Ten days of blissful, uninterrupted silence shattered on the eleventh midnight.
Outside the grotto, the sea was completely calm, yet a thin, greasy tremor rippled through the island’s stone foundation. It was not a physical vibration carried by wind or water. It was a greasy spatial distortion that leaked directly through the fabric of the void.
Inside his hammock, Kaelen did not open his eyes.
He was in the middle of a very pleasant dream about a massive bowl of sweet glutinous rice dumplings swimming in warm almond milk. The dumplings were stuffed with toasted black sesame paste and drizzled with mountain honey.
The chanting tore through his dream like a rusty saw cutting through green pine.
WUUUUU... SHAAAAA... NAAAAA...
A discordant, oily chorus of chanting resonated directly from the granite walls. The sound bypassed the heavy bronze blast doors, ignored the sound-dampening lotus charms, and slipped straight through the stone ceiling like toxic smoke.
It sounded like twelve drowned cats being dragged through a copper funnel.
