#and when that belief is engraved into every rock and groove and tile and brick

[peppermintquartz]

So in a world where belief makes reality, in several decades on, you're gonna find someone in Ankh Morpork who swears that they saw a copper emerge from the shadows, lit only by a cigar and surrounded by a faint sheen of smoke, and it will smell like rain even if it isn't raining, and this man will say something like "I'll stop doing that right now if I were you, kid," then if the someone was doing something they shouldn't have been doing they sure won't be doing it after seeing him just disappear into the shadows after they take a swing at him.

And if what they had been doing was something really bad, well, then the man doesn't even speak. He just emerges between them and their would-be victim. And then a flash of darkness, a sense of immense age, and a flick of a tail.