Igor, Lena, and Kacper slip into the abandoned von Lichtenberg manor and find a locked casket that points to something hidden inside the house. Then someone, or something, starts moving in the corridor.
Summer evenings in a small town could feel endless in the worst possible way, unless you had a friend like Lena, a friend like Kacper, and a friend like Igor. The three of them had little in common beyond curiosity and a talent for turning bad ideas into adventures. That was how they ended up at the Old Corner, staring up at the ruined von Lichtenberg manor, where every local legend in town seemed to begin and end.
The manor stood behind a sagging fence and a tangle of wild grass, its roof broken open to the sky. The windows were black cavities. The gate gave way with a thin shriek when Kacper shoved it, and all three froze, listening for shouts from the nearby houses. None came. Only the wind moved through the weeds.
Lena went first, torch in one hand, camera in the other, as if she could prove the place existed by taking enough pictures of it. Igor followed with the expression of someone who had already decided this was a stupid idea and was too stubborn to admit it. Kacper, as always, acted like hesitation was for other people, and pushed the front door wider with his shoulder.
The smell inside was old wood, damp stone, and something faintly sweet, like flowers left too long in a vase. Moonlight spilled through a hole in the ceiling and lay across the entrance hall in pale strips. The floor sagged under their feet. Every step echoed far too loudly against the cracked walls.
"This is not a house," Igor muttered. "This is a warning sign."
Lena ignored him, moving her torch over the peeling wallpaper and the collapsed stairs. Everyone in town knew the stories: lights in the upstairs rooms, voices in the cellar, footsteps where no one walked. Most of it had sounded ridiculous from the safety of daylight. Here, surrounded by dust and silence, it felt harder to laugh.
Then Lena stopped.
Half-buried beneath a heap of rotted books and broken picture frames was a small metal casket. It was darker than the rest of the room, covered in strange symbols that seemed to catch the light for a second before sinking back into shadow. Lena knelt and lifted it carefully, brushing away the dust.
"It looks hidden," she said quietly. "Not forgotten."
Kacper crouched beside her while Igor kept glancing toward the hallway. The casket was heavier than it looked. When Lena opened the lid, they all leaned in, expecting jewellery, letters, maybe some family trinket left behind by the last owners.
Inside was only a folded sheet of paper.
Lena unfolded it. A sketch of the manor appeared under her torch beam, but not the way it stood around them now. One room was marked in dark ink, a place none of them had seen. Beneath the drawing, written in neat, hurried letters, were the words: "Last chance before they close the doors. Tonight at midnight."
Nobody spoke.
Then, from somewhere deep in the corridor, a door creaked open.