The Elderwood Kids

The Glimmering Cage

The peace they fought for was an illusion. The real threat was just opening its ledger.

After saving their enchanted town from temporal collapse, Milo, Tess, and Leo have earned their title as Keepers. But their hard-won peace shatters with the arrival of a gaunt man in a perfectly tailored grey suit. He is not a ghost or a monster. He is an appraiser from the Aethereal Bourse, a hidden market that trades in the essence of magic itself.

With a chilling, bureaucratic precision, he begins harvesting Elderwood's soul, siphoning its joy, its memories, and its very magic into a brilliant, captive sphere. He isn't destroying it—he's packaging it for sale.

To save their home, the Elderwood Kids can't fight him with the tools they used before. They must beat him at his own game. Their desperate gambit? To sabotage his investment by making their magic seem worthless. But when their plan backfires, they are forced to make a catastrophic choice: sever the town's magic completely to stop the thief, plunging Elderwood into a silent, colorless void.

The rescue becomes a crisis, and their victory comes with a terrible price. The Appraiser may be gone, but he has left them with a bill—a debt not of money, but of service. Now, they are forced to work for him, containing the dangerous anomalies their actions have unleashed. The case is never closed, the ledger is always open, and the Keepers of Elderwood have become indentured servants to a cosmic power.

The hunt is over. The audit has begun.