The Reversed Choir
Filed under: Salt Hollows Fauna | Sonic Mimics | Echo-Predators
Contributor: FDG Field Archivist No. 5
Last updated: May 2025
Overview
Echo-Spine Worms are transparent, thread-like creatures suspended in the pressure-deep zones of the Salt Hollows, often near trench mouths or the submerged thresholds of drowned structures. Though physically unimposing, their presence is considered a serious auditory threat.
These worms do not produce speech—they refract it.
Every nearby spoken word becomes a looped, backward distortion. The effect is not only unnerving, but can cause severe linguistic disruption, migraines, and—if prolonged—breakdown of self-narrative in human minds.
They are the Salt Hollows’ answer to the question:
What if language drowned before it was spoken?
Appearance
- Length: 6–10 inches standard; largest verified specimen was 18 inches long
- Colour: Nearly invisible; faintly green-blue under ultraviolet or bioluminescent light
- Structure: Flexible, ribbon-like bodies with a central vertebra-like shimmer (believed to be a sensory array)
- Eyes: None visible. May navigate via pressure vibration
- Movement: Vertical floaters, often still for hours. Shift only in response to sound
- Environment: Hover in “acoustic nests” where the seabed forms an echo chamber—sunken chapels, collapsed amphitheatres, hulls of drowned vessels
Behaviour and Abilities
Acoustic Inversion Reflex
- When exposed to sound, the worm trembles violently, then emits a reversed echo of the nearest speech or noise.
- The result is often a fragmented, reversed sentence that plays repeatedly until the sound source stops or the worm flees.
- Multiple worms will “chorus” in distorted synchrony—creating a reversed-language sound storm that has caused several field agents to black out.
Cognitive Feedback Loop
- Subjects exposed to prolonged worm-chatter report:
- Trouble processing normal speech
- Feelings of drowning inside their own thoughts
- Word confusion, stuttering, or inverted sentence construction
Echo-Nesting
- Worms cluster in zones of historical human grief—especially locations where unheard final words were spoken:
- Shipwrecks where no distress call was sent
- Flooded psychiatric hospitals
- Submerged radio towers
Folklore and Signs
“The Words That Swam Back”
A legend in Cornish fishing villages tells of sailors who heard their own voices from the sea long after drowning. The belief persists that the sea remembers what you didn’t mean to say, and repeats it when you’re most alone.
Soundless Altars
Some trench-faiths place offerings of silent tape recorders at known Echo-Spine hives, hoping to “record the forgotten.” Playback often results in corrupted language or disturbing reversed nursery rhymes.
The Drowned Sermon
According to Thorne oral records, an underwater cathedral near the Dover trench-mouth once hosted 13 worms. Divers reported the worms repeated a sermon in Latin—backwards and layered over itself—for three days after a human entered. The sermon has since been forbidden for transcription.
Effect on Earth and Human Minds
Mild Exposure
- Dizziness, mild aphasia
- A sense of hearing others speak “out of sync”
- Difficulty finishing sentences; obsession with meaning reversal
Prolonged Exposure
- Inversion Syndrome: subject begins thinking and writing backwards, sometimes without noticing
- Occasional auditory hallucinations of backwards prayer or laughter
- Breakdown of narrative memory—subject recalls events in the wrong order or with altered emotional cause/effect
Summary for Field Operatives
| Trait | Detail |
|---|---|
| Threat Level | Low physical. High auditory-cognitive risk. |
| Signs of Presence | Backward echoes, sudden silence in echo-prone spaces, harmonic tremors in water |
| Containment Risk | Moderate. Worms resist nets but avoid soundlessness. Complete silencing zones may repel them. |
| Engagement Advice | Use gesture-based communication. Wear auditory insulation or reverse-cancellation ear rigs. Avoid speaking in submerged ruins or steel-chamber wrecks. Never repeat what the worm says. If you hear your own voice backwards—leave immediately. |
“I heard myself say my own name. Not just the name—but the way I said it when I was five and afraid. Then I heard my mother’s voice. But reversed. And then I started answering. Backwards.”
—FDG Dive Log #23, Operative T. Marsh, Discipulus Deep
Faylinn Defence Group 