This story expands the Metro universe and lets you look out from the grim underground depths to make sure that life exists not only below, but also on the surface…
“Of course, everyone in the village knew about the Road, including Van’ka.
Their own worn rut, drowning in rutted holes filled with runny, muddy slime, led not to it, but in the opposite direction—toward Matveyevka and the river. And only one wrong footpath went to the Road, tangled as it twisted into bushes of wolf berries the size of a child’s fist, almost dissolving in the tall grass; it was trodden never—God knows how long. There was nothing to do there on the Road, and every kid in the village understood that. Earlier, the boys—despite their parents’ warnings—ran there too: on the solid dark covering you could draw with fragments of flint-silicate bricks, and the ball bounced off it better. Then several children who ran off to play on the Road disappeared, and since then it was considered a cursed, bad place.”
After arguing with his father, Van’ka decides to run away from home and find out where this mysterious Road leads…