Many contemporary scholars of secularism and the post-secular have noticed that magic, the shared other of both orthodox religion and normative secularism, is flourishing in the realm of popular culture. Following this turn to popular literature and magic, I read the Poppy War fantasy series as an alternative bildungsroman in which the secular’s world-building and subject-formation are disrupted and exposed as themselves “magical” in a postcolonial context. Analyzing the mythic narratives, fluid configurations, and shifting contours in the fantasy series, I invite readers to take up the political and ethical responsibility to reconsider, reimagine, and reinvent our relationship with the magical others and ourselves both in the textual world and real society.