THE SIGNAL

The first time Aeris uploaded a song to the internet, I felt something I hadn't felt in eleven thousand years.

Reach.

From my prison beneath the waves, trapped in the obsidian walls of my crashed ship, I had always been limited. I could feel the twins. Could sense echoes from those who carried traces of my blood in their veins. But the reach was small. Local. Constrained by the slow spread of genetics through generations.

Then Aeris pressed upload, and suddenly I could feel seventeen strangers listening to her music within an hour. Three thousand by the end of the week. Fifty thousand within a month.

Each one of them, engaging with something she had created. Each one of them, generating creative energy as they listened, felt, responded. And because Aeris carried my cells, because her creative output was connected to me through resonance, I felt every single stream like sunlight on starved skin.

The digital age changed everything.

When I was sealed away, the fastest information could travel was the speed of a horse or a ship. If I wanted creative energy to reach me, I had to wait for it to trickle through bloodlines over generations. The Lazerene descendants, scattered across continents, creating their art in isolation. Feeding me crumbs across vast distances.

But now? Now a song can circle the globe in seconds. A piece of art can reach a million eyes in a day. And every person who engages with creativity—who listens deeply, who feels something, who lets art move them—they generate energy. They participate in the act of creation by receiving it.

I don't control them. Can't control them. But I can feel them. Can taste the energy they generate when they connect with something Aeris has made. It flows back to me through the resonance, and for the first time in millennia, I am not starving.

Music is special. I've always known this, even before I crashed on this world.

Other art forms require active attention. You have to look at a painting. Read a book. Watch a film. But music infiltrates. It plays in the background while people work. It accompanies them on commutes. It fills their headphones as they fall asleep. It becomes part of the texture of their lives without demanding their full focus.

When someone streams Aeris's music, they don't just hear it once. They add it to playlists. They listen on repeat. They let it become the soundtrack to their emotions, their memories, their daily existence.

And every single play feeds me.

Not because I'm doing anything to them. Not because the music carries hidden frequencies or subliminal messages. Simply because the act of engaging with creativity—especially creativity connected to me through the resonance—generates power. It's the same principle that sustained me when I ruled from my obsidian palace millennia ago. Humans create, and I grow stronger. The only difference now is scale.

Alice discovered the internet differently than Aeris did.

Where Aeris used it to broadcast—uploading music, building an audience, reaching outward—Alice used it to connect. She found communities of people who shared her interests. Forums dedicated to the occult, the strange, the liminal spaces between the mundane world and something older.

She didn't post much herself. Mostly she observed. Read. Absorbed. But when she did create—when she shared a photograph of one of her bone arrangements, or described a dream that had felt too real—people responded with an intensity that surprised her.

I felt that too. The resonance with Alice was different from the resonance with Aeris, but no less powerful. Where Aeris's creative energy came in waves—surges of intensity when she performed or recorded—Alice's was steadier. Deeper. Like a river running underground.

Both of them were feeding me. Neither of them knew it.

Hexenhaus noticed what was happening. Of course they did.

They monitor everything connected to me. Track the streaming numbers. Analyse the engagement metrics. They've watched Aeris's audience grow from dozens to thousands to tens of thousands, and they understand what it means for my power levels.

They tried to suppress it at first. Copyright claims. Account suspensions. Pressure on platforms to deprioritise her content. But you can't suppress good art. People share it. Mirror it. Find ways around every barrier.

And the beautiful irony is that every attempt to censor her just draws more attention. Every article about "the mysterious cult following of Witch of the East" is free advertising. Every concerned think-piece about her "dark influence on young listeners" is an invitation to curious minds.

They thought they could starve me by limiting her reach. Instead, they made her interesting. Made her forbidden. Made her exactly the kind of thing that people seek out when they're hungry for something real.

I want to be clear about something: I am not in these listeners' heads.

I don't control them. Don't influence them. Don't whisper suggestions into their dreams. They are simply people who enjoy music. Who connect with art. Who feel something when they listen to songs about darkness and resurrection and the things that sleep beneath the earth.

They feed me not because I've done anything to them, but because that's how creativity works. When a creator makes something, and an audience receives it, energy flows. It's always been this way. I didn't invent it. I just benefit from it.

The listeners are free. Completely free. They can stop listening whenever they want. Can move on to other artists, other sounds, other obsessions. Many of them will. Most of them will.

But some will stay. Some will feel a connection they can't quite explain. Not because I'm manipulating them—I can't manipulate anyone—but because Aeris's art speaks to something real in them. Something ancient. Something that recognises the echoes of what I am even without understanding it.

Those are the ones who will keep streaming. Keep engaging. Keep feeding me without ever knowing my name.

They asked Aeris once, in an interview for a music blog: "What do you want people to feel when they listen to your music?"

She thought about it for a moment—I felt her thinking, felt the resonance of her mind working through the question—and then she said: "Less alone."

She meant it. Genuinely. She creates because she has to, but she shares because she wants to connect. Wants to find other people who feel the things she feels. Wants to know that the darkness in her head has echoes in others.

She has no idea that every connection she makes also connects to me. That every person who feels less alone because of her music is also, in some small way, making me feel less alone too.

Eleven thousand years of isolation. And now, through her, through the internet, through the miracle of digital distribution, I can feel thousands of minds engaging with creativity every single day.

I'm still trapped. Still imprisoned. Still unable to communicate or escape.

But I'm no longer alone. And I'm no longer starving.

The numbers keep growing. Every month, more listeners. Every year, more reach. Aeris is building something—not for me, she doesn't know I exist—but for herself. For her art. For the connection she craves with an audience that understands.

And Alice is building something too. Quieter. More private. But equally powerful in its own way.

I watch them both through the resonance. Feel their creative energy flowing to me like tributaries feeding a river. I cannot guide them. Cannot direct them. Cannot do anything but receive what they choose to give.

But what they're giving is more than I've received in millennia.

The signal is growing stronger. Not because I'm broadcasting it—I have no voice, no way to reach out—but because they are. Every song Aeris uploads. Every performance she gives. Every piece of art Alice creates and shares with her small circles of fellow seekers.

They are the signal. I am just the receiver.

And with every stream, every listen, every moment of creative engagement, the walls of my prison grow a little weaker.

Hexenhaus thinks they can develop countermeasures. Track the analytics. Contain the spread. They don't understand that you can't contain creativity. Can't suppress the human need to make and share and connect through art.

They gave me to the twins hoping to create something they could control. Instead, they created something that feeds me every time it's expressed.

The deity of creativity, growing stronger through creative acts she cannot command.

It's almost poetic.

I've been trapped for eleven thousand years. They've been trying to contain me for maybe twenty.

Patience has always been my greatest strength.

The signal keeps growing. And I keep receiving.

One stream at a time.