Three students rent a flat in a strange city and wake to powers they cannot explain. Soon the whispers outside their door begin to sound less like noise and more like a warning.
The City of Whispers never really slept. Even in summer, when the sun should have softened the stone and brightened the river, a chill lingered under the bridges and in the narrow streets. The old townhouses leaned close together as if sharing secrets, and the River Bystra moved below them like something alive, listening.
Lena, Igor, and Szymon thought they had found the perfect place to begin their studies: a cramped flat above a quiet street, cheap enough to be suspicious and strange enough to be memorable. None of them had expected the city itself to notice them.
The first sign came on the first night. Lena woke with the sense that someone was speaking just beyond the wardrobe door. The words were too low to understand, but the whispering had intent, as if it knew her name. In the next room, Igor lay awake staring at the ceiling, certain his shadow had shifted when he turned off the lamp, stretching a little too far toward the hallway. At the desk by the window, Szymon opened his notebook and found the pages blanking out by morning, line after line fading as though his thoughts had been stolen in the dark.
They told themselves it was stress, exhaustion, the pressure of a new city and a new life. Then the city pushed back. One evening after lectures, Lena caught sight of a figure across the street. Its face was a blur, as if someone had wiped it away with a thumb, but its shadow moved with perfect patience, following her turn for turn through the maze of streets until she broke into a run.
The next day, Igor heard more than words. Sitting in a crowded café, he realised that when he focused hard enough on a voice, he could hear the shape beneath it: fear, anger, hunger, lies. And when Szymon’s nerves tightened during a seminar, his pen began to move on its own, capturing thoughts no one had spoken aloud. By evening, his notebook was full of sentences that had not come from any mouth in the room.
They stopped pretending they were imagining things. Whatever was happening to them had a pattern, and the pattern seemed tied to the city itself. So when night fell, they crossed the old bridge where Lena had seen the blurred face, drawn there by the same question that had been haunting them all day: were these powers a gift, a curse, or a warning?
Mist gathered over the river. The water below them shifted, and the silence tightened around the bridge until even their breathing sounded too loud. Then a voice rose out of the dark, clear as if spoken right behind them: "You are chosen."
A figure stepped forward from the shadows.