Three teens uncover a hidden portal beneath an old lighthouse after a storm, and the first voice to come through says Anna’s name.
For weeks, Anna, Maciek, and Julia had claimed the same stretch of the old cycle path after school, where the town thinned out into weeds, broken asphalt, and Lamp Post Twelve leaning over the grass like it was too tired to stand straight. Beyond it rose the old lighthouse, paint peeling in long white strips, its top crooked against the sky. No one else ever lingered there. For everyone else, it was just a forgotten corner of town.
For them, it was where plans were made, secrets were traded, and the future sounded close enough to touch.
The storm the night before had torn the whole place apart. Mud streaked the path. Rainwater gathered in the cracks. Broken branches lay tangled in the grass. And at the lighthouse’s base, half-hidden by wet weeds, something new pulsed in the dim afternoon light.
Anna saw it first.
At first she thought it was a reflection trapped in a puddle. Then it shifted, a violet-blue shimmer pressed flat against the stone, like a shadow that had forgotten how to behave. It had no edges she could trust. It seemed to breathe.
She stopped so suddenly that Maciek nearly ran into her.
“Do you see that?” she asked.
Julia was already staring. “That is not normal.”
They moved closer, the three of them slowing as if the ground itself might crack if they stepped wrong. The air near the lighthouse felt charged, heavy with the smell of wet stone and something sharper beneath it, like metal after lightning.
“It looks like a stain,” Maciek said, though his voice had gone thin.
Then a bell rang.
Not from the town. Not from the church. It came from inside the shadow itself, deep and clear and far too close, as if someone had struck glass on the other side of a wall.
Julia flinched. Anna didn’t even realise she had reached out until her fingers touched the darkness.
Warmth flashed through her hand.
Not cold, not wet. Warm, almost alive, like skin under fabric, like the air just before a strike of lightning. She jerked back, heart hammering.
“It’s impossible,” Julia whispered.
But the shadow was changing.
It widened in a smooth, silent motion, pulling apart into a perfect circle at the lighthouse’s base. Beyond it was a second sky, grey and restless, split by pale seams of light. Houses floated there, half a metre above the ground. Symbols drifted through the air like sparks that had learned a language. The world on the other side looked almost like theirs, and wrong in every detail that mattered.
A whisper slid out of the opening.
Anna froze.
Her name.
It was spoken softly, almost urgently, by a voice she could not place.
The three of them looked at each other. Maciek’s face had gone pale with fear and excitement tangled together. Julia had already taken a step back, but she hadn’t run. None of them had.
Then the portal flared white.
Wind burst out of it, snapping their jackets against their bodies and whipping wet leaves and torn notebook pages into the air. Anna lifted an arm to shield her face, and through the glare she saw something moving inside the circle of light.
A shape.
Tall, slow, and coming closer.
For one suspended second, Anna thought she recognized it.
Then it stepped forward, and the shadow looked back.