The lock was older than the door that held it. Iron teeth, rusted to a dull brown, sealed into wood swollen from centuries of damp. The key I carried trembled between my fingers, not because of nerves, but because the metal itself seemed unwilling to fit the thing it was made for.
This room was not on any map. It should not exist in the building at all. I had discovered its mention only once—buried in an inventory log from 1832, scribbled over with ink as if to erase it from record. "Storage, lower vaults. Do not open."
Naturally, I opened it.
The key slid in with a reluctant click, as though the lock sighed at being disturbed after so long. A turn, a scrape, and the tumblers yielded.
The door swung inward on soundless hinges.
What waited inside was no ordinary storage room.
Rows of shelves stretched into the darkness, far too deep for the dimensions of the building above. The smell was immediate—dust, parchment, mildew, and something sharper. A copper tang, faint but unmistakable.
I lit my lantern. The flame cast a weak glow, but it was enough to see the first of the shelves. Books, ledgers, scrolls, boxes—records upon records stacked with care and precision. Their labels were written in a dozen languages, some I knew, some I didn't, and some that might never have belonged to Earth.
The air shifted as I stepped inside, like the room was breathing.
One book in particular drew my attention. It lay apart from the others, resting on a pedestal of blackened wood. Its cover was bound in a leather that didn't quite look like leather. Too smooth, too pale, with faint ridges like veins. No title adorned it, only a single sigil burned into its surface: a circle bisected by a jagged line.
I hesitated. My instincts screamed not to touch it.
But instinct had never stopped me before.
The moment my fingers brushed the cover, the lantern flame guttered. Shadows lengthened, twisting unnaturally across the shelves. Somewhere deeper in the archive, something shifted—pages rustling as though thousands of hands turned them at once.
I opened the book.
The first page was blank. The second too. But the third held words, written in a script I somehow understood despite never having seen before.
It spoke of a place called The Drowned Choir.
Not a myth. Not a legend. A record. A report.
I read.
File I: The Drowned Choir
They are not fish, though they swim. They are not human, though they sing in voices that pierce the heart.
According to the record, the first encounter was in 1904, when a salvage crew off the coast of Norway vanished. Their ship was later found drifting, no crew aboard, only saltwater flooding the deck. Survivors from nearby vessels claimed they heard the voices—a chorus of mournful song rising from the sea itself.
The file described the creatures as long, pale forms beneath the water, mouths too wide, throats vibrating not with sound but with a resonance that traveled through bone. To hear them was to be compelled. To follow. To drown willingly.
One illustration showed a diver staring into the abyss, eyes glazed, while shadowy forms circled him. Their outlines were human but wrong—limbs too thin, fingers stretching like strands of kelp, mouths open in endless hymns.
The report ended abruptly, ink smudged as though written in haste:They do not stop singing. Even now. Even here.
I closed the book with a snap.
The air in the room had thickened. My lantern flickered violently, shadows thrashing against the walls like trapped things.
And then I heard it.
Faint, at first. Barely audible. But unmistakable.
Singing.
It was coming from beyond the shelves, echoing through the archive. A harmony of voices, distant but growing closer.
I told myself it was imagination. Memory. The power of suggestion. But the longer I listened, the clearer it became. Words forming in a language I didn't know yet understood in my marrow.
The lantern went out.
Darkness swallowed the room.
I could still hear the voices.
And, I realized with cold clarity, they could hear me too.