Chapter 3 The Door Beneath the Bridge

The city looked different at midnight.

Not darker - deeper.

Like the buildings were taller, the streets more curious, the air thick with things that had names in languages forgotten. Streetlights blinked like nervous eyes. Buses passed, half-empty and half-aware.

Ariella moved through it all like a thread in a tapestry, invisible until tugged.

She wore a hoodie too thin for the chill, her pockets stuffed with the feather, a flashlight, and a notebook she never let anyone see. Its pages were full of strange lyrics she didn't remember writing.

The bridge at Old Market Street was a sagging thing, crusted with ivy and graffiti prayers - Save Us, Save Us, Saint of Shadows, and Don't Follow the Rain.

Beneath it:

A rusted metal door, low and forgotten. No handle. No window. Just the sound of humming - faint, like lullabies in Morse code.

She reached into her pocket and pressed the feather against the door.

It opened.

---

The air inside smelled like cinnamon and electricity.

The stairs twisted downward, not in a spiral, but in a slow coil, like the spine of a serpent made of stone. Candles lined the walls, some flickering sideways, some burning without flame. Her footsteps made no sound.

At the bottom: music.

Low and haunting. Not from speakers. Not from instruments.

From people.

Dozens of them - standing in a circle, cloaked in dusk-colored robes, faces hidden, mouths open. Each person sang a different note, but somehow it formed harmony. A living chord. A spell.

At the center of it all stood the man with amber eyes.

He had removed his coat. Beneath it, tattoos curled like calligraphy down his arms - notes, runes, names. His voice didn't join the circle's song. He listened.

When Ariella stepped into the light, the song stopped.

He looked up. "You came."

She nodded, unable to speak. Something in her throat itched, like a caged bird begging to be released.

"Good," he said. "You're late. The dying has already begun."

---

He stepped forward, offered her something.

A tuning fork.

Old, silver, scarred.

He struck it once against the stone wall. It rang.

The circle of singers shuddered as though struck in the chest.

Ariella dropped to one knee.

The world - all of it - swayed.

He leaned down, whispered into her ear:

> "You hear more than sound.

You hear truth.

That is what they're hunting."

She looked up, voice cracking. "Who are they?"

He only smiled - and the candles flickered red.

---

Far above, in the world that thought itself normal, clocks stopped ticking for seven seconds.

A train derailed but caused no damage.

A baby cried for no reason.

A blind man, in a city ten miles away, turned his face to the east and whispered, "She's awake."

And beneath the bridge, the Guild of the Hollow Note began to sing again.

But this time, with her voice woven in