Marks’s voice broke through her trance. “Siya… we need to move. Now. Before it spreads further.”She nodded, but her body shivered against her will, vibrating in sync with the global resonance. The city wasn’t just broadcasting the Spiral anymore, it was consuming itself, and she was the signal.The tunnels smelled of damp stone and metal. Every step echoed through the hollow passages like a soft drum, vibrating just beneath Siya’s skin.Marks led the way, flashlight in one hand, his revolver in the other. They had dragged Asanda with them, though she trailed behind, silent, her eyes closed, murmuring under her breath in a low, tonal chant that seemed to steady the air around them.“Are you sure this will work?” Marks asked, voice hoarse, catching the faint resonance that still clung to the city above. It hummed through the tunnels, vibrating along the metal supports like a nerve.Siya’s eyes darted across the rough walls, etched with the

The first thing Siya became aware of was that the world was no longer quiet. It wasn’t loud, exactly. Not in the human sense. But the silence that had settled after the Array’s calibration had teeth now, serrated edges pressing against the inside of her skull.Groote Schuur was breathing. Not metaphorically. Not poetically. Actually breathing, slow, measured, impossibly deep, as though the hospital had learned how to inhale.Siya stood at the center of the Array chamber, crystals orbiting her in lazy, deliberate arcs. Their fractures glowed faintly, veins of pale light pulsing in time with her heart. Each pulse traveled outward, through walls, through concrete, through the buried arteries of the building itself.She felt the foundations vibrating, the old iron beams humming, the ventilation shafts carrying resonance like whispered prayers through hollow bones.Marks had stopped moving. He stood frozen beside the control housing, hands suspended over exposed wiring, knuckles white, eye