Tomas’s Warning

The air in the Legacy Wing library was thick with the cloying scent of decaying paper and stale coffee. Dust motes danced in the single beam of light cast by a desk lamp, illuminating the strained faces of Dr. Maya Lane and Dr. Michael Hargreaves. Outside, the clinic hummed with its usual late-night thrum, a sound usually as comforting as a heartbeat, now a discordant throb against the silence within.

Nurse Tomas stood before them, his usual calm fractured. His hands, usually steady as he administered injections, were clasped so tightly his knuckles were white. His dark eyes, often holding a quiet wisdom, were now wide and urgent, fixed on Maya.

“It’s not a malfunction, Dr. Lane,” Tomas began, his voice a low rumble that seemed to vibrate through the floorboards. “Not in the way you understand it. This… *thing*… it feeds.”

Hargreaves scoffed, leaning back in his worn leather chair, the springs groaning in protest. “Feeds? Tomas, we’re dealing with anomalous energy signatures and complex neurological feedback loops, not some mythical beast.” He ran a hand through his already disheveled hair, his gaze flicking to a tablet displaying reams of scrolling data. “We need tangible solutions, empirical evidence. Not folklore.”

Tomas’s jaw tightened. “My people have lived alongside these ‘anomalous energy signatures’ for millennia, Dr. Hargreaves. We call them spirits. And this one, the one that twists sleep into nightmares, the one that makes the walls bleed ink and the air suffocate… my grandmother called it the *‘Kai’taan’*, the Spirit Eater.”

Maya shifted, her gaze drawn to the worn spines of the books lining the shelves. The whispers had started for her too, faint at first, like static on a radio, but now… now they felt like they were inside her head, a chorus of forgotten fears. She felt a tremor of recognition at Tomas’s words, a faint echo of her brother’s hushed stories, dreams he’d scribbled down in his journal.

“The Kai’taan,” Tomas continued, his voice gaining a strange, almost melodic cadence, “it feasts on the suppressed grief. The unacknowledged pain. It twists it, amplifies it, and uses it to weave a veil between our world and… something else.” He gestured vaguely, his eyes unfocused as if seeing something beyond the library walls. “The nightmares, the distortions… they are not random. They are the Spirit Eater’s rituals, its hunger made manifest.”

Hargreaves tapped impatiently on his tablet. “And how, precisely, do your tribal legends propose we combat this ‘Spirit Eater’?” His tone was laced with a patronizing amusement that made Maya’s stomach clench.

Tomas finally met Hargreaves’ gaze, his own now burning with an intensity that momentarily silenced the doctor. “There is a way. An ancient song. The *‘Shama’la’*, the Song of Binding. It’s not a weapon, but a resonance. It calls to the spirit, but with a frequency that doesn’t feed it, but rather… unravels it. It returns the stolen fear to its source.”

“A song?” Hargreaves let out a short, sharp laugh. “You expect us to sing to an interdimensional parasite?”

“It is not mere singing, Dr. Hargreaves,” Tomas countered, his voice low but firm. “It requires specific tones, a specific rhythm. And it requires a place. A place where echoes are born. A chamber.” He paused, his brow furrowed in concentration. “My grandmother spoke of it. A place of deep resonance, a ‘chamber of echoes.’ It is where the ancestors first learned to commune with the spirit world. If the Kai’taan has a physical foothold here, it will be connected to such a place.”

Maya felt a jolt. A chamber of echoes. It resonated with something deep within her, a half-forgotten memory of her brother tracing patterns in his journal, of hushed conversations about places that held forgotten power. Her skepticism warred with a desperate hope, a desperate need for anything that wasn't the cold, hard data that kept failing them. The sigils on Lila’s sketches, the whispers that seemed to emanate from the clinic’s very foundations… they felt less like errors and more like… signs.

“A chamber,” Maya murmured, her voice barely a whisper. She looked at Tomas, her eyes wide with a dawning, terrifying possibility. “Where would we find such a place?”

Tomas met her gaze, a flicker of understanding passing between them. “Beneath us, I believe. In the oldest part of the clinic. The Legacy Wing. My grandfather helped map some of its hidden passages.” He pulled a folded, brittle piece of parchment from his pocket. It was covered in faded ink, a complex web of lines and symbols that looked ancient and alien. “This… this is a fragment of a map. It speaks of a place where the earth remembers.”

Hargreaves, his initial amusement fading, stared at the parchment with a grudging curiosity. The scientific impossibility of Tomas's claims warred with the escalating, undeniable anomalies plaguing the clinic. The EEG readings were a mess, the patient behaviors were becoming more erratic, and the air itself felt… wrong. He still scoffed, but his dismissiveness was tinged with an unease he couldn’t quite shake.

“This is absurd,” Hargreaves stated, but his eyes lingered on the map. “Superstition and folklore. We need concrete data, not fairy tales.” Yet, a part of him, the part that was desperate for a breakthrough, the part that felt the immense pressure from his sponsors, was beginning to consider the unthinkable.

Maya, however, felt a pull, undeniable and strong. Her brother’s journal, his dreams of ancient rituals and forgotten powers, had always seemed like fanciful ramblings. Now, coupled with Tomas’s urgent plea and the map’s cryptic symbols, they felt like a lifeline. The hope, fragile and nascent, began to bloom in the tense silence of the library, a quiet defiance against the encroaching darkness. “A chamber of echoes,” she repeated, the words tasting strange and significant on her tongue. “We need to find it.”