Kael stood at the center of the square and clapped his hands.
Just once.
The sound cracked through Oakhaven like a bullet shattering glass. Sharp, defiant, wrong in the suffocating silence.
People froze mid-motion. Across the street, a man's calloused fingers lost their grip, and the loaf of bread he was carrying tumbled to the cobblestones.
A woman straining to pull a heavy cart stumbled, her feet tangling. No one screamed, no vocal outburst pierced the stillness.
But every eye in the square swiveled towards him, each gaze mirroring the same silent question:
Why are you doing this?
Kael didn't flinch under their collective scrutiny. He held their gazes, one by one, then slowly raised a hand and signed a message Two-Tap had painstakingly taught him the night before.
We don't have to live like this." No one responded with word or gesture. But something shifted in the air.
No one moved to stop him, either. A silent permission hung in the balance.
...
Back in the dim attic, Kael laid out the worn notebook, a stick of chalk, and a series of intricate symbols he'd hastily sketched from the Dreamwell chamber's decaying murals.
Two-Tap sat beside him, her small legs crossed, her dark eyes wide and serious, absorbing his every move.
He tapped the open page of the notebook, the rough paper scratching softly beneath his finger.
"I'm going to teach you a word," he said quietly, his voice a low murmur in the vast silence. "Not the sound of it. Just the shape it makes here." He touched his lips. She hesitated, her gaze flicking between his mouth and the notebook.
Then, a small, decisive nod. He drew a simple word: "light." Then repeated it in a soft, deliberate whisper, enunciating each syllable carefully. "L… eye… t."
Two-Tap stared intently at the drawn word, her lips pursed in concentration, then tentatively tried to mimic the shape his mouth had made. No sound emerged, just a soft exhalation of breath.
That was okay. It wasn't about breaking the silence yet. It was about reclaiming something stolen. Owning the essence of it. Building meaning in a place where meaning had been systematically crushed.
Day by day, hour by hour, they worked in the quiet solitude of the attic. It started small, almost imperceptible. Kael whispered single words – anchors in the silence – while she mirrored them with painstaking signs.
Hope. Fire. Truth.
Each whispered word, each careful gesture, brought a subtle, unsettling shift to their reality. A fleeting flicker in the oppressive gray of the sky. A momentary warping of the distant horizon. A single bird, wings beating against the silent air, appearing overhead only to vanish mid-flight as if reality itself couldn't sustain it. Something fundamental was unraveling, the tightly woven fabric of their silent world beginning to fray.
The silence wasn't just the absence of sound anymore. It felt charged, hostile, alive with a suppressed energy.
And it was losing its iron grip. By the third day of their secret lessons, the changes were undeniable, seeping into the edges of their awareness. The bakery's long-dead fire crackled to life again, a small, hesitant dance of orange within the soot-stained oven – not loud, not full of warmth, but undeniably present.
A young boy, startled by a shadow, accidentally dropped a spoon on the cobblestones, and the sharp clink of metal against stone rang out through the square before being abruptly swallowed by a wave of palpable fear. But the Collectors didn't materialize.
The silence held, strained but unbroken. Kael watched the townsfolk from the shadowed corners of buildings, a silent observer of their silent lives. Some still actively avoided his gaze, their fear a tangible barrier.
But others… Others watched him back, their expressions a complex mix of apprehension and a dawning curiosity.
A woman at the fabric stall, her hands moving with practiced silence, signed something to him across the dusty square: "Danger." But her eyes held no animosity, only a flicker of something akin to desperate hope.
That night, Kael lit a single candle in the attic, the small flame casting dancing shadows on the sloping walls. It shouldn't have mattered in this soundless world. But it did. The fragile flame flickered, responding to the barely audible whisper as he spoke the word, "Light." Two-Tap repeated the shape with her mouth, a soft exhalation accompanying the silent form.
Still no sound, just a breath and the careful articulation. But in the stillness of the attic, that was enough. And the room responded in kind. The oppressive shadows seemed to recede, pushed back by the tiny beacon. The aged wooden boards beneath them creaked for the first time since he'd arrived, a low groan in the silence that felt strangely like a sigh.
The very air in the small space felt subtly different, charged with a nascent energy. Kael leaned back against the wall, staring at the flickering candle, his voice gaining a newfound steadiness. "This place was never meant to last," he murmured into the silence. "They locked it down so tightly, they forgot how to live inside it. They built a prison and forgot it was a cell."
He turned to the girl, his gaze meeting her wide, uncertain eyes. "You're the first spark." She looked afraid, the weight of his words settling upon her. "Doesn't matter," Kael said, a grim determination hardening his features. "Fear's just part of the fire."
...
The Collectors came that night. Not with their usual oppressive silence — but with sound. A low, resonant drone filled the air as Kael stepped out of the house, the flickering candle still clutched in his hand. The masked figures weren't trying to blend into the stillness anymore.
They walked openly through the deserted streets, their movements unnervingly synchronized, the hems of their dark robes dragging against the cobblestones like coarse sandpaper. But this time, they weren't pointing, weren't offering silent choices. They were chanting.
Not in discernible words. Not in any recognizable language. In pure, unadulterated pressure. The low hum intensified, the sound of a collapsing dam, the weight of absolute surrender weaponized and directed at him. Kael's knees buckled under the onslaught of the sonic force.
It felt like a mountain had been crushed unto his back.
But in the next moment something shocking happened.
Two-Tap screamed.
Not loud, the sound thin and reedy, a mere thread in the heavy air. Not strong, lacking the resonance of true voice. But real actual sound.
The oppressive humming shattered instantly, the sonic pressure dissolving as if it had struck an invisible wall. The Collectors faltered, their unified movements breaking. The smooth surface of one of their bone-white masks cracked, a jagged line appearing across its blank face.
They clearly seemed shocked.
Then, all at once, they turned and fled, their cloaks billowing behind them as they disappeared into the silent shadows. Kael turned to the girl, shock etched on his face.
"You—" Two-Tap held up a trembling hand, her breath catching in ragged gasps. Tears streamed down her face, silent tracks in the dim light. But a small, fragile smile trembled on her lips, a beacon in her fear. And for the first time since he'd met her, she spoke, the sound a bare, almost inaudible thread in the suddenly quiet air. "Light."