The last lantern held by the door to door evangelists winked out like a star dunked in a bucket.

For a moment, everything was back to pure silence. The sound of the creepy hymns had faded into the darkness along with the even creepier people, and finally, Lachlan was able to let out a soft sigh of relief.

It wasn’t that he disagreed with anything that they had said, per se, but it was the way that they looked, the way that they spoke, how their voices were hallow... like their bodies were nothing more than a husk that made him shiver.

One thing was for sure; they needed to be gone before those people, that Fold, returned.

He leaned his shoulder to the farmhouse wall and let the stillness and the peace of the night press into his bones. He had originally been worried, thinking that something bad would happen at night. But if the Fold was the worst thing that the night threw at them, it wasn’t all that bad.

He could deal with it.

Luci’s growl rolled under the floorboards, low and careful, the kind a dire wolf used when it hadn’t decided if this was prey or a bigger predator.

Lachlan strained his ears, surprised that he could hear a lot further out than he ever could before.

A sound rose out of the fields.

It wasn’t the sound of the wind rustling through the fields, and it definitely wasn’t any type of engine that he ever heard before.

Instead, it was almost a rippling murmur, soft as a faraway crowd, the kind of noise you would notice only because everything else was quiet around them.

The sound seemed to come in layers—soft at first, almost like you could overlook it if you didn’t pay attention. But then it got louder... and more intense as it seemed to move toward the farmhouse and the fields around it.

"Anyone else hearing that?" Lachlan asked, keeping his tone easy. His mouth already quirking for the joke he might need.

Zubair lifted his head without turning. "Direction?"

"Is everywhere a direction?" Lachlan relied, cocking his head to the side.

Elias drifted toward the window, his palm flat against the glass. "There’s no vibration. Just... pressure." His brow tightened in confusion. "Moisture too. The ambient humidity has just increased."

Alexei frowned, rubbing his temple like he had a headache that he couldn’t quite get rid of. His eyes moved around the room, tracking nothing while getting frustrated that there was nothing to track. "I don’t feel anything different. Then again, I’m not a walking science lab..."

The sound outside became even louder.

Croaks, like those from a frog, threaded through it—single calls at first, then multiple sounds layered so tight they felt like there was nothing outside of them.

But that didn’t make sense. There wasn’t a pond near by, no ditch, and no green ribbon of a creek in any direction that Lachlan had seen.

It was a dry country as far as the eye could see, but still the noise grew, rolling over fallow rows, over rusting harrows, and over the ditch full of baked weeds, until even the studs inside the walls of the farm seemed to listen.

Luci went rigid, his tail low, and his hackles pushed up like someone had brushed him backward with a static glove.

Sera tipped her head toward the door. Not in fear so much as in interest.

She stepped closer to the barrier, her fingertips grazing the edge of the frame like she might catch the sound and pull it inside for inspection.

"Hold," Zubair murmured, hand already on the bolt. His other palm found the center of Sera’s back in a small, quiet anchor, then lifted away.

The first thunk landed above them.

Soft and wet, a single note on tin.

Then another.

Then two together.

Then five, each a fraction of a heartbeat off the one before, until pattern replaced coincidence and the roof began to play a rhythm none of them liked.

Lachlan’s jaw went tight. "Hail?" He already knew better. The sound didn’t patter; it didn’t bounce off the surface after it hit. It hit, then stuck, then slid with tiny squeaks across the metal.

"It seems to be more organic," Elias decided under his breath. "Too irregular to be ice."

Something scudded the length of the kitchen ceiling joist—a liquid skitter, like suction cups dragged across an enamel sink.

Another impact chose the porch roof. Then the bedroom. Then the washroom, a nearer whup followed by a slither.

Zubair unlatched the deadbolt but didn’t open. He shifted his stance by inches, making a door of himself. "Positions."

Alexei ghosted toward the chimney, his knife blade reversed along his forearm.

Elias reached automatically for his medical bag, realized how stupid that was, and set it down again with a wry breath that barely qualified as a laugh.

Luci padded to the center of the room and planted himself facing the largest window, his chest wide, and his head low, ready to attack.

The croaks swelled. Not a chorus, but a flood.

The impacts thickened until the roof itself seemed to shiver. Each wet strike joined to the next, then the next, and the next, until individual notes blurred into a single wet percussion.

The walls took up the rhythm.

The porch complained. The stove pipe thrummed.

Lachlan felt the floor flex under his boots by a hair, as if a great animal had rolled under the house to scratch its spine.

"Where is it coming from?" he asked, his voice coming out rough on purpose. Rough helped when the jokes were threatening to spill past his lips.

Elias pressed harder into the glass. "No—there’s no lake. No irrigation ditch. Nothing." His gaze cut to the dark horizon. "They’re coming overland."

"That’s impossible," Alexei muttered, but he didn’t sound committed to the idea.

Sera stepped nearer the window; her shoulders rounded with interest. "They’re singing," she murmured, pressing her ear against the curtain.

"Not the word I’d pick," Lachlan offered, even as something in his chest agreed.