He sat in one of the auditoriums, half-listening to the lecture on history. Having revised the syllabus before and getting back to it sometimes when he couldn't sleep, he tended to get ahead of the material — this lecture was exactly that. He had read about the topic and revised it a week ago. Instead of taking notes now, he drew a little map of Prague in his worn-out notebook he always had around.

  For thoughts, for observations, for practicing mapping and maybe some ciphers when he needed to busy his mind with something.

  As he continued drawing the street lines, he pointed out the Pospí?ilová street — just wrote the name in a font slightly bolder than everything else. Then Thunovská. He saw it being a little spiraled when he was walking out of the hotel yesterday. Since they were part of the landscape now, might have as well become part of the maps too.

  With his hand moving almost on its own, his gaze followed it, but his mind drifted off. Watching the languid, almost lazy movement, he at some point stopped hearing the professor whatsoever.

  "You'll be walking soon".

  The note with these words had been tucked away in between the pages of this exact notebook since he left the Jínak Cafe yesterday, but they seemed to have burnt itself into his mind.

  What was that about? Walking…

  He glanced to the window, his hand stopping for just a fraction before resembling the idle movement, but he didn't notice it.

  Was it a threat? Or a prank? Teens these days had this idiotic ritual about ‘summoning yourself a Hallwalker’. A stupid trend popped out of nowhere, probably forced by those people who believed "Tulpa" things were real, but who in the end were just adults falling into a child phase and reinventing the imaginary friends.

  Except Hallwalkers weren't imaginary, and everyone in their rightful mind and enough wariness knew that, even if the government was somewhat mumbling in it's official statements again and again.

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  The trend spread via collapsed social video platforms and spiraled TikTok clones. Often performed in basements, tunnels, or quiet bathrooms. He saw a video or two with teens and sometimes even adults with all seriousness performing the ritual: drawing a spiral in lipstick on a bathroom mirror, whispering: “I’m not in yet, but I will be.” Once it was done, they would spin clockwise once, eyes closed. Then open them and stare into their own reflection for eight seconds. If the reflection blinked wrong or tilted its head independently — congratulations.

  You’ve got a Hallwalker.

  He remembered the tagline he noticed they often shared: “It doesn’t take your body — it lets you borrow its shape.”

  God, put a sign of a spiral on it immediately, why don't ya. As if those teenagers weren't romanticizing the Spiralá itself enough, giving the latter a great advertising campaign among other ways people knew about them.

  Not that he hated the Spiralá and was a heavily pro-IHCD. No one from common people in their right mind would be that. But he couldn't say he was pro-Spiralá too.

  Both groups had their pros and cons, but something inside kept nudging him about both being basically the same Kool-Aid in different wrappings.

  Sighing, he rubbed his forehead — the more he thought about all these stuff he saw on the socials everyday, the quicker he was going to get himself another migraine. Or already had.

  He blinked softly, getting out of his own haze, and realized his hand was still moving. Forcing it to stop, he looked down at the notebook, and saw the map was, surprisingly, not messed up even if he had been doodling it without looking for the last ten minutes.

  Except one thing was wrong.

  Where there must have been a hotel, up the street after the St. Nicholas Church at Malá Strana, there was a spot which he seemed to miss deliberately, over and over. And the streets hugging it from the three sides seemed like they're slightly curling inward, "locking" the spot in a broken circle.

  He stared at it for a moment before feeling one of his classmates’ gaze's on him. Putting the pen aside, he stopped it from rolling even if it didn't move, and closed the notebook with a sigh, pretending to look back at the professor who was wrapping up now.

  A couple of minutes later, as he filled out of the auditorium along with others, he glanced towards his reflection in the window for a split second. By this moment he just did the self-checks as part of the routine, barely even noticing them, to be honest.

  The reflection looked normal. Blinked slowly when he did. Beat. Blinked again.