The silence came without warning, without the gradual fade that usually preceded quiet, without any transition between sound and its absence. One moment, the Crimson Citadel thrummed with ambient noise—the whisper of marrow flowing through bloodstone walls, the distant murmur of revenants outside, the crackle of Selena's corrupted flame and the rumble of Dante's weakened storm. The next moment, all of it ceased.
Not stopped. Not paused. Ceased, as if sound had never existed, as if the concept of noise was being actively unmade.
Selena felt it first as wrongness in her chest, in the place where her corrupted flame burned perpetually, where ember-warmth had become blood-edged darkness but had never fully extinguished. The flame flickered, guttered, responded to the silence the way fire responded to vacuum—by dying.
