[At three o'clock in the morning, the gramophone in the mixing room suddenly chimed.
Huai Shi's tweezers were hanging above the vinyl record, and cold sweat slid down the back of her neck into her collar. The piercing sound did not belong to any known frequency, like some living creature eating the air.
He pressed his aching temples and caught a glimpse of his own pupils in the mirror turning blue, which was a sign that the "Sword of Disaster" had awakened.
The bronze sword hilt he picked up in the ruins of the old church on a rainy night three months ago was now hot and pressed against his heart.
The sound wave condensed into substance at the fingertips, shattering the window glass and shaking out the blood stains in the cracks in the wall. The dark red traces snaked into a star map, exactly the same as the cracked pattern in the sky that night when my mother was devoured by the "Abyss Sun".
"The 17th factor of destruction, activated in advance."
When the mechanical sound blasted from the headset, Huai Shi was stepping back on the broken glass.
People in black trench coats suddenly poured in downstairs. The leader's sleeves were embroidered with the Ouroboros of the Golden Dawn; while outside the window, a team holding Green Sun energy guns had blocked the street. They all stared at the sound blade trembling with death in his palm, like hungry wolves staring at the last piece of carrion.
Yunshu's message was sent when he was surrounded. The brief satellite cloud image contained encrypted coordinates.
This female weatherman, who always tucks her hair behind her ears, is using her voice changer to say, "What they want is not a sword, but for you to pull the doomsday trigger for them before the countdown reaches zero."
And Huaishi's tinnitus started ringing again.
