Three friends sneak into the school attic and find an old mirror that shows something impossible. The reflection is wrong, and whatever is inside seems to notice them.
The attic of the old school was meant to be empty.
That only made Lena, Maks, and Tymek want to be there more.
It was a grey Saturday, storm rain ticking against the roof tiles, and the three of them had climbed up through a narrow service stairwell to escape the boredom below. Up here, the air smelled of dust, damp wood, and things forgotten years ago. Boxes leaned against the walls. Broken chairs were stacked under sheets of webbed fabric. Old trophies, faded posters, and cracked atlases were buried in the shadows. And somewhere in the dark, the floorboards kept answering their steps with a low, nervous creak.
School stories said you could hear footsteps in the attic at night. No one ever admitted believing it.
Lena was the first to spot something unusual. She stopped so suddenly that Maks bumped into her shoulder.
"Look," she whispered.
Near the window, half hidden behind a pile of boxes, stood a tall mirror in a carved wooden frame. Dust coated the glass in a pale film, but even through that grime the frame looked strange, almost too detailed for the rest of the attic. Thin patterns twisted through the wood like veins or roots, curling around the edges as if they had been carved by hand a long time ago.
Maks brushed away a curtain of cobwebs. Tymek leaned in and wiped the glass with his sleeve.
At first, they saw only themselves, warped and ghostly in the dim light: three pale faces, a flashlight beam, shoulders hunched against the cold.
Then Lena frowned.
Something was wrong.
Behind them, in the mirror, there was a fourth shape.
It stood just out of reach, tall and thin, its face blurred as if the glass refused to hold it. Long fingers rested at its sides. None of them moved. The attic behind them was empty. Lena knew it. Maks knew it. Tymek knew it. And yet the figure was there, watching from inside the reflection.
Maks whispered, "Tell me you see that."
Tymek lifted the flashlight and aimed it straight at the mirror.
The beam hit the glass. The attic stayed empty.
But the figure in the reflection slowly raised one hand, as if it had been waiting for them to notice.
Then the mirror shuddered.
Not like glass struck by wind. Like something knocking from the other side.
Three sharp taps echoed through the attic.
Lena stepped back so fast that her heel scraped the floorboards.
A line of letters began to appear in the dust on the mirror’s surface, dragged through the grime as if by a fingernail:
STAY.
The cold hit them all at once. Tymek froze with the flashlight still raised. Maks turned white. The attic seemed to shrink around them, every creak and sigh of the old building suddenly too loud.
Then, behind them, another floorboard groaned.
Slowly, all three turned toward the sound.