Three friends slip into Griffin Castle after dark, following a rumour about a hidden diary and the secrets sealed behind Corridor 13.
Their footsteps sounded far louder than they should have in Griffin Castle. The abandoned stone halls swallowed every breath, every shuffle, every nervous pause. Sylwia led the way with a torch held high, its beam catching on cobwebs, peeling plaster, and the ghost-white dust that drifted through the air. Bartek stayed close behind her, jaw tight, eyes flicking to every doorway. Kuba brought up the rear, trying to look steady while his fingers worried the key ring clipped to his rucksack.
None of them had planned on ending up here a week ago. It had started in history class, with a passing remark from their teacher about the last master of the castle: a man who had spent his life buried in strange experiments and left behind only rumours, a missing journal, and the whisper of an artefact said to bend time itself. Most people would have laughed it off. Sylwia had not. By nightfall, she had Bartek and Kuba climbing through a side entrance the castle's caretakers had long since given up on.
The deeper they went, the colder the corridors became. Wind slid through broken windows in thin, uneasy whistles. Shadows lengthened across the floor and climbed the walls as if they had a mind of their own. More than once Kuba thought he saw movement at the edge of the torchlight, a shift where nothing should have moved, and each time the castle answered with a soft creak from somewhere ahead.
Then Bartek stopped so abruptly that Sylwia nearly collided with him. At the end of the passage stood a heavy iron door, its surface scarred with rust. A dark number plate hung beside it, barely readable in the torchlight. Corridor Thirteen. Bartek swallowed. "This is it," he whispered.
The hinges resisted at first, then gave with a long, scraping groan that seemed to travel through the whole castle. Beyond the door lay another corridor, narrower and darker than the first, lined with dusty tables and portraits of stern-faced strangers whose painted eyes seemed to follow them. At the far end waited a second door, smaller this time, with a silver handle fused black at the edges.
"The laboratory," Sylwia breathed, stepping forward.
Bartek reached for the handle, but before his fingers touched it, a faint tapping sounded from the other side of the door. Once. Twice. Then silence.
All three froze.
Kuba felt the air tighten around him. Something cold slid down the back of his neck as a whisper drifted through the wood, barely louder than breath.
"Sylwia... Bartek... Kuba..."
Sylwia placed her hand on the silver handle. Slowly, almost unwillingly, the door began to open. A pale silver light spilled out into the corridor, strange and cold, carrying with it a heavy scent like burning wax and wet stone. For one heartbeat, Kuba saw a figure moving inside, cloaked in something dark and threadbare.
Then the door slammed shut behind them with a violent crash.