The Wrong Book

A few hours earlier, before the lights, before the crowd, before any of it -

The real magician, a tall man named Mr. Aldric who had performed at Sunrise's exhibition for years, was getting ready backstage when his phone rang. He frowned at the screen, then answered.

"Hello?"

"Mr. Aldric?" a tired voice said. "This is the city hospital. Your father's been brought in - it's urgent. You should come right away."

The color drained from Aldric's face. "I- yes. Yes, I'm coming."

He hung up, his hands already shaking, and turned to the young man sitting on a stool nearby, nervously polishing a set of brass rings. This was Felix, his assistant of barely two months - eager, quick to learn tricks, but still very new to the real work of the trade.

"Felix," Aldric said, grabbing his coat, "I have to go. Family emergency."

Felix's eyes went wide. "Go? But - the show starts in twenty minutes! There's no one else who-"

"You'll do it," Aldric said firmly, already halfway to the door. "You know the routine. The scarves, the coins, the floating candle - you've practiced all of it a hundred times."

"And the disappearing box?" Felix asked, panic creeping into his voice.

Aldric paused at the door. "Don't do the disappearing trick tonight. It's too advanced for-"

"I can do it," Felix said quickly. "I've watched you do it so many times, I know the words, I-"

"Felix." Aldric's voice turned sharp, the kind of sharp that came from years of experience and a healthy respect for things he didn't fully understand himself. "If you insist on doing it, there's an orange book in the cupboard backstage. Use only that one. It's the safe version - it'll undo the trick properly. Do you understand me? The orange book. Nothing else."

"Orange book. Got it," Felix said, nodding fast.

Aldric gave him one last look, torn between worry and the urgency clawing at his chest, then turned and ran.

Felix stood alone backstage for a moment, heart hammering, before hurrying to the small wooden cupboard in the corner. He yanked the doors open.

Inside sat several books, stacked unevenly - a thin orange one near the top, just as Aldric had said.

But tucked behind it, half-hidden in shadow, was another book. Old. Bound in cracked brown leather, its cover worn smooth in places like it had been touched by hundreds of hands over hundreds of years. There were no markings on the cover except a strange symbol stamped faintly into the leather, almost worn away entirely.

Felix had never seen it before. Not once, in two months of organizing this very cupboard.

Curious, he thought, reaching past the orange book without really deciding to. He picked up the old one instead, turning it over in his hands, running his thumb along the cracked spine.

It's probably just an older version of the same trick, he told himself. Looks more impressive too. The kids will love it.

He told himself a lot of things in that moment - that it was probably fine, that one old book couldn't be so different from another, that Aldric was just being overly cautious like always.

He didn't open it to check. He didn't even consider it might be something else entirely.

He simply tucked the ancient book into his coat pocket, picked up his hat, and walked out to begin the show -

completely unaware that the words written inside that book were nothing like the ones in the orange one at all.

By the time he realized something was wrong -

standing on that stage, sweat beading on his forehead, flipping desperately through pages he couldn't read fast enough -

it was already far too late.

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