Lena, Olek, and Iga discover a hidden dome around their school and strange powers that wake up inside it.
On Daisy Street, beside the old park with its bent benches and whispering trees, stood a school that looked perfectly ordinary. At least, it did to everyone except Lena, Olek, and Iga. Every week, exactly at midnight on Thursday, a glass-clear dome shimmered into place around the building. It was so thin and so silent that no one else ever noticed it.
That night, the three friends crept up to the gates with torches in their hands and their hearts thudding so hard it almost hurt. The air felt colder than it should have. When they stepped over the invisible boundary, Lena’s fingers tingled, Olek heard a high, buzzing hum in his ears, and Iga saw her shadow slide a little too far across the wall.
They froze and stared at one another. Then the torchlight twisted in the dark, spinning into a bright, swirling column that made the courtyard glow with flashes of blue, green, and gold.
"Do you see that?" Olek whispered.
His voice came back to them strangely, as if the night itself was answering.
Lena lifted her hand. Her skin turned pale and clear at the edges, as if the darkness was eating through her fingers.
"Lena?" Iga said, taking a step back.
But Iga was the next to gasp. Her shadow had changed. It stretched, rounded its shoulders, and lifted a tail like a cat made of smoke.
"This cannot be real," she breathed, though she did not sound certain at all.
Olek jumped, and his feet made no sound when they hit the ground. He looked down, gave a startled laugh, and then rose a few inches into the air as if something beneath him had let go.
Before any of them could speak again, a green light flashed from deep inside the school, behind the tall windows of the old gym. Then came the whispering. Soft at first. Closer than breathing.
And slowly, with a long, scraping creak, the gym door began to open.