Lena and Igor follow a hidden forest path and stumble into a city made of glass, where moonlight has rules, strangers know their names, and something beyond the gate is already waking.
Lena had always said the world was too small for her. After school ended, she and Igor wasted the long days on their bikes, hunting for abandoned roads and forgotten corners around their hometown, as if the map had a secret they were meant to uncover.
By late afternoon they had gone farther than usual. The main road fell behind them, the light thinned under the trees, and an unmarked track slid into the forest like a dare. The air changed almost at once. It took on a strange violet sheen, and the moss crowded so thickly around their tyres that the wheels dragged as if the earth itself wanted to hold them back.
Igor glanced at her and grinned. "If a dwarf jumps out, I’m blaming you."
Lena snorted, but her skin prickled. Something about the path felt too quiet, too deliberate, as if it had been waiting for them.
Then the trees opened.
The trail stopped at the edge of a lake so pale it seemed poured from milk. A silver mist hovered over the surface, glittering like shaken dust in moonlight, though the moon had only just begun to rise. On the far side, something flashed once, faint and bright, like a signal.
Without knowing why, Lena and Igor pushed their bikes onto a narrow stone bridge that cut across the water. Every step echoed softly under their shoes. The mist thickened around them, cool against Lena’s face, and for one impossible second she thought she heard music under the silence.
They reached the other shore.
The mist split apart.
Beyond it stood a city made of glass.
Towers of translucent crystal climbed into the dark, catching the moon and throwing it back in fractured silver. Streets branched below them like a web of light, threaded with sparks of colour that moved as if they were alive. People passed beneath the towers with feathered wings, or wings that shimmered like cut gemstones, speaking in voices so soft they sounded almost like singing.
The air smelled of hot chocolate, cold stone, and flowers Lena had never seen before.
She was still staring when a boy appeared in front of them as if he had stepped out of the night itself. He was tall and slender, wearing a long navy coat that brushed his boots, and his face looked barely older than theirs. His eyes, though, were unnervingly old, deep as midnight water.
He smiled with the sort of calm that made Lena more uneasy than fear would have.
"You’ve been seen," he said. Then, with a small bow: "Welcome to the Glass City, chosen by moonlight. If you want answers, you’ll have to come quickly. Time does not move kindly here, and not everyone who crosses the lake comes back unchanged."
Igor’s expression shifted from excitement to something sharper, more alert. Around them, several passers-by had stopped to watch, smiling as if this were an arrival they had all been expecting.
A bell sounded somewhere in the distance.
Low. Deep. Wrong.
The glass towers shivered.
The boy’s smile vanished. "Now," he whispered, and turned toward a wrought-iron gate arching into the heart of the city. "Before they lock it."
Lena took Igor’s hand before she could think better of it.
They had just reached the gate when blue lightning tore across the sky, and every tower in the city flared with a cold warning light. From somewhere beyond the streets, a scream rose through the night, long and raw, as if something had just been set loose inside the Glass City.