Amelia, Tymon, and Daria break into Green Valley's abandoned station and find a locked room, strange notes, and a warning in the dark. Then the shadows answer back.
The old railway station in Green Valley had been empty for years, but it never looked abandoned for long. Grass swallowed the tracks, rain streaked the broken windows, and the main hall still held the shape of lost noise, as if the last train had only just gone.
Amelia liked places like that. So did Tymon and Daria. They were the sort of friends who treated locked gates, warning signs, and rumours as invitations. That afternoon, while they were circling the platform edge, Amelia found something wedged deep in a crack in the wall: a small metal key, cold enough to sting her fingers. Nearby, in the dust along the platform, there were footprints that did not match any of theirs.
Daria leaned closer and raised her torch. "Tell me those are old."
"They aren't," Amelia said. She turned the key over in her palm.
Tymon gave a tight, almost convincing grin. "Then we stop pretending this place is empty."
By the time darkness settled over Green Valley, the station had changed again. The beams overhead threw twisted bands of light across the floor, the clocks on the wall each showed a different time, and the mist outside the windows made the whole building look half-submerged. They followed the corridor at the back of the hall until they found the door to the engine room, rusted shut and hidden behind a stack of broken crates.
Amelia slid the key into the lock. It resisted once, then gave way with a dry click. The door opened on a breath of stale air.
Inside was the smell of dust, old grease, and paper left too long in the dark. Shelves sagged under binders and tools, and behind a desk sat a notebook no one had ever signed. The first page was covered in numbers, diagrams, and symbols that made no sense at all.
Tymon reached for it. At the same moment, something metallic clanged somewhere deeper in the room.
All three of them froze.
Then a whisper scraped through the darkness, thin and close enough to make Amelia's skin tighten.
"They're here..."
Her torch flickered. Once. Twice.
And behind the shelves, a circle of lights began to move.