New York, 1923. Wilhelm Taube is twelve years old, an orphan running from a workhouse that treats its children like slaves. He ducks into an antique shop that shouldn't exist, hiding in a massive wardrobe while men from the orphanage search the streets.

EISENGLASS ANTIQUES AND CONSIGNMENT reads the sign. The shop is dark, silent, filled with treasures from centuries past—a Queen Anne secretaire, medieval armor, meerschaum pipes, jewelry that belonged to queens.

And a cornhusk doll. Faceless. Simple. Utterly out of place among the opulence.

At midnight, Wilhelm discovers why the doll matters. The shop fills with ghosts—spirits bound to the objects they loved most, reliving their defining moments for eternity. A woman writes love letters that will never arrive. A sailor smokes a pipe, watching horizons only he can see. A child sings in Russian to a baby that isn't there.

But one ghost is different. Liesel, a girl who died in the winter of 1848, sees him clearly. She tells him about the shop's secret: an obsidian mirror that grants wishes to those who want them with their whole heart.

Wilhelm has nothing in the world but his father's broken pocket watch and a lifetime of running ahead of him. But Liesel offers him something he's never had: a place to belong. A family that will never leave. An eternity among the treasures and the ghosts.

All he has to do is wish.

The post on The Veil Archives was three years old and had only four comments. But the details matched accounts going back to the 1800s: a carnival that appears deep in the wilderness, never in the same place twice. Lights and music where no lights should be. People who enter and never return. And those who do come back... changed.

Ronald Davis has researched paranormal phenomena for six years without ever seeing anything he couldn't explain. When he convinces his ghost-hunting group—Reggie, Jason, Crystal, and the chronically overlooked Lois—to investigate, he hopes to finally find proof.

What they find is Schuld's Travelling Wonder.

Real. Impossible. Beautiful in ways that make the skin crawl. A ringmaster in crimson welcomes them with a smile that promises everything and costs more than they know.

One by one, the group separates. Reggie follows a beautiful woman into the House of Horrors and sees every cruelty he's ever committed played back in scenes that close around him like walls. Jason follows a clown into the Freak Show and meets the twisted reflections of everyone who bent themselves to become something they weren't. Crystal rides the Tunnel of Love and learns what it means to be truly empty.

Only Ronald and Lois escape with gifts: footage that will make them famous, and a mirror that shows a beautiful face. But gifts from the carnival always come with a price—and the corruption has already begun.

The shop wasn't there on Monday.

Between the dry cleaner's and the nail salon, where Karen Singleton has walked every day for three years, a door now stands. CURIOS & CONSIDERATIONS, the sign reads. EST. 1887. Below that: The Perfect Thing for the Perfect Person.

Inside, a man named Mr. Considine listens. He doesn't interrupt. Doesn't judge. Doesn't offer platitudes about forgiveness. He just asks one question: Is there someone in your life who's wronged you?

Karen thinks about Dr. Goodfellow. The affair. The promises. The promotion she earned on her back that went to someone else who was better at the game. She tells Mr. Considine everything.

He offers three gifts to choose from. A ring that poisons its wearer slowly, blackening the skin from finger to heart. A clock that counts down to the moment of death, its ticking inescapable. And an antique surgeon's kit—including a lobotomy set—that compels its recipient to perform the procedure on themselves.

The price? A drop of blood. A piece of soul.

But Karen isn't the only customer. And the gifts work exactly as promised. And when your enemy dies screaming, someone else might be shopping for a gift... with your name on the tag.