Morrigan Crow and the Ghostly Hour

Chapter 4: Courage Square

A cool morning breeze swept through Courage Square as Morrigan and Hawthorne stood on the quiet cobblestone ground. Usually Courage Square would be buzzing with life but today it was empty thanks to the amazing distraction conducted by the Wunderous Society. Now all they had to do was contain it. They explained that the size and duration of this time bubble was unpredictable so they must be prepared for anything (that's why they are early) but Morrigan wasn't worried... Well, at least she wasn't panicking her head off. They still had half an hour to go until 10am so it was unlikely that anything would happen until then.

"Why do we have to be part of the distraction again?" Hawthorne sighed. "I mean, last time nothing interesting happened and now we have to stand here for like... an hour or something doing nothing."

"I'm just glad I'm not with Heloise again." Morrigan glanced over her shoulder as she spotted (in another section of the square (in the distance) ) the familiar bright sickly green haired girl in the year above her bothering some unfortunate kid who was unlucky enough to be partnered up with Heloise.

Hawthorne cringed in sympathy. "Yeah. I'd hate to be that guy."

"At least we are partnered up with someone in our Unit this time," Morrigan said.

"Hm. Yeah," he agreed.

Suddenly Morrigan spotted a group of people sprinting towards them. She squinted, Morrigan recognised them. They were her unit.

"We came here to warn you..." Anah weezed, crouching over and holding her side.

"That it's going to come early," continued Thaddea. She glanced over at Anah with concern.

Morrigan's heart raced. "How early?"

Lambeth frowned in thought. "About... half an hour early."

"Wait..." Hawthorne said. "Now is half an hour early-"

Suddenly, the sky cracked open like smashed glass. Like as if someone got a giant hammer and smashed open the sky revealing what seemed to be a silver light shining from within. Everyone looked up. Murmurs could be heard from the inside, getting louder and louder as the cracks spread further and further across the sky, bathing Nevermoor in a silver light brighter than the sun.

They said that it was only going to be at Courage Square, but it seemed to take up all of the surrounding burrows as well.

The murmurs turned into shouts, voices, sounds. The light was blinding, getting brighter and brighter when suddenly...

The light cleared, and when it did, Morrigan gasped.

Fire.

But not just any fire... Wunderous Fire, Inferno.

It was if the whole square was ablaze with Wunderous light but not enough to blind them. In fact, it wasn't even a square it was more like... Ruins of what used to be a street, houses, life. Ruins all except for 9 people who seemed to be in some sort of argument... a disagreement... a fight.

They seemed to have entered an entirely different place and yet it was the same place just... different. Like as if they traveled to the past. No. More like, the past traveled to them, like a memory.

Like a Ghostly Hour, like time travel.

Before Morrigan could even comprehend what she was seeing, a burst of light and sound erupted from the arguing crowd of people and everything quickly dissolved back to normal, leaving unit 919 (and (as a matter of fact) all of Nevermoor) in awe at what they just witnessed. Not that it was a good thing of course...