This audiobook is narrated by a digital voice.

The rain drummed against the windows of Mira Chen's downtown studio apartment, each droplet catching the neon glow from the street below and fracturing it into a thousand tiny rainbows. She pressed her camera to the glass, adjusting the focus until the city lights blurred into abstract brushstrokes of color. This was her favorite kind of night—when the ordinary world transformed into something magical through her lens.

"Perfect," she whispered, clicking the shutter. The camera captured what her eyes saw: a world where reality bent at the edges, where shadows held secrets and light told stories.

Mira had been a photographer for seven years, ever since graduating from art school with more dreams than practical sense. She specialized in urban landscapes, finding beauty in forgotten corners of the city where others saw only decay. Her work had been featured in several local galleries, though she still struggled to make ends meet in her cramped studio that doubled as both home and workspace.

What set her apart from other photographers wasn't just her technical skill—it was something else, something she couldn't quite name. She seemed to capture things that weren't quite there, details that appeared in her photographs but not to the naked eye. Wisps of light that looked almost like figures, shadows that seemed to move between frames, reflections that showed more than what stood before the mirror.

Her friends jokingly called it the "Mira magic," but she had begun to wonder if there was more truth to that phrase than anyone realized.

Thunder rolled across the sky, and Mira stepped back from the window. She needed to get these photos uploaded to her computer before her client meeting tomorrow. The Morrison Gallery had commissioned her to create a series showcasing the hidden beauty of the city's oldest district—the very area where she now lived. If this project went well, it could launch her career to the next level.