The Forgotten Hatcheries

Jay pushed his hand through his unruly brown hair and made a decision to investigate and followed the sound.

He crouched behind a jagged outcrop of rubble, staring into the caverns where the sounds were coming from. The stories said nothing lived here anymore, not even scavengers. Too unstable, they said. Too dangerous for anyone to travel through, but Jay had a hunch, and hunches, when combined with tech and curiosity, often led to discoveries.

The harmonic sounds seemed to be coming from beneath the ground. An otherworldly sound that drew him. As he stepped deeper into the caves, Jay’s pulse quickened.

“Show me,” he whispered.

Sliding his machine into his satchel, Jay climbed down into the ruins, his boots crunching softly on loose stone. The air grew colder the deeper he went, and the eerie silence of the place pressed in on him. Every so often, Jay’s gaze flicked to the jagged shadows above. If the stories about the ruins collapsing weren’t exaggerated, he needed to work fast.

The harmonic sound led him through a half-buried archway and into a cavernous hall. Pillars lined the walls, carved with intricate designs that glimmered faintly under the beam of Jay’s flashlight. The air here felt different. Heavy, almost alive.

The last note lingered in the air, trembling like a bird trapped in his chest. Jay’s fingers hovered over the makeshift keys of his invention, still vibrating from the sound he had coaxed out of wires and scrap.

The air in front of him shimmered as though heat were rising from stone, but it wasn’t heat, it was sound, visible and alive, curling the space open like someone pulling back a curtain. A circle of light widened, humming in harmony with the last echoes of his machine.

Jay’s breath left him in a sharp gasp. His gray-green eyes locked on the impossible. He had never seen anything like it, had never even imagined it. He could feel the sound thrumming through his bones, as though his body itself had become an instrument.

What did I just do?

A rush of emotions flooded him at once, terror, wonder, disbelief. His lanky body trembled, knees threatening to buckle. For a moment he thought he might be dreaming, that he’d fallen asleep in the wreckage again, clutching his scraps and hoping for music that could bring his mother back.

This wasn’t a dream. The portal pulsed, rippling like water, colors shifting in ways he didn’t have words for. It was beautiful, strange, alive. His heart pounded so loud it almost drowned out the music, and yet beneath the fear was something else, a pull.

Jay’s hands shook, but he couldn’t look away. Every part of him screamed that this was dangerous, that he had no idea what he’d just unleashed, and yet, another thought, quiet and insistent, refused to leave him: If sound can open doors, maybe it can lead me to her.

Jay swallowed hard, his throat dry. The shimmering light tugged at him, each pulse of sound pulled stronger than the last. His feet moved without permission, one shaky step closer, then another. The air grew colder as he neared, the fine hairs on his arms prickling upright.

He reached out, slowly, fingers trembling. The surface rippled at his nearness, like a pond waiting for him to break its skin. His gray-green eyes widened, caught between terror and wonder.

His breath hitched, and he stumbled back. His first instinct was to run, to shut the machine down before the whole thing tore apart, but he didn’t.

Instead, he froze, staring at the impossible swirl of light and sound before him. The longer he looked, the less it felt like a threat and the more it felt like an invitation. His heart pounded against his ribs, but this time not from fear, from something hotter, sharper. Curiosity.

I built this, he thought. If I can open it, I can face it.

Jay clenched his fists, steadied his shaking legs, and leaned forward. The portal rippled around his face, cool and strange, buzzing like static against his skin. For one final moment, he hesitated, then he stepped through.

The light swallowed him whole.