In Magnolia, in an ordinary home.
After dinner, the family sat together by the living-room stove, enjoying the free time on the night before the festival.
"I can't wait for the Harvest Festival tomorrow!"
A little boy sprawled on the windowsill, legs swinging, eyes sparkling with excitement. "My classmate said Fairy Tail is going to do some super awesome magic!"
"That's called the 'Magic Parade,' not just a performance," his mother said with a smile as she ironed the clothes they'd wear tomorrow. "But even after living here for so many years, Fairy Tail still manages to surprise us every time. I wonder what new tricks they'll pull this year—I'm excited too."
"Yeah." His father set down the newspaper and took a sip of hot tea. "As long as they don't tear up the streets like they did the year before last…"
They chatted animatedly in a warm, cozy atmosphere.
Then the mother suddenly paused, frowning. She lifted a hand and waved it in front of her nose in disgust. "Why does it stink so bad…? Honey, do you smell that?"
"Hm?" The father sniffed.
A stench he couldn't even describe forced its way into his nose—like sludge that had been rotting in a sewer for a hundred years, like the reek of a decaying swamp.
"Now that you mention it… yeah. It's coming from outside."
He stood up, puzzled, and walked over to the window.
"Probably a clogged drain somewhere. I'll close the window."
But the instant he pushed it open and looked outside, his whole body locked up.
"T-This is—"
The familiar street was gone.
In its place was a suffocating gloom.
The deep night sky had turned a heavy, oppressive lead-gray, like it might collapse at any moment.
It was as if the entire city had been lifted and dropped onto a dead, silent lakeside.
And down in the streets, countless streams of black, viscous sludge were flowing and churning without a sound—like a living tide, crawling up walls and squeezing into cracks, climbing higher and higher.
"Glug… glug…"
Bubbles rose with a nauseating clarity.
"Quick! Block the door!!"
The father snapped out of it, shouting in terror as he saw a wave of black muck about to spill over the threshold.
"W-What?!" The mother jolted.
"Don't ask—just block it! Grab something! It's coming in!"
He charged for the entrance, bracing his body against the door. The mother, still not understanding, panicked and ran over with a chair and whatever else she could grab.
It did nothing.
The sludge didn't behave like a solid at all. It simply ignored the closed door, slipping through it like a ghost—passing through the barrier with zero resistance and flooding into the house.
"What the hell is this thing?!"
The father backed up, shielding his wife and child, drenched in sweat as he watched something so blatantly impossible.
"Is this Fairy Tail's doing?" the mother whispered, trembling.
"No way—" the father insisted, dead serious. "Fairy Tail would never pull a prank this disgusting!"
Just then, the little boy—still on the table—was overcome with curiosity.
While his parents weren't paying attention, he reached out without thinking, trying to touch the rippling black muck.
"Don't touch that!!"
His mother shrieked, lunging to stop him.
She didn't know what it was, but the look and the smell alone screamed danger.
But it was too late.
The boy's fingers had already made contact.
Yet the revolting, sticky sensation he'd expected never came.
His fingers passed straight through the black sludge and slapped the wooden floor with a crisp smack.
"…?"
The boy blinked, as if he'd discovered a whole new world. He waved his hand again, swishing his palm back and forth through the "mud" like he was cutting through air.
"Mom! It's fake! You can't touch it!"
The parents froze—then both let out long, shaky breaths.
To make sure it wasn't just their imaginations, the father swallowed, crouched down, and—forcing himself—reached out to touch the sludge.
Sure enough.
His hand went straight through.
Visually, it looked thick and wet. The stench felt real enough to make your eyes water. But to the touch, it was nothing—empty.
"It's… an illusion!"
The father exhaled hard, wiping sweat off his forehead as the tension finally drained out of his body.
"That scared me half to death…"
He couldn't be blamed—what was happening outside was so bizarre, so oppressive, and that smell was so vivid it was impossible not to believe it was real.
"Then this is definitely Fairy Tail's fault!"
Now that he knew there was no immediate danger, the father immediately flipped his stance—despite insisting a second ago it "couldn't be Fairy Tail."
"No matter what, Makarov went too far this time! Who pulls a stunt like this on the night before the Harvest Festival?! How are people supposed to sleep with that smell?!"
Magnolia's unspoken rule:
When the city is in danger, Fairy Tail is the most reassuring thing in the world.
When the city isn't in danger, Fairy Tail is the biggest danger.
So obviously—this had to be Fairy Tail pulling nonsense again.
