The silver tuning fork didn't just hum; it breathed. Every time Elias moved it, the air seemed to ripple like water.
He stepped out of his basement and into the streets of Oakhaven. The city looked the same—grey, monolithic, and hushed—but to Elias, everything was different. Through the vibrations of the fork, he could see the "Ghost-Sound." A rusted gate didn't just hang there; it radiated a dull, throbbing red light, the visual frequency of a metallic groan that no one could hear.
Elias knew where he had to go: The Blackwood Asylum. Before the Great Muting, Blackwood was where the first cases of "Vocal Atrophy" were reported. People didn't just lose their voices there; they lost their shadows. If the 'First Scream' existed anywhere, it was in the heart of that decayed labyrinth.
As he walked, Elias noticed he was being followed. Not by people, but by voids. Dark, human-shaped patches of absolute nothingness were drifting between the buildings. They were the "Silencers"—the guardians of the Archive he had seen in his dream. They didn't have eyes, yet Elias felt their gaze like needles on his skin.
He reached the Asylum gates. The tuning fork in his hand began to vibrate so violently that his palm bled.
Clang.
He struck the fork against the iron gate.
The sound—or rather, the shockwave—was magnificent. For a split second, the world turned into full color. The grass turned green, the sky blazed blue, and a thunderous ring shattered the silence of the street. The Silencers hissed, their formless bodies recoiling as if burned by the frequency.
Elias pushed inside. The air in the Asylum was thick with the scent of wet dust and forgotten medicine. He followed the vibration of the fork, down into the sub-basements, where the walls were padded with thick, yellowed foam—designed to drown out noise.
In the deepest cell, he found it.
There was no ghost, no monster. Instead, there was a small, ancient phonograph sitting on a stone pedestal. Its needle was scratched, stuck in a permanent groove on a black wax cylinder.
Elias held the tuning fork close to the phonograph. The vibration matched perfectly. He realized with a jolt of horror that the 'First Scream' wasn't a cry of pain.
He leaned in, his ear inches away from the spinning cylinder. Through the static of the universe, he heard the origin.
It was a mother, centuries ago, holding a dying child, trying to scream at the heavens—but she had chosen to swallow it to stay hidden from soldiers passing by. That one suppressed, agonizing moment of pure, concentrated grief had been the seed. It had grown, gathering every other suppressed emotion in history, until it became the monster that ate the world's sound.
"The First Scream wasn't an explosion," Elias whispered to the empty room. "It was a choice."
Suddenly, the floor beneath him began to crack. The walls of the Asylum started to peel away, revealing not bricks, but millions of human faces, all with their mouths sewn shut. The phonograph began to spin faster and faster, the friction creating a heat that scorched the air.
The Silencers were no longer drifting; they were rushing in, merging into one giant wall of darkness to crush Elias and his tuning fork.
"Give it back," a voice boomed, not in his head this time, but shaking the very foundations of the building. "Give the silence back to the earth."
Elias looked at the silver fork, then at the phonograph. He had two choices: strike the fork and shatter the cylinder, releasing a thousand years of pain at once—possibly destroying the world—or let the silence consume him forever.
He raised the fork high. His muscles screamed. His vision blurred.
"No more secrets," Elias roared, his voice finally breaking through the Muting like a lightning bolt.