Dog and Her 12 Boys. Seasoned one. GATELOCK prime. – Episode 15: The Overlook The sewer tunnel curved downward like a throat swallowing us whole. The artifact’s pulse had shifted, no longer the erratic ping of something hidden, but a steady rhythm that matched my heartbeat. Or maybe my heartbeat had matched it. Hard to tell anymore. Boy Six touched the wall as we descended. Stone. Carved stone. I felt his recognition through the lattice and concrete had given way to something older. Symbols etched into black rock, worn smooth by time and touch. Not human script. Not recent. The kind of markings that made your teeth ache just looking at them. The tunnel widened into a natural cavern. The air thickened, carrying weight and dampness that pressed against our skin like wet wool. Then the ledge, a narrow stone jutting over an impossible drop. We crouched in the shadows, looking down into a chamber that stole our breath. A cathedral. Not built—carved. Hollowed from living rock like someone had scooped out the earth’s heart and decorated it with nightmares. Impossible architecture stretched below us, all flowing curves and gravity-defying arches. No mortar. No seams. Just one continuous piece of stone shaped by will or madness. Suspended from the ceiling, hundreds of corpses swayed in perfect formation. Neither random nor chaotic. Flayed bodies hung like meat in a slaughterhouse, skin peeled back to expose glistening muscle and yellow fat. Some were mummified, leather-dark and shrunken. Others were fresh enough that blood still dripped from fingertips into brass bowls positioned beneath. Each body hung at a precise height, specific angle, creating geometric patterns that hurt to follow. They moved like wind chimes in a breeze that didn’t exist, their positions shifting with mathematical precision. Below them, arranged in neat rows like a church congregation, sat the zombie choir. Forty, maybe fifty figures in various stages of decay, all facing forward, all humming in perfect harmony. Their voices rose up to us, hauntingly beautiful, wrong in every frequency. At the altar, two figures stood with arms raised, conducting the choir with slow, deliberate gestures. Tall. Impossibly lean. Their robes hung from frames that seemed too long for human proportions, sleeves extending past where hands should end. Even from here, I could taste their psychic presence—cold, ancient, patient as stone. I studied the layout, tactical mind sorting through the musical madness. The suspended corpses weren’t just decoration, they were instruments. Resonance chambers. The cathedral’s acoustics were designed around them, creating amplification nodes throughout the space. Every surface, every curve, every hanging body served the sound. The artifact pulsed faintly, somewhere beyond this chamber. Whatever we were tracking lay deeper still, but these Necromancers stood between us and our prize. I pulsed the command: Formation. Descent. Silent. We moved down the hidden stone steps, each footfall calculated, controlled. The music grew louder as we descended, more hypnotic. Harmonies layered on harmonies, voices that should have been dead weaving melodies that made the air itself vibrate. Boy Six stumbled once, caught by the music’s pull. Boy Nine’s eyes glazed over for a moment before I pulsed a wake-up call through the lattice. The song wanted to drag us in, make us part of the performance. Not today. I crouched behind a pillar, studying the suspended corpses one last time. Each one positioned just so. Each one part of the greater instrument. Time to break the symphony. I growled low. The boys moved.