When Lena and Bartek return to their missing grandfather’s workshop, they find a strange watch that throws them into a different time and a face they thought they’d lost forever.
The old villa at the end of Kwiatowa Street had been daring people to come closer for years. Most neighbours only stared at it from behind their curtains, but for Lena and Bartek it had always been a place of summer dares, secret routes, and half-forgotten legends. Since their grandfather vanished a year ago, the house had stood shut and silent. On the hottest day of July, the siblings pushed open the workshop door and stepped inside.
The air smelled of dust, oil, and old paper. Sunlight cut through the narrow windows and landed on shelves crowded with tools, rolled-up drawings, and notebooks filled with their grandfather’s tight, slanted handwriting. Lena found a folded map on the desk and smoothed it open. Bartek headed for the back corner, where a heavy bookcase leaned against the wall as if it were hiding something.
He shoved once, then twice. The bookcase scraped across the floor. Something struck the boards with a sharp metallic thud.
"I found something," Bartek said, already crouching.
He lifted a small metal box from the dust. Lena came over, and together they pried it open. Inside lay a watch unlike anything either of them had ever seen: a blue glass face that glowed faintly in the dim room, and a ring of symbols instead of numbers, each one etched so precisely it seemed deliberate, almost careful. Lena’s throat tightened.
"Maybe it was Grandfather’s," she whispered. "A prototype."
Bartek did not answer. He had already seen the red button set into the side.
"Don’t," Lena began.
Too late.
His thumb pressed down. The watch flared with a cold blue light. Somewhere outside, the church bells began to ring, but the sound bent strangely, dragging and echoing as if it were travelling through water. The workshop lurched. The floor pitched beneath them. Lena grabbed Bartek’s arm as the shelves dissolved into streaks of light and the walls seemed to fold away.
Then everything stopped.
They were standing in the middle of a square they did not recognise. Wooden carts rattled over uneven stones. People in old-fashioned clothes hurried past them, carrying baskets and bundles, calling to one another in voices that seemed far too distant. Above the rooftops rose a tall clock tower, black against the bright sky.
And there, right in front of it, a man who looked exactly like their grandfather was turning toward them.
He stared as if he had been expecting them.
Before Lena could breathe, the watch on Bartek’s wrist flashed again, brighter than before, and the man in the square lifted a hand and said their names.