Chapter 2 - The Key in the Shadows

Evening came to Wynthorne with the smell of salt and smoke. The square buzzed as villagers hurried to finish their business before the last bell. Fishmongers shouted prices that dropped lower with every passing minute, bakers stacked leftover loaves in baskets, and lanterns flickered to life one by one along the narrow lanes.

Victoria wove through the crowd with Selena and Anthony close behind, the three of them laughing more loudly than most of the weary shoppers.

“I swear the baker has a personal vendetta against me,” Selena huffed, holding up a misshapen loaf. “Every time, he gives me the ugliest one. This one looks like it fell off a cart and got run over.”

Anthony raised his eyebrows. “Maybe he’s just reflecting your personality in bread form.”

Selena gasped, smacking his arm with the loaf while Victoria nearly doubled over laughing. People turned to stare, but the trio was used to that. They always seemed too loud, too strange—at least compared to the quiet order of Wynthorne.

Victoria brushed a strand of dark hair from her eyes, her laughter fading as her gaze strayed to the fountain at the centre of the square. Something about the way the light struck it made her pause. The air above the stone shimmered faintly, like heat haze, though the evening was cool.

She blinked, and it was gone.

“You saw something, didn’t you?” Anthony’s voice cut in softly. He had noticed the way her smile faltered.

Victoria shook her head quickly. “It’s nothing. Just the light.”

But the truth followed her home.

Her family’s cottage sat near the cliffs, its windows open to the sea breeze. By the time she reached her room, dusk had deepened into night, painting everything in shades of blue. She closed the shutters, turned toward her bed—and froze.

There, on the sill, lay an object that had not been there before.

A key.

It was silver, slender, and gleaming as if freshly polished, though its surface felt cool beneath her fingertips. Strange markings ran along its length—runes she didn’t recognize, curling and shifting when she tried to focus on them.

Her breath caught. She knew this key.

Not from Wynthorne, not from any market stall or trinket shop—but from her dreams. She had seen it clutched in her hand as she walked through forests that whispered her name, as she opened doors carved into the stars themselves. Always the same shape, the same glow, the same impossible pull.

Now it was here. Real. Waiting for her.

The voices from her dreams seemed to stir faintly in her mind, soft as the tide against the shore.

Victoria closed her hand around the key, her pulse quickening. For the first time, she couldn’t pretend her difference was only imagination. The world she had always longed for—the one that lived in her dreams—had begun to bleed into her waking life.

And somewhere deep within her, she knew: Wynthorne’s would never again be ordinary

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