The sun had barely risen above the horizon when Miguel took to the streets. The silence that hung over the city was not the usual silence of a lazy morning; it was dense, suffocating, as if the very air had been poisonedby absence.
He expected to hear neighbors calling out to one another, perhaps shouts of confusion or pleas for help. But there was none of that. Just the muffled sound of nervous footsteps against the stone floor. And then Miguel saw it: dozens, then hundreds of wide eyes, mouths open in despair… and no voices coming from them.
In the central square, the heart of the city, chaos had taken hold. Residents clutched scraps of paper torn from notebooks, loose pages from old books, even grocery bags. Pens scratched furiously, pencils snapped under pressure, as they hurriedly attempted to form sentences. Miguel approached and read some shaky messages scattered on the ground:
"I can't speak."
"My daughter forgot my name."
"Words are fading away."
A chill ran down his spine. He took a deep breath, seeking the coolness of the detective he'd always been. Part of him wanted to chalk it up to mass hysteria, perhaps an outbreak caused by some chemical phenomenon, perhaps even an invisible gas. But something was wrong. Something that couldn't be explained by science alone.
In the middle of the crowd, a young woman tried to bring order to the panic. Her dark hair was tied up in a disheveled mess, strands stuck to her face with sweat. Her paint-stained hands betrayed her haste. She held a makeshift sign above her head, written in firm handwriting:
"Don't panic. Use paper. Calm down."
The gesture wasn't enough to silence the crowd, but it offered a spark of direction. Miguel stepped closer.
"You…" he tried to speak, but the word died before it even came. The girl looked at him and shook her head, with the serenity of someone who had repeated that gesture dozens of times that morning.
Without saying anything, he handed her a piece of paper and a pen. Miguel wrote firmly:
"I'm Miguel Navarro, Detective. I need to understand what's going on."
She read it and replied without hesitation:
"Elisa Duarte, librarian. The whole city woke up like this. It's not just silence... some are already forgetting words."
Miguel narrowed his eyes. His heart hammered in his chest.
"Forgetting?" he murmured, more to himself than to her, even though he knew no one would hear.
Elisa held his gaze firmly, like someone carrying secrets too heavy to share. Then she pointed to the fountain in the center of the square.
It was then that Miguel realized: upon the dark stones, luminous symbols flickered, like living scars. They were ancient, unfamiliar runes, but somehow they pulsed in response to the medallion hanging on his chest.
A shiver ran down the back of his neck. The silence no longer felt like a mere absence of sound. It was something greater. A living, breathing spell around them.
Elisa scribbled again, this time with firm, almost desperate strokes:
"Words are being stolen. It's not just the voice... it's the memory. This is a curse."
Miguel clenched his fists. He'd never believed in curses. At least, not until that morning.