The night air bit at Anja’s skin as she crouched beneath the old stone bridge, her flashlight trembling in her hand. She had heard the sound again — faint, fragile, like a breath half-swallowed by darkness.

When the beam of light fell upon the boy, her heart stuttered. Barefoot, filthy, his eyes pale as frost. Blind. The whimper that had lured her there was gone now, replaced by a silence that seemed to breathe.

She wrapped him in her coat. “You’re safe now,” she whispered. She didn’t yet know what a lie that was.

Nikolai Petrovich, the district officer, arrived an hour later. He stood under the dripping archway, boots sinking into mud.

“Left here to die,” he muttered. “We’ll take him to the orphanage tomorrow.”

“No.” Anja’s voice was steel. “He’s coming with me.”

He frowned, then sighed. “You always were stubborn, Anja Morozova.”

At home, the boy barely moved. Anja washed him, fed him, wrapped him in her mother’s old rose-print sheets. He didn’t speak, but when she hummed — a lullaby she half-remembered from childhood — his fingers sought hers.

She named him Peti.

Her mother disapproved, as expected. “You bring a stranger into this house — a boy — and you don’t even know where he came from?”

“Maybe nowhere,” Anja said. “Maybe I’m the first place he’s ever truly belonged.”

That silenced even her.

Weeks passed. Peti grew stronger. He learned to hold a spoon, to find her hand without sight, to smile at the sound of her voice. The village gossiped — they always did — but Anja didn’t care.

Until the morning she found the scratches.

Tiny, circular grooves carved into her bedroom door. Not random — deliberate. A pattern.

That night, she caught him standing barefoot in the hallway, head tilted toward something only he could hear. His lips moved silently. When she whispered his name, he turned toward her, eyes cloudy but intent.

“Don’t open the door,” he said.

And then he walked back to bed as if nothing had happened.

The next day, Anja asked Nikolai Petrovich for a favor.

“I need to know who he is,” she said. “Anything. Any record.”

Nikolai rubbed his temples. “You’re not the first to find a child like that. There were reports from the northern settlements — blind kids, all found near the river. No one knows where they come from. But…” He lowered his voice. “They say the military tested something up there years ago. Bioacoustics. Sound frequencies affecting neural growth. Children born afterward… changed.”

Anja felt the ground sway beneath her. “You think he’s—”

“I think he hears more than we do.”

That night, the scratching returned. Louder. Inside the walls this time.

Anja jolted upright. Peti was sitting at the end of the bed, head cocked.

“They’re coming,” he whispered.

“Who?”

But he didn’t answer. He pressed his small hands over his ears, rocking.

A moment later, the power went out. The house plunged into darkness.

Outside — footsteps. Slow, synchronized, deliberate.

Anja grabbed her phone, its weak screen casting a bluish glow. A shadow crossed the window. Then another.

She crept to the door and peered through the keyhole — just in time to see Nikolai Petrovich standing there, flashlight off, face expressionless.

He knocked once. “Anja. Let us in. It’s not safe.”

But something in his voice was wrong — a flatness, as if the sound didn’t belong to him.

Peti’s hand found hers. “Don’t,” he said again. “He’s not alone.”

The walls shuddered. A low hum filled the air — too low to be sound, more like a pressure inside her skull. Anja’s nose began to bleed. She stumbled, clutching Peti to her chest.

The boy’s blind eyes glowed faintly in the dark.

“Make it stop,” she gasped.

He shook his head. “It’s not me. It’s them.”

The doorknob turned.

Anja bolted toward the back door — but when she threw it open, three men in gray uniforms stood there. Their eyes, pale and unfocused like Peti’s, turned toward her in eerie unison.

A voice echoed — metallic, distant. “Return the subject.”

Anja held Peti tighter. “You’re not taking him!”

The hum grew louder, a suffocating vibration. Her vision swam. One of the men raised a hand — and then Peti screamed.

Not a human scream. A sound that wasn’t sound at all.

The windows shattered inward. The air seemed to explode, folding in on itself. The men dropped instantly, clutching their heads, blood streaming from their ears.

When it ended, only silence remained — and the faint creak of the wind through broken glass.

Peti slumped forward, limp.

Hours later, dawn filtered through the cracks in the roof. The men were gone — or what was left of them. Anja sat beside Peti, who still hadn’t woken.

Then, faintly, a voice crackled from one of the men’s fallen radios:

“Containment breached. Subject has bonded. Repeat: bonded.”

Anja’s stomach turned to ice.

Peti stirred. His milky eyes fluttered open. He reached for her face again — the same gesture as before — and smiled faintly.

“Mom,” he whispered.

Anja wept with relief.

But then he added, softly:

“Can you hear them too?”

She froze.

The sound returned — faint, like distant singing beneath the earth. A rhythm pulsing at the base of her skull.

Peti’s fingers tightened around hers. “They say we have to go now.”

Anja shook her head violently. “No. You’re safe here. You’re—”

He leaned closer. His voice wasn’t quite his anymore. “We were never safe. They’re calling me home.”

And as the first rays of sunlight touched his face, she saw it — beneath the pale skin, veins of faint silver light pulsing in time with that impossible melody.

Then both the sound and the boy vanished. Just… gone.

Only her coat remained on the floor, still warm.

Weeks later, Nikolai Petrovich filed his final report. The house was empty. The woman missing.

In the official records, it was marked: Case closed — unverified disappearance.

But sometimes, at night, under the bridge where it began, locals say they hear it again — a soft humming, like a lullaby. And if you listen too long, you start to see the lights.

The kind that never belong to the living.