The dark had a pulse.

Noa could hear it not just in the walls, but somewhere between his ribs, a low and uneven throb that didn’t match his heart. It beat in the plaster, in the floorboards, in the thin seam of air that slid under the locked door. It didn’t sound like electricity; the lights were already gone. It didn’t sound like Alessio’s breathing; that was a slow, deliberate thing, the kind of rhythm you couldn’t trust because it never betrayed its owner.

No, this was something ...