Three students slip into a university office where the clock seems unreliable and an old notebook leaves behind a message that should not exist.
Wednesday, 8:12 p.m. Most of the Institute of Polish Studies had already gone quiet, its corridors dim and hollow, the kind of silence that made every footstep sound borrowed. Only a thin strip of light still cut through the dark from Study 107.
Julia shifted her rucksack higher on her shoulder and glanced at Sebastian, who was snapping his laptop shut after another long evening of thesis revisions. Michał was waiting by the door, grinning like the place had been built for him alone.
“I need to drop off my seminar notes for Chmielewska,” Julia said, nodding toward the closed door marked 107 - Dr L. Kierski.
“I’ve heard people say odd things about that office,” Michał said lightly.
Julia frowned. “What kind of odd things?”
Sebastian gave a small, sceptical laugh, but it didn’t quite hide the interest behind it. “The usual campus nonsense. Locked-room legends. Nothing more.”
Still, none of them moved straight away. The light under the door seemed too steady, too bright for an empty office at this hour. Then Michał reached for the handle, and the three of them crossed the threshold together.
The room was smaller than Julia expected. A round oak table stood in the centre, bare except for an old notebook lying open as if someone had just stepped away from it. The handwriting on the page was cramped and hurried, the ink pressed so hard it almost tore through the paper.
If you're reading this, this is only your third time here. Don't trust what you see outside the window...
Julia looked up.
Beyond the glass, there was no dark courtyard, no familiar line of benches and bare trees. Only a pale, shifting glow, like fog lit from the inside by a city she had never seen.
“This isn’t funny,” she whispered.
Michał’s hand was already moving toward the next page.
Before his fingers touched the paper, the lamp overhead flickered once, then again. Something cold slid through the room, and a dark red stain spread across the door handle where there had been nothing a second earlier.