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Hey everyone! I'm trying to get better at SPAG and sentence structure. To that end, I'd greatly appreciate critiques/proof reading of the below passage. I've attempted to apply what I learned from reviews in it.

The Prophet of the Baleful Moon

"There is a malevolent force that resides on the moon. Allow me to explain."

Despite having heard it before, the hoarseness of your own voice catches you off-guard. You used to fancy yourself a skilled orator before the incident. Now, it physically hurts you to even string two sentences together. Regardless, you know that this final speech is probably the most important one in your entire life. You had to put up with this whole farce of a trial to acquire this opportunity. After all, it was against the laws of the Magician's Hall to interrupt a defendant's closing argument. You were going to exploit that simple fact to the fullest. You'd be damned if you were going to let your body get in the way; there was simply too much at stake.

"In earlier ages, magicians tended to rely more on visualization and feeling to cast their spells. We took those spells and researched the phenomena behind them, refining our own knowledge of magic. With the development of magical formulae, we were able to shape magic into whatever we needed it to be, and civilization thrived as a result. However, we had left one class of magic behind: Eclipse magic."

"We only knew two things about Eclipse magic: that it was powerful, and that nearly every community of magicians that had encountered it had prohibited its usage rigorously. I believed that there was some secret hidden within those profane spells, and so I pored over countless texts and documents hoping to reconstruct them. Eventually I found what I was looking for: an ancient recipe for an eclipse spell. I believed that if I could cast the magic and stop just before releasing the spell, then I would be able to transcribe it into a formula. All I would have to do then is to dismantle that formula, identify the unknown elements and repurpose those elements to be able wield the power of the eclipse freely."

"Months passed. Preparations were made. When the Eclipse came, I was ready to uncover the secrets of a forgotten magic. I was not, however, ready to make contact with that thing. As I cast the spell, it filled my mind with visions I could've never imagined myself, and with feelings that no human could possibly feel naturally. I realized that I was being turned into a mere conduit for its wrathful will. When I attempted to terminate the spell by force, it turned its wrath onto me instead. It had its way with me for what I've been told was three days, using my own magic to tear me apart, putting me back together in its own twisted way."

"Hold on now!" you hear a nasal voice exclaim from somewhere above you. "You really expect us to believe this story of yours? It's abundantly clear to everyone here that you attempted to perform a spell beyond what you were capable of. These delusions of yours are just your way of coping with the fact that you messed up and suffered from a high-power spell backfiring. You don't even have any proof of some greater being sabotaging your spell."

You smile. The voice sounded like it belonged to Gilles. He was always a nasty upstart with a chip on his shoulder. In this instance, however, you were thankful for his impudent outburst.

"You want proof, do you?" you ask as you begin to rise out of your wheelchair. The lack of strength in your ravaged muscles combined with the malformed shape of your body make it a difficult task. Even after you manage to stand on your feet, it takes considerable effort to straighten your body. You aren't able do so completely, but it's alright. What matters is that they can have a good look at your face from their elevated seats.

Clumsily, you claw away the bandages covering your face. You've been told that it's quite a grotesque sight, that your skin had sloughed off, and that your eyes had melted away, leaving only hollow sockets in their place. You hear gasps of horror. Satisfied with the reaction, you continue speaking.

"A spell backfire of this magnitude should've killed me. That thing prevented me from dying because it wanted me to suffer. I am still alive, and I still suffer: THAT is your proof!" you say emphatically before collapsing back into your wheelchair. You hear loud murmurs break out amidst the onlookers.

"Order! ORDER!" you hear Farian's voice boom in front of you. Silence falls upon the courtroom once more. After a moment, Farian continues, "Master Viro, the closing argument is the last opportunity you have to defend yourself from the charges levelled against you. Many lives were lost in the catastrophe that happened. Please continue while keeping that in mind."

"Understood, your honor," you say. You once considered Farian a friend, but he had different interests. He played an active part in the politics of the Magician's hall while you dug deeper and focused on your research. In the end, he ended up in a position where he was the best person to act on the truth you had discovered. It seemed like the two of you had walked the paths you were destined for. It had all led up to this moment. With your resolve strengthened, you continue.

"There is a malevolent force that resides on the moon. My theory is that its power is somehow hindered by the sun's light. Eclipses afford it the opportunity to hide from the sun and strongly exert its baleful influence upon us," you pause. Up until this point, you have spoken somewhat logically. Your next statement, however, was purely your own testimony. It was based on the memory of that thing's influence on your mind. You hoped that your peers would believe you.

"It isn't enough to ban Eclipse magic. It isn't enough to make an example of a fool like me. I felt the nature of that thing's fury within my mind. It's hard to describe it, but the one word I wouldn't use for it is 'impotent'. Even if we prevent humans from becoming conduits for it, it will still find a way to descend and destroy us all. My brothers and sisters, we must prepare. Prepare for the descension of the Baleful Moon! The fate of humanity depends on it."

Silence greets the end of your speech. Abruptly, you remember the situation you are in.

"Ah yes. I rest my case," you say.

"Very well then," you hear Farian's voice again. "We will reconvene in two hours with our verdict. Court is now in recess."

