Where Silence Lives
Lucy fell.
Not from a height.
But inward like her body had folded inside itself, collapsing into the cold marrow of the world.
She remembered the last thing she saw:
Jessa's face, wet with tears.
Spirits circling her like vultures.
The attic cracking beneath her knees.
Then blackness.
But not nothing.
It was the black of soil, of grave-pits, of blacked-out memories you were never meant to unearth.
And in that dark, she heard it
A breath so old it sounded like earth cracking open, She comes.
She woke on stone.
Not floor.
Stone that breathed.
Stone that remembered.
It pulsed faintly beneath her palms like muscle. Or guilt.
The air was thick. Heavy. Drenched in soundless screaming.
And the sky, if it could be called that, looked like a ceiling of stitched flesh, with faint silhouettes pressing against it from the other side, as if trying to claw their way out.
Lucy stood, shakily.
Her body ached.
Her skin bore the sigils still glowing faintly white against her bruised flesh.
But her voice was gone.
She opened her mouth.
No sound.
Not stolen.
Muted.
Like this place didn't allow noise.
This was Throsk's domain.
Where sound is swallowed.
Where the forgotten go to finish dying.
Where the dead are kept not out of mercy but to ensure no one remembers them again.
The Place of the Unsaid
The ground was littered with things that made no sense:
Fragments of lullabies in broken stone.
Mute skeletons holding portraits with smeared-out faces.
Glass jars filled with breath.
As Lucy walked, she began to feel pulled, not by hands, but by guilt.
By memories she'd never lived.
A boy choking on smoke.
A girl digging her way out of a coffin.
A man begging for silence before the rope snapped.
The air itself whispered:
You opened the gate. Now open the wound.
Then she saw them:
The Drowned Dead.
Spirits too far gone to remember even their own names.
They had no mouths, no eyes.
Only ears.
Dozens of them. All over their heads. Their backs. Their arms.
They listened to Lucy even though she made no sound.
They heard her pain.
And they began to follow.
She came to a wall, tall, endless, slick with ink.
It pulsed like a heart and bore every forgotten word ever spoken.
Lucy touched it.
Her fingers burned.
Not with fire.
But with loss.
And the wall spoke not aloud, but into her bones.
Do you remember your mother's face
Lucy froze.
Her heart skipped.
She couldn't.
Not anymore.
She'd tried for years.
The image had always stayed just out of reach.
And now the wall whispered:
That is where she lives. Behind me.
The First Silence took her.
And if you keep the door open, he'll take everything.
Then came the footsteps.
Not heavy, final.
Like the sound of a tomb sealing.
From the dark came a figure tall, faceless, and made of black silk and dried blood.
In one hand: a book of all the names ever erased from history.
In the other: a chain connected to Lucy's own ankle.
You brought back the noise, it whispered, though it had no mouth.
Now bear the silence.
It raised a hand, and Lucy's chest lit up the crown inside her thrashing, burning, trying to escape.
She screamed.
But no sound came out, only ashes.
The creature, Throsk circled her.
You wanted the forgotten to speak.
But words carry weight.
Now, give me your voice.
And I will silence the gate forever.
Behind her, the wall pulsed again.
Behind it her mother.
Or what was left.
Lucy fell to her knees.
Shaking.
Alone.
The spirits still watched thousands of them now, holding their own unsaid truths.
And for the first time, Lucy didn't know if she had made a mistake.
Because sometimes, some memories were buried for a reason.
And she was beginning to hear why. She silent for a while, she didn't complain to anyone.
The graveyard was no longer quiet.
It throbbed.
With the weight of voices that had been buried, denied, rewritten voices that had found in Lucy chance to speak again.
But silence does not die easily.
It fights back.
And so the Hollow bled rage into the air.
The Locking Ceremony
Miss Halley had gathered the town's oldest priests and gatekeepers, iron-willed and iron-hearted.
They stood beneath the bleeding willow, reciting ancient incantations passed down by those who believed the dead should stay dead.
Halley's voice rang through the dark.
Let the gate be sealed.
Let the veil be restored.
Let silence return where it belongs, a shimmering white sigil formed in the air, ancient and final. The Silent Crown pulsed in Lucy's mind like a hammer made of needles.
The ground cracked.
The wind twisted.
And then the spirits screamed.
The Spirits Fight Back
The air split as the first spirit lunged.
A faceless woman all mouth, no eyes shrieked as she tore through the sigil, unraveling part of it with ghostlight claws.
Others followed.
A soldier with half a face.
A drowned girl weeping black water.
