"Zul? What's wrong? Your face is pale. Who was on the phone?" Naya asked with a tone of deep concern, leaning across the coffee shop table.

Zulfa slowly lowered his phone, the hand gripping the small device trembling violently. The cold threat from the other end of the line still echoed in his ears. "Your family at the eastern residential block... will experience a permanent blackout tonight."

"Naya, we have to go right now," Zulfa said in a raspy yet firm voice, instantly springing up from his chair and grabbing his jacket.

Naya stood up with him, her eyes wide with shock. "Go where? What's actually happening, Zul?"

"My sister... Rani lives at the eastern residential block," Zulfa answered quickly, his strides already carrying him hurriedly toward the cafe exit. "They threatened her. The electrical grid there is one hundred percent controlled by Aethel Corp's smart system. If I don't hand over this access card, they could cut everything off—or worse, do something to her apartment's water and supply lines."

Naya zipped up her jacket, nodding with grim determination. "I'm coming with you. Don't even think about going alone, Zul. We'll face this together."

By eight in the evening, the ride-share taxi carrying Zulfa and Naya had to halt at the main intersection leading to the Eastern Residential Block due to total gridlock. Yet, tonight's traffic jam wasn't caused by the evening rush hour; instead, every single streetlamp across the densely populated housing complex had died simultaneously.

Pitch black.

Not a single convenience store neon, traffic light, or porch bulb flickered. The multi-hectare neighborhood seemed swallowed by an oppressive night, creating a horrifying contrast against the glittering skyline of the surrounding districts.

"Damn it, they really cut power to an entire block," Zulfa cursed, pushing open the car door and leaping out alongside Naya amidst a light drizzle that had just begun to fall.

"Stay close to me, Zul. The vibe here feels completely wrong," Naya whispered, turning on her phone's small flashlight to illuminate the wet asphalt pathway leading toward the low-rise apartment complex where Rani lived.

As they pushed deeper into the housing blocks, the atmosphere grew profoundly silent—but not a comforting sort of quiet. There was no chatter from neighbors, no muffled television sounds from behind closed doors, or the hum of passing vehicles. All that remained was a constant, low-frequency drone—a thin, buzzing vibration that rippled through the air, making their eardrums ache and sending a splitting migraine hammering behind Zulfa's eyes.

"Do you hear that, Naya?" Zulfa asked, pressing a hand against his throbbing temples.

"Yeah... the hum sounds like an ultrasonic wave," Naya winced, covering one ear with her hand. "The frequency matches the vibrations in the MRT tunnel last night. They're pumping extradimensional energy through the water pipe networks in this sector."

They picked up their pace. Zulfa shoved open the main gate of Rani’s apartment complex, sprinting up the emergency stairwell to the third floor with ragged breaths. Reaching door number 304, he pounded on it in a panic.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

"Rani! Rani, open up! It's your older brother!" Zulfa shouted anxiously.

A few seconds later, the lock clicked from the inside. The door swung open slowly to reveal a teenage girl with short shoulder-length hair and a terrified expression, clutching a small battery-operated flashlight.

"Big Bro Zulfa? Why are you here?" Rani asked, bewildered, her eyes blinking against the glare of the flashlight. "The power across the whole building's been out since seven tonight. My phone has zero signal, and... and it's super creepy outside."

Zulfa shoved his way inside, pulling his sister into a tight embrace of profound relief. "Are you alright, Rani? Did any strangers try to get into your apartment?"

"N-no, Big Bro. I've been all alone, scared out of my mind in my room," Rani replied, hugging him back fiercely. She glanced over his shoulder at Naya standing in the doorway. "Um... who is she, Big Bro?"

"Ah, meet Naya, my coworker," Zulfa said quickly, breaking the hug and scanning the darkened apartment interior. "Rani, listen to me carefully. We need to leave this place right now. It's not safe."

Naya, who had pulled the apartment door shut, suddenly wrinkled her nose, halting near the kitchen corridor. "Zul... hold on. Do you smell that?"

