On a rooftop at the edge of the city, Nadia and her friends find a hidden passage behind a chimney symbol. Below it waits a place that should not exist, where the shadows move first.
Nadia liked the roof of the old townhouse because it let her see farther than the city streets ever could. From up there, the chimneys looked like black teeth against the sky, and the windows below flickered like trapped stars. That night, with the moon hanging low and pale over the rooftops, she had the sudden, uneasy feeling that someone was watching from the dark.
Alek climbed up after her, then Lena, both of them breathing a little harder from the narrow stair and the steep ladder at the back of the house. For a moment they only stood there, listening to the wind scrape over the tiles.
“What if there’s something beyond what we can see?” Alek asked quietly, hugging his knees. For once, he didn’t sound like he was joking.
Lena gave a short, uncertain laugh. “You mean, like another world?”
Nadia was about to answer when she noticed the mark on the chimney wall.
It hadn’t been there before. She was sure of it.
The symbol was carved into the brick just above eye level: a shape like a star folded around an eye, sharp and neat as if it had been cut with a blade. Nadia reached out and touched it. The brick gave a hollow click under her fingers, and one section of the wall shifted inward with a deep, heavy thud.
All three of them froze.
Then, almost at once, they were on their knees, feeling along the bricks, pulling at loose edges, widening the gap by inches. Dust drifted into the moonlight. The opening they uncovered was no bigger than a door at first, but behind it a narrow tunnel dropped away into darkness.
“I think this is a terrible idea,” Alek whispered.
No one argued. They were already leaning in, already staring into the cold blackness that seemed to breathe up at them.
The stairs beyond the opening curled down in a tight spiral, slick with age. Nadia went first, one hand on the wall, her shoes sliding over damp stone. The air grew colder with every step, colder than the night above, until her breath came out in pale streaks.
At the bottom, the tunnel widened into a corridor lit by a faint blue glow that seemed to rise from the walls themselves. Strange paintings stretched along the stone, all of them showing cities none of them had ever seen: towers leaning over impossible streets, bridges that vanished into mist, windows shining beneath a moon that looked too large and too close.
Lena reached out and brushed the nearest wall.
The painting shivered.
Colour spilled across the floor in thin, bright ribbons. The corridor seemed to inhale, and somewhere close by, a whisper slid through the air so softly that Nadia almost thought she had imagined it. Then she heard it again, clearer this time, close enough to make the skin on her arms prickle.
Their names.
A metallic sound rang out from around the corner, sharp and deliberate, like a gate being opened somewhere deep underground. Nadia looked at Alek and Lena, but neither of them was looking at her anymore.
They were staring past her, wide-eyed, at the city that was slowly coming into view at the end of the corridor.
Towers rose from the darkness, not touching the ground at all. Crystal streets caught the blue light and threw it back in cold flashes. Shadows moved between the buildings, long and restless, bending in ways that made no sense.
Then the light dimmed.
A tall figure in a cloak stepped out of the dark and lifted one hand toward them, as if he had been waiting all along.