Beneath the Silent Sky

No one had spoken in 317 days.

Not a whisper. Not a murmur. Not even a breath too loud.

The sky had gone silent first. One morning, birdsong never returned. The wind stopped humming through the trees. Storms passed overhead without a sound. Thunder was reduced to a flicker of light—lightning’s shadow without its roar.

Then the silence spread to the people.

One by one, they simply... stopped speaking. No disease. No war. Just an invisible stillness that swallowed the world whole.

Talia remembered sound.

She remembered her mother’s laugh echoing through the kitchen. Her father's voice calling her name in the dark. The way the old clock used to chime every hour, announcing time’s steady march.

Now the clock still ticked, but it ticked without tone.

People wrote messages. They mimed. They tapped fingers and blinked in code. But no one dared make a sound—not even to cry.

The silence had teeth.

Because the few who did try to speak…

They vanished.

Talia was different. She was born half-mute, her voice barely more than a whisper even in the Before. She had lived in the margins of sound all her life.

But even now, in this voiceless world, she heard things. Not with her ears—but in her mind. In her chest. In the air beneath her skin.

She heard the sky.

Or rather, what hid beneath it.

It started with a hum.

Soft and low, like someone singing to themselves in a cave a thousand miles away. A kind of warmth curled in her chest whenever she stepped outside at night. The stars flickered differently when she listened.

One evening, as the sun fell behind the mountains, she stood in the garden, letting the windless air kiss her face. She placed her hand on the soil, and the hum deepened.

It became a voice—not words, but understanding. It felt like the earth was trying to remember how to speak through her.

That night, Talia dreamed of a tower of glass in the clouds. A single figure stood at its peak, wrapped in threads of light. The figure turned, and Talia saw her own face, older and glowing. The reflection smiled, and mouthed something soundless:

“Find the Source. The silence is not natural.”

When Talia awoke, she knew:

The silence wasn’t a curse.

It was a cage.

She didn’t tell anyone. Words wouldn’t come, and writing wasn’t enough. So instead, she listened.

Over weeks, she followed the voice in the windless air. It led her to forgotten places—old train stations, radio towers, ruins swallowed by ivy. Each one whispered fragments of a song, as though the world itself was trying to remember its own melody.

And always, the sky remained silent. Gray-blue. Still. Watching.

Until she found the boy.

He was sitting beneath a collapsed observatory, sketching star maps into the dirt.

He didn’t look up when she approached.

But when their eyes met, something shifted.

She pointed to her chest, then the sky, then pressed her hand to the earth. His eyes widened.

He understood.

He couldn’t speak either—but he heard it too.

His name was Coren.

Together, they explored the world in silence.

And the more they listened, the more they felt the sky trying to speak through them. Not in words, but in vibration. Emotion. Pressure in the bones.

Talia learned that the silence had a rhythm, like a heart beating behind a wall.

Something was trapped above them—or below them.

And it was waiting to be set free.

Then came the crack.

A hairline fracture in the silence itself.

It happened during a solar eclipse. The world went dark—and for a heartbeat, Talia heard a scream echo through the air. Not human. Not animal.

It was as if the world itself had tried to cry out.

The sky flickered.

The stars blinked.

And Talia knew: the Source was near.

Coren led her to the mountains.

Deep in a hidden cavern carved by time and water, they found a chamber where the walls pulsed like breathing stone. In its center floated a glowing sphere—swirling with clouds, lights, and echoes.

It was the Skyseed—the Source of Sound.

Once, long ago, it had sung life into the world. Winds, voices, birds, music—all had come from it.

But fear had choked it. Humans had grown afraid of noise. Afraid of truth. Afraid of the pain sound could carry.

So they’d silenced it.

Buried it.

Forgotten it.

Talia stepped forward.

The Skyseed pulsed with longing.

It didn’t want noise. It wanted balance—truthful sound, soulful song, voices that remembered how to feel, not just speak.

Talia placed her hand against it.

It felt like fire and ice, thunder and lullabies.

And then she did something she hadn’t done in almost a year.

She sang.

Not loud. Not perfect. But raw and trembling and real.

The song of a girl who missed her mother.

Who feared being alone.

Who remembered a world that once made sound with every heartbeat.

The Skyseed bloomed.

Light poured from it, flooding the cavern, tearing up through the mountain, slicing the sky open.

And with that light came the first sound in nearly a year:

A single, perfect note—carried on the wind that finally returned.

All over the world, people paused.

Babies cried.

Dogs barked.

Lovers whispered.

And somewhere, a broken clock chimed.

Talia stood beneath the no-longer-silent sky, her voice humming with power. Coren took her hand, eyes shining with joy and awe.

The world would not forget sound again.

Because one girl remembered how to listen when no one else could speak.

THE END

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