The chamber did not fail.
It dimmed.
That was worse.
The steady blue glow lining the walls flickered unevenly, sections going dark in slow, creeping intervals as if something unseen was draining power directly from the structure itself.
Emily felt it immediately.
Not through sight.
Through the thing inside her.
Her head snapped up. “Did you feel that?”
“Yes,” Theodore said.
He was already moving.
The shadows around him sharpened, pulling tight along his frame—not defensive this time.
Reactive.
“Tell me that’s just the system glitching,” she said.
“It is not.”
Of course it wasn’t.
Another flicker.
The hum of the chamber dropped lower, weaker, like a heartbeat losing strength.
And beneath it—
Something else.
A frequency.
Too low to hear properly.
Too precise to be natura
