Not the comfortable kind of silence, but a pressure, like the whole of Seoul was holding its breath. The marrow station lay in ruins behind them, smoke twisting into the ashen sky. The group stumbled through cracked streets, shoes scraping glass, lungs burning with soot and dust.
Then, the sound rose.
Not from one place. Not from one throat. But from everywhere.
It was a low, layered hum, rippling through alleyways and skyscraper husks. The kind of sound that carried no air, no breath—just vibration. The abyss-born had not attacked. They had not even moved to encircle the survivors. Instead, they had knelt.
Lin froze at the center of it all. Shadows gathered like armies, some hunched with jagged bone limbs, some tall and hollow-eyed, some formless masses dragging claws against the ground. Yet every one of them bent forward, foreheads touching asphalt, arms outstretched as if in worship.
The hum thickened into words.
