Nikodem, a twenty-year-old computer science student, has lived with a strange fear since the blackout. On the anniversary of that night, the city starts to dim again - and something in the park seems to be waiting for him.
Nikodem had spent years trying to ignore the feeling that something in his life was out of joint. He told himself it was stress, sleeplessness, too much caffeine and too many nights staring at code until the letters blurred. He was twenty, a computer science student at a polytechnic university, living in a crowded city where the streetlamps burned through fog and the trams rattled past after midnight as if darkness had no authority there at all. His flat stood on Miodowa Street, beside an old park that looked harmless in daylight and far less certain after sunset.
He never liked the week leading up to the blackout anniversary. He never spoke about the first one either. Something had happened then, something he could not put into words even now. Only one image stayed with him with brutal clarity: his own hands, lit from within by a pale, unnatural glow. Since then, he had slept with a lamp on, avoided empty streets after dusk, and learned to measure his life by the reach of light.
That evening, the air felt wrong before he even stepped outside. Heavy. Charged. The park across the road was too still, its trees barely moving, their shadows pooled in the paths like spilled ink. Nikodem stood at his window for a long time, watching the darkness gather between the trunks, until the silence in his room became harder to bear than the street below. He grabbed his phone, his keys, and went out, telling himself he only needed air.
The chill hit him as soon as he passed the monument at the park entrance. He stopped. His fingers had begun to tingle. Then the sensation spread up his arms, sharp and electric, and a weak silver light bled through his skin, brightening with every breath he took. One by one, the lamps along the avenue dimmed, their glow thinning as if something invisible were drinking it in.
Nikodem turned slowly. At the edge of the park stood a tall figure in a dark coat, perfectly still, its face hidden beneath the hood. The shadows around it did not behave like shadows should. They stretched toward him, long and deliberate, as though they recognized him.
His mouth went dry. He took one stumbling step back, and the light in his hands flared in answer.
Then the figure spoke, its voice calm and unmistakably close.
"We've been waiting for you..."