Three teenagers follow a glass shard into the Forest of Shadows and find a hidden city of light, mist, and impossible towers waiting in the dark.
Amelka had first heard the name Forest of Shadows when she was nine, spoken in a low voice by adults who thought children could not tell fear from superstition. At fourteen, she knew better. No one in their town went beyond the first bent row of trees. Not unless they were foolish, lost, or desperate.
Tonight, Amelka was all three, and she was not alone.
Janek trudged beside her, hair sticking up as if he had fought the wind and lost. He looked as though rules existed for the sole purpose of being ignored, which was probably why he had agreed to come. On Amelka’s other side, Lena moved with the tense focus of someone following a thread only she could see. She kept one hand wrapped around the thing that had brought them here: a shard of glass no bigger than her palm, clear as water and marked with a strange symbol - a trident split by lightning.
Lena had found it in her garden four nights ago, half-buried in the soil as if it had fallen from the sky. Since then, none of them had been able to think about anything else.
Amelka had heard her grandfather’s stories too many times to dismiss the shard as a coincidence. He used to say there was once a city hidden behind the forest, a city made of glass that vanished in daylight and returned when the moon was high. The adults always rolled their eyes when he spoke like that. But the same adults also crossed themselves when they passed the tree line.
The forest closed around them the deeper they went. Branches snagged sleeves. Wet roots twisted underfoot. Ferns brushed their legs like cold fingers. Every sound seemed to travel farther than it should, until even their breathing felt loud.
Then, through a wall of leaves ahead, something lit the dark.
Amelka stopped so fast Janek nearly collided with her.
The light was not orange like a fire, or pale like moonshine. It shifted and shimmered in layers, blue turning to gold turning to green, as if the air itself had cracked open and something impossible was shining through.
Janek stared into the trees. "Tell me I'm imagining that."
"No," Lena whispered.
The shard in her hand gave a faint pulse, warm as a heartbeat.
They pushed through the last curtain of branches and stepped into silence.
The forest fell away into a broad clearing, and beyond it rose the city.
Towers of glass pierced the dark, thin and elegant, catching the strange light and throwing it back in flashes of silver and colour. Bridges arched between them like frozen threads. Gates taller than houses glowed with fire that did not smoke. Transparent streets wound between fountains and pillars, and above them drifted figures made of mist and light, moving as though they belonged to the same breath as the city itself.
For one stunned moment, none of them moved.
Amelka could only stare, her heart hammering hard enough to hurt.
It was real.
A deep sound rang through the city then - like a bell struck underwater.
The light flared.
Lena gasped and the shard slipped from her fingers, but instead of falling, it hovered in the air, spinning slowly.
From the nearest gate, a figure emerged.
Tall. Wrapped in a cloak woven from fog and pale lightning. Its face was hidden, but Amelka felt its gaze land on all three of them at once, sharp and unmistakable.
The figure lifted one hand.
Behind it, the entire city shuddered, and the glass towers began to glow from within as if something deep inside them had just awakened.