Hamburg at night is never just Hamburg.

When the fog rises from the Elbe and slides silently between the brick walls of the Speicherstadt, something ancient awakens.
Something that has always been there.
Watching. Waiting.

I didn’t believe in magic.

Until I found the book.

It was a cold December afternoon on Mönckebergstraße. Christmas lights shimmered in the early dusk, and I was searching for a gift for my girlfriend.

That’s when I saw the shop.

It hadn’t been there before.

A narrow antique bookstore, squeezed between two modern storefronts. The green wooden sign above the door carried faded golden letters. I stepped inside.

The smell hit me first — leather, dust, time.

And then I saw it.

An old leather-bound book with strange symbols pressed into its cover. Alchemical symbols.

When I opened it…

The pages were blank.

Except for one handwritten note:

"Show me, I who was born in a leap year.
— Nicolas Flamel"

Flamel.

The legendary alchemist.

I laughed.

And then I heard the whisper.

I don’t know why I said the word.

Maybe curiosity. Maybe something else.

“APARECIUM.”

The pages began to fill.

Ink formed out of nothing. Letters wrote themselves.
A recipe appeared.

Fog Soup – One hour of invisibility

Ingredients:

• A drop of morning dew from the Elbe
• Ivy from St. Michael’s Church
• North Sea salt
• Three captured shadows from the Speicherstadt
• A breath of mist from the Landungsbrücken

I should have left.

Instead… I followed the recipe.

When I drank the soup, the cold spread through me like winter itself.

I ran to the mirror.

I was gone.

Invisible.

Hamburg lay before me like a secret world finally unlocked.
The harbour cranes moved in silence.
Dockworkers passed through me without knowing.

The city had another face.

And it was watching me.

The book led me further.

Beneath a bar in St. Pauli, behind a door that did not exist the night before, I found something impossible:

An underground alchemist’s market.

Creatures.
Merchants.
Glowing potions.
Books that breathed.

And one woman who looked at me and said:

“The book chose you.”

Beneath the Speicherstadt, deeper than the canals, older than the city itself, I found the treasure of the alchemists.

Gold infused with elemental power.

Fire.
Water.
Air.
Earth.

But the gold was cursed.

And someone did not want the balance restored.

When I tried to return the gold to the elements, the water began to rage.

Neptune rose from the Elbe.

Angry.

Ancient.

Demanding.

“You dare to challenge the sea?”

And in that moment, I understood:

Hamburg is not just a port city.

It is a battleground between worlds.

Mermaids.
Goblins.
The Klabautermann.
Ancient catacombs beneath the Rathaus.
A ritual that would decide the fate of the city.

And me — an ordinary man who only wanted to buy a Christmas present.

A magical adventure set in the heart of Hamburg.

Magic Between the Elbe and Speicherstadt
A novel about hidden worlds, alchemy, and the invisible forces that shape our reality.