Three friends slip into an abandoned mill outside Grabina to test a legend, but the night is already waiting for them inside.
It was a raw spring night, the kind that made the fields around Grabina seem endless and empty. On the old bridge, three friends stood shoulder to shoulder in the moonlight: Marek, Lena, and Bartek. Each had a torch. Each carried a rucksack with food and a warm sweatshirt. Behind them, the village slept without a sound. Ahead of them, at the edge of the dark, waited the mill.
No one in Grabina went near it after sunset. The building had stood abandoned for years, half-swallowed by weeds and rumor. People said that on the first night of the new moon, whispers drifted through its rooms. Others swore they had seen shapes moving in the windows, shapes that did not belong to anyone alive. Lena had laughed at every version of the story. Marek had acted like he agreed. Bartek had come because backing out now would have been worse.
"Ready?" Marek asked, forcing a grin.
"As ready as we’ll ever be," Lena said, and stepped off the bridge first.
They crossed the overgrown yard in silence, pushing through grass that brushed their knees and snagged at their trousers. Dead leaves shifted under their shoes. The mill loomed ahead, black against the sky, its windows blind and its door hanging crooked on rusted hinges. Lena crouched by the lock, worked at it for a moment, and then the old door gave with a dry, hollow scrape.
Inside, the air was cold enough to raise gooseflesh. Dust and damp wood filled their throats. Their torch beams slid over cracked walls, torn cobwebs, and a swarm of disturbed motes glittering in the dark. Somewhere above them, a loose beam creaked. They climbed the stairs slowly, each step protesting beneath their weight, until they reached the first floor.
In the middle of the room sat a small wooden box, lid closed, its surface buried under years of dust.
Bartek swallowed and reached for it anyway. His fingers had just closed around the edge when a whisper drifted from the darkness behind them, soft and close, as if someone had been standing there all along.