A disgraced sound engineer returns to his storm-lashed hometown to help hunt a killer whose weapon is not a blade but a sound no one survives. In wind-scoured Graymouth, the new luxury seawall hums at night and something older answers from beneath the concrete. Fishermen vanish without a splash. Radio hobbyists catch chanting at 3:03 a.m. The city's glass tech hub blames pranksters, until Detective Mara Quell drags in the one person who might decode the signal: Ezra Pike, ex-prodigy of the Institute for Auditory Phenomena, now hiding in a jukebox repair shop called the Salt Bride.
With the department out of leads and out of bodies, Mara and Ezra follow the noise through derelict piers and mirrored condos, mapping its wake with battered oscilloscopes and a hacked submersible drone named Pilgrim. They uncover the Quiet Choir, a wellness movement spreading through meditation apps and smart speakers, whose clandestine rites unfold in a drowned church beneath Slipway 9. The Choir worships an absence, a cavernous mother-thing they call the Hollow, and every clarity retreat feeds it lungs and blood.
As the scream evolves into language, doors slam in empty rooms and the city's smart infrastructure turns traitor. Ezra's prototypes — bonephones, echolock grenades — might save Graymouth or crack it in half. To stop the ritual known as the Ninth Breath before the equinox storm seals the bay forever, Mara must choose which dead to heed, and Ezra must hear the truth in his ruined ear. A coastal gothic techno-horror of salt, sirens, and a final note you feel in your teeth.
