The Call Of The Void

No one in the drowned district remembered when the signal first began, only that it rose each night from beneath the black water like a voice speaking through rusted cables and church bells. Those who heard it too long left their homes in silence and walked toward the flooded ruins, descending broken stairwells into chambers where the air smelled of salt, oil, and old blood. At the bottom, beyond collapsed pillars and humming machines, the void waited like an open mouth in the earth, pulsing with a patient hunger older than the city above it. Damo did not resist when it called his name. By the time the others found the shore at dawn, only his footprints remained, ending at the edge of the abyss where something vast had finally answered.