I was seventeen, living with my pops in this tiny coastal town called Val Cielo, somewhere south of Barcelona. My dad ran this old, barely-working bookstore—place smelled like damp paper and forgotten dreams. Mom? She bailed years ago. Some say she joined a spiritual cult in Peru, others say she just couldn’t stand small-town life. Either way, it was just me, dad, and this creaky house filled with books and dust.
Now, things were pretty regular until one night, I found this box hidden under the attic floorboards. Wooden, dark red, carved with some weird symbols that didn’t look like any language I knew. I opened it. Inside? A pendant. Looked old. Like Roman Empire old. Nothing fancy, just a jagged black stone in a rusty silver frame. But when I touched it? Everything changed.
At first, it was just flickers. I'd brush past someone and suddenly feel… I dunno, like I knew something I shouldn’t. Like I’d see a flash of them arguing with someone, or crying in their room, or falling off a bike they hadn’t even gotten on yet.
I told my best friend, Manu. He didn’t believe me until I predicted his mom would catch him sneaking out the next night. She did. He got grounded for a week and said I was cursed.
Honestly, I thought I was going nuts. So I stopped telling people. Just kept the necklace in my pocket and stayed quiet.
But then came Aleksa.
She moved to town that summer. Her dad bought the old hotel by the cliffs and planned to turn it into a spa or something. She was different—confident, sarcastic, eyes like a thunderstorm. Naturally, I avoided her. That’s what I do when I like someone—I act like they don’t exist.
One day, we bumped into each other at the market. She dropped a jar of olives, I helped her pick it up. Our hands touched. Boom. I saw her… running. Screaming. In the forest. Being chased by something. I didn’t know what it was, but it didn’t look human.
I pulled back. She looked at me like I’d slapped her. “You saw it, didn’t you?” she said.
“Wait, what?” I asked, heart hammering.
“You saw the woods.”
That’s when she told me. Ever since she was a kid, she'd had dreams. Always the same—running in the forest, shadows behind her, voices whispering her name. She never told anyone, ‘cause who’d believe her?
I did. 'Cause I’d seen it.
We started talking more. Spent nights researching local legends. Turns out, Val Cielo had its secrets. Old ones. There were stories of people disappearing in the forest. Folks spoke of La Sombra—the Shadow—some ancient spirit that marked people, showed them pieces of a future they couldn’t change.
And then, we found it.
Hidden in the basement of the abandoned hotel was this stone circle, right under the floorboards. Carved into the stone was the same symbol from my necklace. When I stepped inside the circle, time froze. Literally. I could hear my own heartbeat echo like a drum. I saw flashes of myself, older, crying, yelling, running. But then, I saw Aleksa—falling.
The next day, she went missing.
The town thought she ran away. But I knew better. I could feel it in my bones.
I followed the vision. Into the woods. Deeper than I’d ever gone. For hours. Until I found the circle again—this time made of smoke and whispers. She was inside, unconscious.
I stepped in. The moment I did, it all clicked. The pendant, the visions, the whispers—they were all parts of a test. A way for this ancient force to choose a guardian. Someone who could see. Someone who would act. I carried her out, and when she woke up, she remembered everything.
We both knew this wasn’t over.
I still wear the pendant.
And every time it pulses warm in my pocket, I know someone’s about to need saving.
But hey, if you're ever in Val Cielo and you see a guy staring too hard at a stranger on the bus—yeah, that’s probably me. And yeah, I probably just saw something weird. But don’t worry. I’ve got it handled.