"Yeah! It stinks so bad—how are we supposed to sleep?" the mother complained too, checking their son over and over to make sure he hadn't been frightened into tears.
"Stinky!" the boy pinched his nose and chimed in.
That emotional whiplash—terror → relief → outrage—spread through Magnolia in minutes, like a virus.
Meanwhile, inside Fairy Tail.
Makarov stared at the "black sludge" now covering the guild hall—so deep it nearly reached people's ankles—and his face crumpled hard enough to squeeze a fly to death.
"What in the world is this garbage?!"
If they hadn't already confirmed it was just an incredibly realistic illusion, he wouldn't have been able to sit still for a second.
But precisely because it was harmless, his headache about public fallout outweighed any relief about safety.
"We're finished… the townspeople are absolutely going to think we did this…"
He covered his face in agony.
"And of course it happens on the Harvest Festival eve! How am I supposed to explain this tomorrow?!"
He whipped his head around and glared at Gildarts, who was still drinking like nothing mattered.
"Hey! Take this seriously for once!"
"What's the big deal?" Gildarts wiped his mouth. "It doesn't actually hurt anything."
Then he squinted at the sludge and the gloom outside. "Besides… this illusion's crazy good. Even the smell's accurate. Which genius pulled this off?"
He was about to toss out a few lazy words to calm the old man down—
When his expression sharpened.
He snapped his head toward the street, eyes suddenly razor-focused.
"Mm. You feel that too, old man?" He set his cup down, voice low.
Makarov's face went stiff. "A huge—and extremely strange—magic power."
The two exchanged a look and stood up in sync.
They didn't alert the guild members still poking at the fake sludge with curiosity. They simply strode out through the front doors.
Outside had completely transformed.
Sky and ground were drowned in darkness—Magnolia felt like it had fallen into a bottomless, dead well.
"Who's casting an illusion on this scale, and what do they want?" Makarov scanned the warped city, worry etched into every line.
Gildarts followed the direction of the pressure they'd sensed, gaze locking on the far end of the street.
There, something… wrong shuffled forward.
A strange figure, wrapped in black muck—or shadow—was slowly wandering down the road, inching closer.
"What is that?" Gildarts narrowed his eyes. "Doesn't look human—and yet that magic power is insane."
"No matter what you are—"
Makarov stepped forward, planting himself in front of the guild entrance. Golden magic light flickered in his hand.
"Don't come any closer to the guild!"
His voice was deadly serious.
As one of the Ten Wizard Saints, he could feel it—whatever that thing was, it was deeply ominous, and—
Strong.
But the unknown "creature" ignored him completely.
It kept advancing with that same eerie rhythm, dragging itself nearer.
"Hmph."
Makarov stopped wasting breath and fired a probing light spell.
A beam shot out—dead on target.
And passed straight through.
No impact. No resistance.
The spell continued on and blasted the street stones behind it, kicking up dust and debris.
"…Also an illusion?"
Makarov frowned. He relaxed a fraction—yet the oppressive feeling didn't ease at all.
"This kind of anomaly… what is it?"
Gildarts scratched his head, equally baffled. "This is ridiculous. That disgusting magic is practically in my ear—pressure right up in my face—so real it feels physical—and it's still an illusion?"
Elsewhere, at the cottage in the eastern outskirts.
As the "sludge" poured outward from its source, Erza was the first to notice something wrong with Shane's room.
That unsettling presence was leaking through the door crack, along with the black mud-like illusion.
"Shane… what is he doing in there?"
Erza stood in the hallway, unaware that the entire city was already being swallowed by the same phenomenon.
Her heart twisted in two directions at once—she didn't want to barge in and mess up his training, but she couldn't shake the fear that something had gone wrong.
After ten agonizing minutes, worry finally won.
"Enough!"
She took a deep breath, grabbed the doorknob, and twisted hard.
Click.
The door swung open.
And what greeted her wasn't a normal bedroom.
The small space had stretched—expanded—becoming impossibly vast.
As far as she could see: a dim, dead swamp, thick with stinking sludge.
"Shane?!"
Her heart lurched. She scanned frantically for that familiar figure.
But she couldn't see him anywhere.
She was about to step inside—
When her gaze froze.
In the center of that black lake of filth…
Glug… glug…
Bubbles burst.
And a pale, long-fingered hand—white and elegant—slowly, slowly rose out of the mire.
~~~
Patreon(.)com/Bleam
— Currently You can Read 120 Chapters Ahead of Others!