Nadia and Tymon sneak backstage at the Luminello Circus and find a locked chest marked DO NOT OPEN, but someone is already coming for it.
The day the Luminello Circus rolled into town, Nadia and Tymon could think of nothing else. By evening, the old football field had vanished under a giant striped tent, and the whole place glowed as if it were hiding a second moon.
From the seats, the show was dazzling: acrobats spinning on ropes far above the ring, clowns appearing in flashes of smoke, an illusionist making a penguin vanish and then showering the audience with bright paper butterflies. But Nadia kept watching the shadows behind the curtain. That was where the real secrets were.
After school, the two friends hurried around the side of the tent until they found a tear in the canvas, half hidden behind a stack of crates. Nadia ducked through first. Tymon followed, and at once they were in another world, where ropes hung from the ceiling, metal trunks sat in crooked piles, and cages with velvet covers waited in the dim light.
It smelled of sugar, dust, and straw. Someone laughed nearby, then a stagehand wheeled past with a bundle of masks under one arm. Tymon froze. Nadia pressed closer to the wall and spotted a brass key resting on an upturned barrel, as if it had been left there on purpose.
On the floor beside it stood a wooden chest the size of a suitcase. It was covered in strange symbols, all sharp lines and curling loops, and an old poster had been slapped across the lid in red paint: DO NOT OPEN!
Nadia’s fingers closed around the key before she could change her mind. The lock clicked. The lid creaked.
Something inside moved.
Then heavy footsteps sounded just beyond the curtain, coming straight toward them.