Night duty at the former weather station was usually quiet, almost meditative. The wind rustled in the spruce trees and the Moonlight Hall glowed dully behind the glass of the control room. Lena, a geology student earning extra money in the summer, counted her steps among the display cabinets of maps and barometers. For weeks, one spot on the floor had whispered under her shoe like a taut membrane. Grandma had once told her that there was a threshold under the Hall that was not marked on any plan. It had been built by the old surveyors and then forgotten because the horizon stopped agreeing with them. Lena treated it as folklore, until the night when the stone slab really started to tremble. The clock chimed twelve o'clock, and the smell of wet chalk and the distant sea came from the ventilation grille. The lights dimmed for a second, the emergency lamp buzzed, and Lena knelt by the disputed square of floor. She undermined the grout with a penknife, as she kept tools that liked to have multiple uses in her duty station. The slab lifted like the lid of a box, revealing a metal ring, cool with rhytes resembling edge lines. When she touched the marks, they trembled like strings and reflected the milky lamplight in trembling circles. - Hello, Stefan? - she tried to call the warehouse, but the phone only answered with a hum, as if swallowed by a tunnel. In the ring she saw a reflection that was not of her, but of a sky with glassy clouds and tall grasses glowing from below. The air from below melted the dust on the floor, shaping it into circles and then into something resembling letters. She read slowly: LEN..., as the rest was consumed by another tremor, now deeper and more decisive. At the edge of the ring, condensed light dripped like rain, and with each drop, reality split audibly. The arc of the floor gathered to a leap and opened vertically, creating a passage that smelled of salt, moss and promise. On the other side, someone took a step, unhurriedly, as if checking whether it was really still night. - 'If this is a joke, I'll close it right away,' she whispered, and then she saw that the shadow knew her name. Before she had time to withdraw her hand, the air cracked like glass, and a voice from the passage said very clearly: "Lena, it's time." All that was left of the reflex of laughter was a trembling hand; the other world rippled, stretching out towards her like a breath. Beyond the passage she could see terraces of white stone and a river that flowed across the sky without touching the ground. On the nearest terrace something lit up with a short sign, like a beacon cut to human size. My grandmother's amulet, a simple amber on a thin thong, warmed suddenly as if someone was holding it from the other side. From inside the Hall, the clocks in the display cabinets answered him, all at once standing still and the hands pointing evenly at one point - the threshold. On the other side, someone raised a hand, disturbingly familiar in movement, and took another step forward. A sound, like the twisting of ice in a river, swept through the Hall as the edge of the floor began to splinter into luminous dust. - 'Leno,' repeated the voice, closer than before, and then something pinched her wrist lightly, invitingly.