Darkness pressed in like a tide.For a long, breathless moment, I could hear nothing but the singing—that mournful chorus rising and falling as if the sea itself breathed through the walls.
Then, as though in mockery, the lantern reignited on its own. The flame didn't burn orange anymore. It shimmered with a cold, bluish pallor, casting the shelves in a ghastly light.
The book still lay before me, open. Its pages turned of their own accord, as though guided by invisible fingers. My hands were not moving, yet the parchment flipped swiftly, halting at a new section.
The header was written in jagged ink:
File II: The Black Signal
My pulse quickened.
File II: The Black Signal
There is no sound, and yet it deafens.
The file began with a transcript—broken radio chatter from 1961. A research vessel in the Arctic had intercepted a transmission on a dead frequency. No station, no call sign, only static. And beneath it, a pulse.
At first the crew thought it was mechanical interference. But when they tuned in, they began to… change.
The first officer reported headaches, then visions of a black tower rising from an endless plain. The engineer swore he could hear voices whispering beneath the static—his mother's, his wife's, and then ones he didn't recognize.
Within hours, they turned on each other.
The report described the aftermath with clinical precision:
The captain was found frozen to death on the upper deck, hands pressed to his ears.
The radio operator had smashed his own teeth out with a wrench.
The engineer was missing entirely. Only his boots remained.
The file noted that the signal was not sound in the ordinary sense. It bypassed ears, drilled directly into the nervous system, a message written into flesh and bone.
An illustration accompanied the text. A crude sketch, drawn in charcoal.
It showed a man seated before a radio set. Black tendrils poured from the speaker, not into his ears, but into his eyes, nose, and open mouth. His body convulsed, strings pulled by something unseen.
At the bottom of the page, a final scrawled warning:If you hear it, do not listen. If you listen, do not answer. If you answer… you are already lost.
My throat was dry.
I closed the book again, but too late.
Because I could hear it.
Not singing this time. Not voices. But a hiss of static rising from the dark corners of the archive. It buzzed faintly, like a forgotten radio buried in the walls. A steady pulse beneath it, beating in perfect rhythm with my own heart.
I stumbled back, clutching the lantern, its pale light trembling with me.
Shelves groaned. Books fell, spines cracking, pages fluttering in a storm of dust. The sound grew louder, pressing into my skull. Static, deep and endless, carrying something with it.
And then, beneath the hiss, I heard a voice.
My name.
Spoken in my own voice.
I dropped the lantern. The flame did not die this time. It rolled across the floor without fuel, burning bluish white as if feeding on the air itself.
The shadows convulsed. The static surged.
I did the only thing I could. I ran.
The Corridor That Should Not Exist
The archive was shifting again. Shelves bent at impossible angles, twisting into spirals. The floor stretched, warped, became a corridor that shouldn't have been there.
The voices followed me, layered one atop another, whispering in the static. My own voice among them, repeating things I had never said.
If you answer, you are already lost.
The words rang louder than the rest.
I sprinted into the corridor.
The shelves gave way to walls of stone. Cold, damp, and slick with condensation. The air smelled of saltwater again. The singing faded behind me, but the static remained, crawling into my bones.
And then—silence.
Absolute, suffocating silence.
I turned. The corridor behind me was gone. Only a blank wall of stone remained.
The archive had sealed me in.
The Chamber
Ahead lay a single chamber, circular, carved from rock that pulsed faintly as if alive.
At its center stood an object. A radio.
Ancient, its wood warped and cracked, its knobs corroded. Yet it hummed faintly with power.
I approached despite every instinct screaming at me not to. The hum rose in pitch.
The dial turned of its own accord, clicking through dead frequencies until it landed on one. The static poured out, a waterfall of sound.
And beneath it, faint, almost lost—singing.
The Drowned Choir.
The two files were not separate. They were connected.
The signal was their voice, carried where the sea could not reach.
The realization chilled me deeper than any Arctic wind.
I should have run. I should have destroyed the thing.
But I didn't.
I listened.
The static coiled around my skull, threading into thought. Images burst behind my eyes. A black ocean stretching forever. A tower rising from its center, jagged and infinite. At its base, figures knelt, faceless, chanting with mouths that opened wider than should be possible.
The signal was not a transmission.
It was an invitation.
My nose bled. My hands shook. My heart hammered, not in panic but in rhythm with the pulse.
And through the static, one voice cut clearer than the rest.
It was not mine.
It was not human.
It whispered a single word.
Come.
The Lantern's Betrayal
The lantern flared, its cold flame leaping high, casting monstrous shadows across the chamber walls.
The shelves of the archive returned, twisting into place around me, warping back into endless aisles. The radio vanished. The static remained.
Books screamed as they fell open, pages flapping like wings. Sigils burned on parchment, glowing red-hot. The air vibrated with a frequency that rattled my teeth.
And then, silence again.
I stood alone, lantern dim, book still clutched in my trembling hand.
The page had turned once more, without my touch. A new file awaited me.
I dared to read only the header before the lantern guttered once more.
File III: The Hollow-Eyed Children.