As soon as Farian bangs his gavel, you hear a great rabble. You are wheeled away amidst the sound of fervent arguing. You smile. You don't really care what the verdict will be. Your work here is done.

I wasn't really planning to read this all right now, but the first sentence caught my attention and the story really remained interesting throughout. I will say I wasn't really scanning for SPAG mistakes, but I didn't see any.
The amount of information I got here without it being just thrown at me is impressive. You built a whole world and at least two characters in it, both with backstories, in less words than a thunderdome entry.
To sum it up, this is actually really good. Kudos

Thanks for taking the time to read it. I was a little worried whether readers would feel like I was info-dumping. I'm glad to hear that you enjoyed it. :]

Like fresh said I also didn't notice any spag mistakes. More than anything I ended up not even caring to rate your spag after a certain point and just enjoyed what you wrote instead. I'd love to see you make this into a story if you're not already doing so, it's a really cool concept which has already established your main antagonist, seemingly in the first page (if this is your first page).

I've recently been reading a web novel called shadow slave, for some reason this short except reminded me of it, especially the other worldly antagonist and the horrors it may Come to inflict on the world, kudos.

Thanks for reading. I generally like the idea of scientific concepts being mixed into fantasy/magic settings. My Harry Potter head canon is that electrical devices don't work in Hogwarts because magic itself has an electric nature. If muggles were actually allowed to research magic, they would probably be able to create magic amplification/nullification devices.

In this story's case, I wanted a logical explanation why something like an eclipse would allow magicians to cast stronger spells. It's not really a part of any greater story at the moment. I might consider reusing concepts from this elsewhere though. :]

Have you read Merlin: Origins?

Seems really interesting! I'll give it a read through when I can.

I've read this over a couple of times.  Really well done.  No SPAG issues that I could find.  Solid characterization and scene painting.  Looking forward to seeing the rest of this story.  Similar creepy vibes to the Local 58 youtube channel, just obviously not modern: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BD-ba-aXQo

Thanks for reading. I'll give these videos a looksie. It could lead to some new inspiration. :]

Two errors that I noticed are that you don't need closing double quotation marks at the end of paragraph quotations when the next paragraph is just more dialogue by the same speaker (though more and more people are making that mistake nowadays, so who knows) and "He played an active part in the politics of the Magician's hall" the h in hall should be capitalized like it was earlier, being a proper noun.

Ooh, good catch on the name capitalization. I should probably keep a list of names I use in any work. I could then search across the document after it's completed for any place where I didn't capitalize a name properly.

The quotes thing though... Opening quotation marks and not closing them in the same paragraph makes me feel weird. I think I would rather end every quote paragraph with 'you say' or just deliberately break up the speech somehow to keep the opening and closing quotes in the same paragraph. Maybe that's just me being a weirdo. XD

No, I'm the same way.
Well... maybe that doesn't make you not a weirdo, but you're not the only weirdo

Haha, at least I have good company! XD

the best

I had to get used to the formatting of quotes myself when I read books when I was younger. Still, it's helpful not to end punctuation marks at the end of a sentence if you're continuing the person's dialogue in the next sentence.

I also really like this short entry here. It's very well written and you've gotten me curious about a wizarding world with sociopolitical elements. I'd love to see more.

Thanks for reading. :]

I suppose it does make sense to allow quotations to span over multiple paragraphs for monologues. I'm just worried that a reader would find themselves several paragraphs in wondering whether what they are reading is narration or dialogue. Backtracking across paragraphs looking for a tiny quotation mark seems like a pain. I could try changing the font color or italicizing all dialogue text to avoid that issue.

I didn't see any issues with SPAG, I thought that for the most part, your grammar and spelling were on point. If you're interested in improving SPAG and sentence structure, I just wanted to give a shoutout to Gryphon's sentence workshop.

Gryphon held this sentence structure workshop about a month ago, where he had people submit samples of their writing for critique and line-by-line edits. I learned about making line-edits there, and I'll drop the link here because I thought it was really good. Gryphon's sentence structure workshop

I learned a lot there, and I highly encourage you to read through everyone's submissions and the critique given there, if you haven't already.

Once you've read through some line-edits, make your own! Go through the passage, and see things that you might want to improve, and I promise you, do this 2 or 3 times and it will really pay off! Keep the following in mind when editing: grammar, sentence structure flow, information delivery, characterization, showing vs telling, setting tone, and tenses.

I really enjoyed this story. It was really amazing, and I thought the world building was really cool.I really hope you make this into a full story game, I thought the failed experiment writing, how his eyes burned into his sockets, that was really cool. I recently watched Arcane, and this failed experiment was reminiscent of arcane, in a good way, like this passage matched arcane's vibe. It felt like Viro is Jace, and he becomes Viktor when he gets the accident. I also see hints of Professor Heimerdinger in Viro's caution in banning Eclipse magic.

Ahh yes, I remember seeing the workshop in progress. Unfortunately, I couldn't participate actively because of other commitments. I'll be sure to have a look at the thread.

Also, I really should binge watch Arcane at some point.