Of all the silences Delaney had known—the quiet of the confessional, the hush of a hospital room, the dead air after a phone line goes dead—this was the absolute. It was a silence that didn't just lack sound; it devoured it. The slam of the heavy oak door behind her was swallowed whole, leaving no echo, no reverberation. It was as if the universe itself had taken a final, shuddering breath and then simply stopped.
She stumbled forward, not seeing, her boots crunching on gravel that made no noise. The world was a monochrome etching, all sharp edges and hollow grays. The vibrant, terrifying tapestry of the world—the hum of electricity, the whisper of the wind, the distant thrum of life—had been ripped away. She was deaf in a way that had nothing to do with her ears. She was soul-deaf.
And the cold. It was a cold that started in the cavity of her chest, right where the bond had been, and radiated outward, turning her blood to slurry and her bones to ice. Lane's face, twisted in that awful, determined agony, was seared onto the backs of her eyelids. The feel of his kiss, a brand of betrayal. The words of severance, a spell that hadn't just broken a connection; it had performed a spiritual amputation.
She didn't know how long she walked, a ghost through the grounds of the ruined estate. The manicured lawns were scarred with fissures, the hedges withered as if blighted. The Schism's wound in the world was still bleeding, a sickly, purple-black bruise on the sky above the mountain, but its scream was now a silent movie playing just for her.
Her body finally gave out near a skeletal grove of cherry trees. Her legs buckled and she collapsed against a gnarled trunk, the bark scraping her cheek. She drew her knees to her chest, wrapping her arms around them, a futile attempt to hold herself together. The sobs came then, violent, wrenching things that tore from her throat but produced no sound in her new, silent world. She was a doll, broken and discarded on the floor of a dead universe.
This was what it meant to be unmade. This was the price of his victory. He had saved the world by destroying hers.
A flicker of movement caught her eye—not a sight, but a shift in the oppressive gray of her perception. A figure stood at the edge of the grove, watching her. It was Colton. His usual swagger was gone, replaced by a stillness that was more unnerving. He looked… solid. Real. In a world that had become a phantom limb, he was disturbingly present.
He walked toward her, his boots making no sound on the fallen leaves. He crouched before her, his dark eyes searching her face. She could see his lips move, could guess the shape of her name, but there was nothing. No sound. No vibration in the air. She just stared at him, her eyes wide and vacant.
A flicker of frustration crossed his features. He reached out, his fingers brushing a tear from her cheek. The contact was a jolt. It wasn't the electric, soul-deep connection of the bond, but it was a sensation. An anchor point in the sensory void. She flinched away.
He withdrew his hand, then pointed two fingers at his own eyes, then at hers. Look at me. He tapped his ear, then shook his head. I know you can't hear. He then placed a hand flat over his own heart, his expression uncharacteristically grave. But you can still feel.
Delaney shook her head, a frantic, desperate motion. No. I can't. There's nothing left to feel.
Colton's jaw tightened. He reached into the pocket of his leather jacket and pulled out a small, tarnished silver whistle. It was an old thing, intricately carved with patterns that made her eyes water if she looked too closely. He held it up for her to see, then put it to his lips.
She braced for a sound that would never come. But instead of blowing, he simply exhaled, a soft, controlled breath. And a note bloomed inside her mind.
It wasn't a sound that traveled through the air. It was a frequency that resonated directly in her consciousness, a clear, pure tone that cut through the static of her grief. It was a single point of data in the emptiness. A single star in a dead sky.
Her breath hitched. She stared at him, bewildered.
He lowered the whistle, a grim satisfaction in his eyes. He pointed to the whistle, then to his temple. It doesn't work on ears. It works on… everything else.
He spoke again, his voice still silent to her, but now she could see the shapes of the words more clearly, could read the intent in his face. "The Bond is gone, Delaney. But you are not. The power you had, the way you heard the world… that wasn't just the bond. That was you."
He held out the whistle to her. Hesitantly, she reached out and took it. The metal was warm from his hand. As her fingers closed around it, a faint, residual hum traveled up her arm, a ghost of a sensation.
"The severance…" Colton's silent words continued, his gaze intense. "It didn't just cut you off from him. It cut you off from everything. It's a blanket. A dampener. But you can learn to listen underneath it. You have to."
Why? she wanted to scream. What is left to listen for?
As if reading her mind, Colton's expression darkened. He pointed a thumb back toward the mountain, toward the silent, pulsing bruise in the sky. "Because he lost," Colton's lips formed the words with brutal clarity. "Lane didn't seal it. He made it worse. The silence you're sitting in? That's not grief, kid. That's the calm before the storm. The Oriax Foundation isn't trying to stop it anymore. They're conducting it."
The pieces, cold and sharp, began to arrange themselves in her mind. Corvus's patronage. The conveniently obtained texts. Lane, pushed to the brink. They had all been players in a game orchestrated by a hidden hand. Lane's ultimate sacrifice hadn't been a victory; it had been the final move in Corvus's plan.
The numbness began to recede, burned away by a slow, simmering anger. It was a feeble flame, but it was heat. It was feeling.
Colton saw the change in her eyes. He nodded, once. "The bond was a channel. A narrow, focused stream. That's gone. But the ocean it came from is still there. You're adrift in it. You can either drown in the silence, or you can learn to swim in it." He tapped the whistle in her hand. "That's a floatation device. A starting point."
Delaney looked down at the small silver object. It felt impossibly light, yet heavy with potential. She brought it to her lips, her hands trembling. She closed her eyes, trying to remember what it felt like to make a sound, to send a vibration out into the world. She exhaled, not with force, but with intention.
Nothing happened for a moment. Then, a faint, warbling tone trembled in the darkness behind her eyes. It was weak, unsteady, but it was there. A signal from a shipwreck survivor, sent out into the vast, silent dark.
She opened her eyes. Colton was watching her, a ghost of his old, irreverent smile touching his lips. "See?" he said, the silent word full of a grim promise. "You're not broken. You're retuning."
He stood up and offered her a hand. She stared at it for a long moment, the weight of her despair still anchoring her to the ground. But the anger was there now, a spark against the cold. Lane was in there, trapped in the heart of whatever Corvus had built. He had severed them to save her, but in doing so, he had doomed himself to become a tool for the very darkness they'd fought.
She couldn't hear the world. But she could still fight for it.
She reached out and took Colton's hand. His grip was firm, real, hauling her to her feet. The world was still a silent film, but now she had a script. A purpose.
She looked toward the mountain, toward the silent, spreading bruise. The war wasn't over. It had just entered a new, more terrible phase. And she, the girl who could no longer hear the whispers of the dark, would have to learn to scream back.