NEUROBANGERZ, Vol. 10 - Xustin

Below the tenth level of the undercity, where the tunnels were walled with stacked vertebrae and the ceiling was held up by ribs older than the district above, there stood an altar no one had built. It had grown from the bone itself, the way stalagmites grow in wet caves, until it resembled a crude pulpit crowned with a single massive skull. For decades it was dead silence down there. Then Xustin's signal hit the catacomb network — a sub-bass pulse that moved through marrow instead of air — and the skull opened its jaw. Not to scream. To call. Every skeleton in the tenth level straightened at once. Skulls turned toward the altar. Hands made of finger bones reached for weapons that had rusted into their grips centuries ago. The frequency spread downward through nine more levels, each one answering in turn, until the entire ossuary hummed with a single low note and ten thousand dead things began climbing toward the surface in perfect, unhurried lockstep.