In the neon haze of the City of Sparks, three lifelong friends stumble into impossible powers and the attention of a stranger who seems to have been waiting for them.
The City of Sparks never really went dark. Neon bled across wet pavements, tram wires hummed overhead, and the streets kept breathing long after midnight, full of cafés, late arguments, and strangers with nowhere urgent to be. By day it looked ordinary enough. By night it felt like it was holding its breath.
Lena, Bartek, and Karol had grown up inside that restless glow. Nineteen now, they still met in the same cramped café near the station, the one where they had once plotted rooftop expeditions, secret hideouts, and other childhood adventures that never quite stopped being theirs. They told themselves they came for the coffee. They came because the three of them still felt more real together than anywhere else.
That night, the air was heavy with storm rain and the city smelled like metal. Lena cut through the underpass beneath the station, where the walls were layered with old graffiti, tags, symbols, half-faded faces. She was nearly past the tunnel when one drawing made her stop cold: a man with wings, painted in blue and silver, seemed to pulse under the station lights.
She stared. The wings brightened.
Lena reached out before she could think better of it. The paint was warm. A sharp current jolted up her arm, bright enough to make her gasp. Sparks burst behind her eyes, and for one impossible second it felt as if something inside the wall had recognized her.
"Did you see that?" she whispered.
Bartek and Karol were coming down the stairs at the far end of the underpass. Bartek looked from the mural to Lena and laughed once, uncertainly, as if this had to be a trick. Karol lifted his phone to take a photo, but the screen shuddered and blurred into static.
Bartek, always the bolder one, pressed his fingers to the glowing wings.
The world lurched.
He stumbled back with a strangled shout, his hand flickering thin and pale, almost see-through, like light passing through smoke. Lena stared at her own palm, now faintly lit from within, while Karol drew in a sharp breath and froze. The air around him had gone suddenly cold. Then his expression changed, his eyes locking upward as if he could hear something neither of the others could.
"Someone's coming," he said, voice tight. "And not just from the stairs."
Heavy footsteps echoed through the tunnel.
At the far end of the walkway, a man stepped out of the shadows in a long coat dark with rain. He did not look surprised to find them there. He looked certain, almost relieved. In the hollow of his raised hand, a blue spark snapped and died.
"I’ve been looking for you," he said.
No one moved. The station above them rumbled. The winged figure behind Lena flared brighter, as if answering him.