Three friends find a hidden door in the woods and step into a strange world under a purple sky, where something is already watching them.
Ola, Maks and Lena spent most summer afternoons in the forest outside town, in their secret clearing beneath the old oaks. Ferns crowded the ground there, and sunlight broke through the branches in warm gold stripes. It was the kind of place that felt untouched by everything else in the world.
That afternoon, though, the clearing seemed to be holding its breath.
A sharp gust swept through the trees, even though the air beyond their circle was still. Leaves on one oak began to shiver and twist as if something inside the trunk were trying to get out. Maks stepped closer, frowning. For a second, the bark looked wrong to him, soft and wavering like smoke.
"Look," he said, and pointed.
A tiny door had appeared in the tree, no bigger than a school notebook. It was cut neatly into the bark and marked with strange symbols that seemed to shift when Ola blinked. "That wasn't there yesterday," she muttered, half laughing, half not. "Who would put a door in the middle of a forest?"
Lena did not laugh. She crouched beside it and pressed her fingers against the wood.
The door swung open.
Cold blue light spilled out, lighting Lena's face from below. Behind the doorway was not hollow bark, but a narrow corridor that seemed to breathe, and from somewhere deep inside came a low, musical whisper that made the hair on Ola's arms rise.
Maks leaned in first, because of course he did. He peered through the opening, then froze. Beyond the door lay a sky the colour of bruised violets, and trees towered above it like glowing buildings, their branches lit from within. On one branch sat a creature no bigger than his hand, with sleek scales and bright amber eyes fixed directly on him.
"You have to see this," he whispered.
Ola and Lena exchanged one look, the kind that meant they both knew they should be afraid and were going anyway. They stepped through together.
The moment their feet crossed the threshold, a crack split the air behind them. The door slammed shut and vanished into the tree as if it had never existed. Somewhere in the strange purple distance, footsteps were coming closer. Then a pale, luminous shadow moved across the sky above them, and the little dragon on the branch lifted its head and hissed.