A boy with hands too large for his body, crawling up the trees, whispering, don't shut me out again.
They weren't evil.
They were angry.
They had waited decades, centuries.
And now they were being told to return to silence.
They would not go quietly.
Lucy's Breaking Point
Lucy stood between them and the gatekeepers.
Sweat rolled down her back.
The Crown burned on her brow.
Stop, she cried. You're making it worse!
But no one was listening not the living, not the dead.
The spirits were throwing themselves against the barrier, tearing it open only for it to begin resealing.
The priests were chanting louder.
Miss Halley pointed a blade of cold silver at Lucy's chest.
You've let them believe this world is theirs, she hissed. It never was. You're not their queen, you're a door, and I will shut you.
The Unraveling
The Hollow howled.
A great rift tore open in the earth behind the chapel.
From it rose not a spirit, but a shadow of pure will, made of all the names erased from history.
It slammed into the sigil, cracking it.
The air split open.
Time faltered.
Lucy screamed.
But not in pain in fury.
You will not silence them again! If I must burn between both worlds to keep the gate open, so be it.
She raised her hand.
The Crown flared.
And the sigil shattered like glass.
The Cost of Voice
The spirits roared in triumph some laughed, some wept.
Others whispered thank you, brushing against Lucy like cold fingers of wind.
But something had changed.
The gate was no longer stable.
The veil had been torn.
And Miss Halley, pale and defeated, fell to her knees.
You've doomed us.
Lucy turned, voice ragged. No. I've remembered us. You just forgot what grief sounds like when it wakes.
And above them, in the sky where stars should have been, the Hollow opened its eye.
It was watching now.
And it was hungry.
The air in Blackglen Cemetery was no longer still.
It hissed. It shook.
It carried the weight of the forgotten.
Silence, once the graveyard's protector, had become something else.
A cage.
And the dead were clawing to be free of it.
The Ceremony of Locking
Beneath the bleeding willow, Miss Halley stood with iron runes carved into her skin. Behind her, the gatekeepers old, sunken-eyed, cloaked in ash and salt formed a circle and began the rite to seal the gates of the dead forever.
Siilence shall return, they chanted.
No voice shall pass this veil again.
Let them sleep beneath the Hollow.
The air tightened.
The sky groaned.
And deep in the soil, the spirits screamed.
The Spirits Refuse Silence
They burst from the ground like smoke with claws.
They rose from shadows, bones cracking, eyes glowing with old fire.
These were not the spirits Lucy had helped.
These were the Unrested.
The Unshut.
The Forever-Watching.
Once, they had been people thieves, soldiers, witches, murdered lovers, forgotten children. Now, they were hate made form.
You buried us and called it mercy,hissed a spectral woman whose tongue had been torn out long ago.
You shut the door and called it peace.
But we REMEMBER, cried a faceless man with bloodied hands.
We are the bones beneath your cities. The scream in your lullabies.
We will NOT be shut again.
Lucy's Realization
Lucy stood in the middle of the chaos, the Silent Crown burning on her head.
She had thought she was saving them helping the dead find peace.
But some did not want peace.
Some wanted to remain.
To walk among the living.
To rule, to punish, to speak what had been silenced for too long.
They don't want to rest, Lucy whispered. The want to last forever.
The Spirits Turn on Lucy.
Not all were grateful.
Some spirits turned on Lucy with seething hatred.
You opened the gate, ne howled, eyes like fireflies.
You let us hope now you'd shut it again
We trusted you, hissed another, a soldier whose ribcage was wrapped in chains.
Now you serve the Gatekeepers.
Lucy backed away. The Hollow pulsed beneath her feet like a heartbeat made of rot.
She had become their symbol their bridge and now she was a betrayer in their eyes.
I didn't promise forever, she cried.
YOU DID, they roared.
The Collapse of Silence
As Miss Halley raised the final rune and slammed it into the earth, a pulse of white light surged the last breath of Silence.
But the dead were no longer bound by rules.
The strongest of the Unrested, a child-shaped spirit named Grael, stepped forward.
Silence is dead, he whispered.
And then he shattered the sigil with his bare hands.
The earth cracked open.
The wind howled backward.
And every grave in Blackglen split.
A New Law
The Hollow itself screamed.
Lucy fell to her knees as ghostlight exploded across the sky.
And the spirits, angry, eternal declared themselves.
We will walk.
We will speak.
We will NEVER be silent again.
Their voices tore into the world.
Children woke screaming from dreams of drowning.
Elders wept blood at the church steps.
The veil had been torn.
And silence would never return.