Zulfa stopped, sniffing the indoor air. A sharp, pungent odor of sulfur and rotting fish stung his nostrils, heavily laced with the smell of concentrated iron rust. The stench was drifting from the direction of the bathroom.

"Rani, do you smell something weird in the bathroom?" Zulfa asked, looking seriously at his sister.

Rani nodded hesitantly. "Yeah, Big Bro. The tap water went dead this afternoon. But when I tried twisting the handle half an hour ago... it wasn't clear water that came out."

Without waiting for further explanation, Zulfa marched quickly toward the tiny bathroom in the corner of the apartment. He shoved the wooden door open and swept his phone flashlight beam across the white ceramic bathtub inside.

Zulfa and Naya gasped in horror.

The tub was filled to the brim with pitch-black, tar-like fluid that refused to drain down the outlet. The surface of the dark liquid churned sluggishly, venting tiny bubbles and humming with that exact same low-frequency resonance they had heard outside.

"Good god..." whispered Rani, who had followed right behind them, covering her mouth in disgust and terror. "The water in this whole building turned black since this afternoon. It smells awful, like a rotting carcass trapped inside the pipes."

Zulfa stared at the black fluid with a hard, furious glare. This wasn't ordinary toxic waste dumping. It was anomalous residue siphoned directly from the Main Valve, deliberately piped into the residents' domestic water supply to inflict psychological terror.

"Nobody get near that bathtub," Zulfa warned in an icy tone. "This fluid is toxic."

However, just as Zulfa turned away to step back, a sharp flash of bright blue light suddenly flared from the bottom of the black tub.

Srekk!

Zulfa froze.

Reflexively, he snapped his gaze back toward the bathtub. The surface of the jet-black liquid spun violently into a miniature whirlpool, sucking down the blue light from the bottom before reflecting a blinding glare directly into Zulfa's eyes.

"Zulfa? What is it?" Naya asked anxiously, seeing Zulfa paralyzed in the bathroom doorway.

Zulfa couldn't answer. The moment his fingertips accidentally brushed the wet ceramic rim of the tub coated in black spray, the entire room around him violently dissolved.

The sound of the apartment, the rhythm of Rani's breathing, and the rain outside vanished in an instant.

Zulfa's vision shifted completely. The cramped bathroom expanded, its walls transforming into ancient stone masonry slick with the rainwater of a forgotten century. Before him, thousands of exhausted, ragged forced laborers were chaining themselves to massive underground concrete pillars.

In that flashing vision of the past, Zulfa witnessed how the ancient city founders—decades ago—built the foundation of this mystical circuit not with ordinary cement or steel, but with the blood and sweat of forced laborers sacrificed alive inside the concrete foundations, sealed away permanently to prevent extradimensional entities from breaching the surface.

An old man wearing a blood-stained colonial engineering coat turned his head straight toward Zulfa, uttering a single sentence in a raspy voice before the vision collapsed:

"Those who break this seal out of greed... will drown within the city's bleeding veins."

Thud!

Zulfa jerked violently, stumbling backward until he crashed against the apartment corridor wall. His breath came in ragged gasps, cold sweat soaking his face and back.

"Zulfa! You're bleeding from the nose!" Naya yelled in panic, grabbing Zulfa's shoulders as she saw fresh blood streaming down from his nostrils.

Rani scrambled to grab a tissue from the living room table, offering it with trembling hands. "Big Bro Zulfa, what's wrong?! Your face is as pale as a ghost!"

Zulfa wiped the blood from his nose with a shaking hand. He stared at Naya with wide, unblinking eyes, a bitter realization striking his mind like a sledgehammer.

"I... I saw it, Naya," Zulfa whispered in a voice trembling with terror. "This city wasn't just built over pipes and cables. It was built over the graves of past workers used as sacrificial seals... and Aethel Corp is trying to break that blood seal tonight."