anything worth having is."
He walked toward it, his footsteps slow and measured. The air around the briefcase trembled as he approached, reacting to his presence like something alive.
Without hesitation, Adrian extended his right hand. A faint seal unfolded into a circular pattern, rotating silently. The briefcase shimmered, the thirteen wards recognizing the magic before them. The air pulsed once — and then the case dissolved into pure light, drawn into the ring on Adrian's palm.
Alice blinked, momentarily caught off guard. "You stored it… inside a ring?"
"Yes," Adrian said quietly, lowering his hand. "Inside a ring."
He showed her — a simple, dark ring carved with sigils. It absorbed the light until nothing remained. "Safer this way."
Alice leaned forward, intrigued. "Storage magic of that scale should be impossible. I've only ever seen—"
"—half of what's possible," he finished smoothly.
For a moment, they just looked at each other — the silence alive with unspoken thoughts. Then Alice smiled, slow and deliberate.
" I am having dinner, would you care to join me?" She asked, not as a question, but as an invitation wrapped in command.
Adrian's brow lifted. "Dinner?"
She moved closer, her voice dropping to a soft murmur. "It's the least I can offer to a man who just broke every law of containment magic in my living room."
He studied her for a heartbeat glint of mischief in her eyes, the sharpness behind her calm. "Luckily, it's the only law I have broken, or else I fear dinner would not be enough." He said, his eyes held the same mischief as hers did.
She did not shy away from eye contact, but her smile was a bit warmer, he thought.
Then, with a faint smirk, he nodded. "Very well. Lead the way."
They crossed the hall in silence, but not a quiet one.
The rhythm of her heels echoed against the marble, each step calculated, deliberate. Adrian watched the sway of her waist, the subtle tilt of her hips, the way her magic, faint but controlled, flickered around her like perfume.
Her red dress shimmered with movement, hugging every curve. Now and then, she would glance over her shoulder, just enough for her blue eyes to meet his before turning forward again.
It wasn't accidental.
And Adrian?
Adrian was enjoying the show.