Eighteen-year-old Lena finds a strange device in her grandmother’s cellar and is hurled with Kuba into an unknown time. To get home, they must uncover what was lost.
The night was unnaturally still, the kind of stillness that made every step feel like a mistake. Lena tightened the strap of her rucksack and went down into the cellar after Kuba, the beam of his torch swinging over damp stone and shelves warped by years of neglect.
The air smelled of mould, cold earth, and old paper. It should have been just another forgotten room under her grandmother’s house. Instead, it felt guarded, as if the darkness had been waiting for them.
“Hurry up,” Kuba whispered. His voice bounced softly off the walls. “Your grandmother said there were boxes under the stairs. Maybe we’ll actually find something worth the trip.”
Lena crouched beside a paint-splattered crate half hidden behind a stack of rotting jars. One corner of the lid was bent upward, and something metallic caught the torchlight. She brushed away a film of dust and felt a ridge of cool brass beneath her fingertips.
Then the crate clicked.
The lid jerked open with a dry snap, and Lena froze. Inside lay a strange mechanism no bigger than both her hands: rings of brass nested around each other, tiny gears set so tightly together they seemed to have been built for a purpose no one had bothered to explain. In its centre rested a stone as dark and blue as deep water.
Kuba leaned in. “What is that supposed to be?”
“No idea.” Lena lifted it carefully. It was heavier than it looked, and warm in a way metal had no right to be. The stone caught the torchlight and held it, as if it were looking back.
Kuba pointed. “There’s a wheel on the side. I think it turns.”
Lena should have put it down. Instead, she felt the smallest catch of movement under her thumb and turned the wheel.
The cellar vanished.
Cold swept through her first, then a pressure so fierce it seemed to squeeze the breath from her ribs. The walls bent inward like painted cardboard. Light tore across the room in white streaks, and the floor dropped away beneath her feet. Kuba shouted her name, but his voice stretched and broke apart, swallowed by a rising roar.
Then, in the middle of the storm of light, someone spoke.
“If you wish to return,” the voice said, calm and close, “find what was lost.”
The world slammed back into place.
Lena stumbled, gripping the mechanism so hard it hurt. The cellar was gone. So was the house, the damp stone, the smell of mildew. Around her rose red marble columns, taller than any building she had ever seen. People in pale tunics crossed the courtyard without glancing at her, as if two strangers had not just appeared out of nowhere in the middle of their day.
Above them, the sky glowed a strange violet colour, and somewhere beyond the arches, bells rang with a slow, heavy rhythm.
Kuba stood beside her, staring so hard he looked almost frightened enough to stop breathing.
Lena tightened her hand around the device. It felt warmer now, almost restless.
Then a figure in a white mask stepped out from behind one of the columns and turned directly toward them.