# 📘 **PART V – ECHO OF DARKNESS** *(extensive, extensive, multi-chapter)* ---

 

## **CHAPTER 1 – Anxiety That Doesn't Sleep**

The lights of Skalin flickered restlessly, as if an unsynchronized pulse had suddenly appeared throughout the city. Every street, every alleyway seemed marked by something invisible, yet felt by those with even the slightest heightened senses.

Zofia had felt this for several days: an anxiety that persisted even as she drifted off to sleep. Faces she didn't recognize, but whose deaths she saw clearly, appeared in her dreams – like echoes of events yet to come.

The runes on her skin quivered for no reason.

Or perhaps there was a reason… she just didn't understand it yet.

--

The Zamelski house was silent, but this silence was unusual. There was something cold, unnatural about her. An old clock, out of order for years, chimed at random times, and the door creaked as if someone were passing in the hallway.

Zofia began to doubt whether she was alone here.

--

## **CHAPTER 2 – Janek and the Books That Weren't Supposed to Be**

Janek spent more and more time with forgotten volumes from his father's library. Some of the books were so old that the paper crumbled under his fingers, and the ink looked as if it had evaporated and returned.

In one of the books, he found a passage that shouldn't have been there: a description of the ritual of awakening the city.

But something was wrong…

The notes called it **the ritual of admitting the shadow**.

Janek had the feeling that someone else had tried to understand something before him. And that someone… hadn't ended well.

---

## **CHAPTER 3 – Another Body**

In the morning, news broke: another young man had been found.

In the city center.

By the monument that had for years been merely a backdrop for tourist photos.

But this time, the body looked different.

The boy's hand bore a burned symbol, pulsing as if still hot.

Witnesses claimed that "something like a man-shaped fog" had appeared over the city during the night.

The police, of course, "explained everything."

But the residents sensed that something was happening in Skalin that no one dared to name.

---

## **CHAPTER 4 – Old Family Lies**

In the evening, Zofia was going through her grandfather's old drawers.

She found letters. Her family's names repeated themselves generation after generation, but alongside the Sarnowskis were also the names of families she'd never heard of:

* Poborowskis

* Nowińskis

* Stachurskis

Under each one was a single sentence, repeated like a curse:

**"The Circle must not be awakened before its time."**

But why?

And who had tried to do this… before?

---

## **CHAPTER 5 – The Herald That Doesn't Disappear**

As Janek walked back through the forest, he noticed a shadow. The same one that had been appearing for weeks.

But this time, the shadow wasn't watching – it came closer.

It had no face, no outline, and yet Janek knew it was watching.

At one point, the figure raised a hand – as if in a beckoning gesture.

And then a whisper rent the air:

**“This is only the beginning.”**

---

## **CHAPTER 6 – The City’s Untold History**

The city archives had been a mess for years. But one binder was locked, and the key was hidden in a safe.

Zofia opened it by accident.

The documents were clear: Skalin hadn’t been founded by accident. It wasn’t an ordinary town.

It was **built on the site of an ancient ritual** meant to protect people from something…

But what?

--

One word appeared in the records:

**Awakening.**

And one name, crossed out thousands of times:

**“He will return.”**

---