He wasn't looking for anything special.
He just wanted to hide from the noise.
From the engines, from the voices, from the endless notifications — from himself.
The world around Varn lived in a rhythm that exhausted even the soul; everything buzzed, screamed, demanded attention.
Sometimes it felt as if people had long forgotten how silence sounded.
That evening he was simply walking home.
The air was heavy and damp, as if the city itself breathed through a filter of fatigue.
And then Varn noticed it — an old book, lying beside a garbage bin.
A worn cover, half-erased letters, pages yellowed by time.
The title was faded beyond recognition.
He picked it up — and for some reason, he couldn't throw it away.
At home, Varn sat on his bed, turned on the lamp, and opened the book.
No author, no date.
Only a single line, written in thin, uneven ink:
> "Let my voice become salvation for those who still hear."
He smirked. "Another piece of philosophical nonsense," he thought, flipping through the pages.
And yet, something was off.
The words didn't speak — they whispered, though no sound came from them, filling his mind with the feeling of being watched by the text itself.
It spoke of a man named Elior Verran — a wanderer who had heard the Whispers and made a pact with them.
His philosophy was called Salvation.
Not magic, not faith — but an inner vow: to save others, even if it meant his own end.
The deeper Elior delved into his philosophy, the clearer the Whisper became.
And the quieter he grew.
> "Each Whisper is a thought the world has rejected.
Each who listens becomes the mirror of their own philosophy.
And those who reject all Whispers… become the Void."
Varn frowned.
He didn't understand.
He was used to magic as spectacle, not as thought.
All this talk of philosophies and voices felt too heavy, too abstract — as if the author had tried to give meaning to what could never be understood.
But as he turned the last page of the chapter, the room suddenly froze.
The hum of the lamp vanished.
The world went deaf.
Even his breath dissolved into the air.
A strange coldness bloomed beneath his skin — not pain, not fear, but the absence of everything.
And then, for the first time, he heard not a Whisper.
He heard Silence.
Not a sound. Not a voice.
But something else — primordial, wordless, as if Nothing itself had turned its gaze toward him.
The book slipped from his hands and fell to the floor.
Its pages turned on their own, and Varn saw only one final line before the light flickered out:
> "When silence begins to speak, the world will cease to exist."