The hum didn’t fade.Even after Siya’s note cracked the spiral open and slammed it shut again, the resonance stayed in her bones. She walked through Groote Schuur’s corridors like a ghost, her hand pressed against the wall for balance. Marks followed close behind, his gun out, but he looked more afraid of her than of whatever else waited.The journal pressed against Siya’s chest was heavy. Her sister’s words burned in her mind, "We sang the door open."But now Siya understood. The door wasn’t the problem. The problem was what had come through.They reached an old ward that had been stripped bare, the windows covered with boards, the beds removed. It should have been silent, yet the air vibrated faintly, as if music still clung to the walls. Siya paused, eyes half-closed, listening.“There,” she whispered.Marks frowned. “What?”“Not the hospital, behind it, beneath it, something’s moving.”He looked uneasy. “Siya, don’t...”But she was already kneeling, pressing her ear to the cracked

Cape Town had gone quiet after the blackout, but it was not a natural silence. The city hummed faintly, like a plucked string, a sound no one wanted to admit they heard. Radios picked up fragments of it. Cell phones vibrated with bursts of static. Even the water pipes carried a pulse that felt like breath.Siya walked through the dark streets with Marks. The soldiers had pulled back, setting up checkpoints around the hospital and beyond, but the hum carried past their fences. Some of the men began humming back without realizing it. Others scratched spirals into the dirt with the ends of their boots.The infection wasn’t blood. It was sound.Marks kept his hand close to his gun, though they both knew bullets would not silence resonance. “Where do we even start?” he muttered.Siya’s head turned slowly, eyes scanning. She didn’t look at streets or buildings, she was listening. “We start where the song is loudest.”Their first stop was an apartment block near Observatory. Dozens of reside

The hospital groaned as if it was alive. Siya moved through the dark with Marks at her side. The stairwell went lower than she’d ever thought possible. Past the known basements, past service levels that hadn’t been used for decades, down into a space that felt more like a tomb than a hospital. The concrete gave way to stone, rough-hewn and old. The walls dripped with moisture, the air thick with mold and something metallic, like blood.Her torchlight caught rusted doors with no handles, heavy chains eaten through by age, and stair treads worn by feet that had walked here long before Groote Schuur was ever built.“Sub-sub-basement,” Marks whispered, voice tight. He carried the portable scanner slung over his shoulder. It chirped and rattled constantly, overwhelmed by resonance spikes. “This place shouldn’t exist on the blueprints. It’s like they built the hospital around it.”Siya didn’t answer. She felt it in her bones. Every step lower pressed sound into her chest, a pressure that wa

The tunnel shuddered as Marks dragged them upward, his boots slipping on wet stone. Siya’s body jerked in his grip, every convulsion echoing with a sound he couldn’t hear but could feel, low, grinding, deep inside his bones. Her eyes rolled black, the spirals in her pupils pulsing like embers.Behind them, the cavern collapsed inward, walls twisting as though they were not stone but something soft, folding into itself. A scream tore through the chamber, not human, not animal, but pure resonance, a voice stretched across a thousand throats.Asanda coughed weakly against Siya’s shoulder. Her lips were pale blue, her breath shallow, but she clung to her sister with surprising strength. Her fingers dug into Siya’s sleeve. “She can’t hold it long,” Asanda rasped. “She’s breaking.”Marks cursed under his breath. He half-carried, half-dragged them into the spiral tunnel. The walls glowed faintly, glyphs appearing in the damp stone. Each curve of the tunnel warped tighter, bending reality as

The morning after felt like waking inside the grave of the world.Siya opened her eyes slowly. Dust clung to her lashes, grit burned her throat. Above her, ceiling panels hung like torn skin, wires dangling in coils. Pale light leaked through broken windows. The air was heavy, thick with plaster, smoke, and something that smelled faintly metallic, like old blood.She lay on a cracked hospital bed shoved against a wall. The sheets were grey with dust. Her chest ached as though she had swallowed stones. For a moment she couldn’t remember where she was, or why the silence pressed so thickly against her ears. Then it came back. The rooftop, the note, the collapse and the silence that followed.She pushed herself up, every movement scraping her muscles raw. The ward was empty. Rows of beds stood bare, some tilted sideways where the floor had cracked. Machines were dark, their screens shattered. A wheelchair lay on its side like an abandoned insect.“Asanda…” Siya croaked, her voice soundin