Everyone and everything in Deshret knows about the Hum.
It's heard best when the city is quiet, in the hour before the work-bells ring. It's heard in the lifts, heard when one presses their ear against the walls. Some days it is scarcely more than just a chattering in your teeth, while on others cups tremble on the shelves and the walls seem to breathe. Children are taught about it growing up with lullabies and nursery rhymes. One such is noted below:
Sleep, little sparrow, fold up your wings
Dream while the stone beneath you sings
Whatever it promises, whatever it knows
Lie very still and keep your eyes closed.
Sleep, little sparrow, morning is near
Pay no mind to the voice in your ear
Though it may weep and though it may plead,
Mother won't ever call from beneath your feet.
Sepulchre teaches that the Hum is the breath of Saint Marrow himself, rising from his tomb beneath the Cathedral at the very bottom of the city. It is held as living proof that the Prophet endures: that he listens, that he hears every prayer, and to say otherwise is heresy.
Even so, rumours persist. People speak of hearing voices within the Hum when the city is quiet enough: dead relatives, strangers, sometimes voices that seem to know the listener by name. Some claim it can be answered. Some say it warns, comforts, or leads those who know how to listen.
Most accept Sepulchre’s teaching. Others believe the Hum is no more than a frequency carried through the bedrock, perhaps produced by the Pneumatikon, the great engine that powers Deshret and its infrastructure. Divers often support this view, insisting that the Hum is louder when one is jacked in. And then there are those who believe neither priest nor engineer, claiming the Hum is the dead.
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