Three teens break into an abandoned house and find a strange watch that throws them into another time, where one portrait looks far too much like Filip and someone is coming up behind them.
The house on the edge of town had been empty for years, but by the time Lena, Filip, and Kamil reached it, the windows still seemed to watch them through the dark. The plan had started as a dare, then turned into an obsession. People said the place once belonged to a man who could make machines obey him. Lena had laughed at that story until they were standing on the rotting steps, with the dead quiet pressing in around them.
The front door gave way with a low groan. Lena swept her torch across the hallway, and the beam caught cobwebs, cracked wallpaper, and a row of old portraits staring out from the walls. Her light lingered on one frame. The boy in it had the same narrow face, the same sharp mouth, the same unsettled eyes as Filip. For a second, she wondered if the painting was mocking them.
"Tell me you see that too," she whispered.
Filip swallowed. "I see it. I hate it."
They moved deeper into the house, past a corridor lined with dust and silence, until they found a study hidden at the back. A heavy oak desk stood in the middle of the room, untouched except for one object: a pocket watch, gleaming dully in the torchlight as if it had been waiting.
Kamil reached for it before either of the others could stop him. The instant his fingers closed around the case, the watch clicked open.
Its hands spun wild and fast. Gold light burst across the room, bright enough to blind them. The desk, the walls, the portraits all began to blur and stretch, as if the house were being torn apart and pulled somewhere else. Lena heard Filip shout. She tried to grab the desk, but the floor dropped away beneath her.
When the spinning stopped, the air had changed.
They were standing in a park that was almost the same place and not the same place at all. The road was only a dirt track now. No cars. No streetlamps. In the distance, a carriage rattled past between trees that looked younger, wilder. Kamil stared at the watch in his hand. Its face was glowing with a cold blue light.
Lena turned slowly, her mouth dry. If this was the past, then how far back had they gone?
And why did the boy from the portrait look exactly like Filip?
A branch snapped behind them.