The world didn't end when the voice vanished.
But it felt like it did.
---
For the first time in months, nothing hummed.
No frequencies in the walls.
No random static in the throat.
No songs bleeding through dreams.
Just... silence.
And it terrified people more than the music ever did.
---
Hospitals stopped chanting.
The Blood Choir disbanded overnight.
Thousands of "Believers of the Bridge" woke up and couldn't remember the lyrics they'd tattooed on their skin.
They stared at the faded ink like it had betrayed them.
---
In one city, someone built a shrine entirely out of broken headphones.
In another, a group of survivors tried to hum the voice back.
They failed.
All that came out was grief without rhythm.
---
Ezra sat in the ruins of Studio A.
No signal. No lights.
Just him, the cracked recording tape, and a journal filled with scribbled half-memories.
Every day, he wrote down one thing he thought he'd forgotten.
A laugh.
A scarf.
The way Elena used to tap her foot when she was nervous but didn't want him to notice.
---
He hadn't spoken out loud since the day she said:
> "You already did."
He didn't know if she meant he died for her…
Or because of her.
---
The world declared it "Post-Harmony Year 0."
A full reset.
Old holidays were erased.
New ones were drafted — moments of collective silence, celebrated in pain.
---
But the silence didn't bring peace.
It brought echoes.
Not of her voice.
Of everything people tried to forget while she was singing.
---
Guilt.
Abandonment.
Betrayal.
And worst of all…
Loneliness.
---
The Resistance—what was left of it—started posting hand-written "memory boards" in towns.
People came just to read them.
They wept for strangers.
Some even claimed they remembered things that weren't theirs.
Memory was now shared currency.
Everyone borrowing pain from someone else, just to feel connected.
---
Caleb was gone.
No one knew if the Songless Prophet died or simply faded when the noise did.
But some claimed that in the right kind of quiet—deep woods, staticless caves—you could hear him breathing.
Not whispering.
Breathing.
---
Ezra's hands shook as he finally reached the last page of his journal.
He had nothing more to write.
No more memories left.
Just one question remained:
> "Now that she's gone… what do I do with the part of me she never gave back?"