The relief of having gotten rid of the amulet was as sweet as it was fragile. It lasted exactly three days. Three days during which I managed to negotiate with Brom a payment plan that didn't involve my eternal enslavement (only occasional services of "security and damage containment," a vague enough term to give me chills). Three days during which the only thing flying in Kael's workshop were curse words, not tools.
On the fourth day, I woke up to a strange silence.
It wasn't the oppressive silence of the Vale or the whispering one of the Stone Forest. It was an… urban silence. Absent. The shrill laughter of the tavern drunks, the merchants' cries, the ringing of the guild bell, the constant hammering from Kael's forge… all of it had stopped.
I left my room. The inn's hallway was empty. I went downstairs. The main tavern was full of people, but it was the quietest scene I'd ever seen. Several patrons had their mouths open, frozen mid-conversation, their mugs suspended halfway to their lips. Torin, behind the counter, stood motionless, a dishcloth in hand, his mouth forming a silent "O" of astonishment.
I looked at them, waiting for a joke. Nothing.
"Liriel?" I shouted. My own voice sounded muffled, as if I were speaking through a blanket.
She appeared at the top of the stairs, her face pale, her eyes wide. She pointed to my mouth, then to her ears, shaking her head.
She couldn't hear me.
Panic, silent and suffocating, began to rise in my throat. I ran back upstairs and burst into Elara and Vespera's room. Elara was standing, gripping her staff tightly, her lips moving without producing sound. Vespera was at the window, gesturing frantically toward the street, her mouth moving in a constant flow of words that went nowhere.
She saw us and pointed outside.
The main street of Vaelor was a living, silent tableau. Horses and carts frozen mid-motion, children paused mid-play, guards gesturing soundlessly. And hovering over everything was a low mist, the color of dirty pearl, that seemed to absorb every trace of sound.
It wasn't a natural silence. It was a theft.
Liriel pulled a piece of parchment and a quill from her bag (yes, she carried that) and wrote furiously in elegant handwriting:
"Mist of Sonic Erasure. High-level magic. Not divine. Twisted alchemy. CUTS SOUND AT THE SOURCE."
I took her quill and wrote beneath it: "WHO?"
She wrote back, underlining the word: "CELINE. Or someone working for her. This is a statement. A warning."
Elara took the parchment and wrote, her handwriting shaky: "The amulet? Is it causing this from afar?"
Liriel shook her head vehemently and wrote: "NO. The Temple contains it. This is new. Someone is testing our defenses. Our morale. Isolating us."
Vespera, frustrated at being unable to communicate, grabbed an apple from the fruit basket and threw it against the wall. The apple hit the wood with a dull, almost inaudible thud. She gestured at the mist, then made a cutting motion across her throat.
She was right. We were being silenced. Strangled.
We tried to step out into the street. The mist was cold and damp to the touch, clinging to the skin. Walking through it was like swimming in cotton. Every step, every breath, was muffled. It was disorienting and deeply terrifying. I saw people's faces, their expressions of pure panic, without the sounds that should have accompanied them. It was a mute nightmare.
Then, a sound broke through the silence. It wasn't a normal sound. It was metallic, distorted, coming from all directions at once. It sounded like… music.
"...and the STRIPPED shall fall, without a cry for help!"
It was Melina's voice—the bard—but filtered through some mechanical device, distorted and soulless. Her mocking song now served as a macabre soundtrack to our silent siege.
Liriel grabbed my arm and pointed to the roof of the town hall. There, hovering above the mist, was a small metal orb, slowly rotating. From it, the distorted music emanated.
"Your goddess will not save you, your magic is weak and failing!"
That was it. It was a psychological attack. Cut our communication, isolate us, and then remind us of our failures with the voice of the most annoying person in the kingdom.
The anger I felt was hotter than any flame. I didn't know who was behind it — whether it was Celine or some other henchman — but they had made a mistake. They underestimated the power of a man with nothing to lose and everything to prove, even if he couldn't hear his own voice of rage.
I ran toward the town hall, ignoring the silent, panicked looks around me. Liriel, Elara, and Vespera followed close behind. We climbed the stairs in silence, our footsteps muffled.
On the roof, we found the source of the music. The metal orb, about the size of a human head, spun atop a tripod, projecting its distorted message. Beside it stood a man dressed in gray robes, with gear-like goggles over his eyes, delicately adjusting a series of levers and buttons on a control box.
He saw us and smiled — a smile of technocratic superiority. His mouth moved. I read his lips: "Silence is progress, noise is chaos. I'm merely… cleaning."
He was a servant of Celine. An alchemist or engineer, someone who saw life as a problem to be solved — and we were just background noise.
He pressed a button. From the orb came not music this time, but a single sonic pulse — a wave of force that hit us like a punch. It was as if all the sounds that had been stolen were released at once, in a single burst of pure noise. The pain was excruciating. We fell to our knees, covering ears that were already trapped in terrifying silence.
The gray man laughed soundlessly and prepared another pulse.
That's when Vespera, tears of pain and fury streaming down her face, did the only thing she could do in a soundless world. She stood, drew her bow, and fired.
The arrow made no whoosh. It simply appeared in the center of the control box, sending silent sparks flying.
The gray man screamed without sound. His hands flew to the damaged controls. The metal orb rattled, emitted one last distorted note, and then went dark.
The pearly mist began to fade instantly, like smoke blown away by a gust of wind.
And then sound returned. Not gently, but in an overwhelming cacophony. The gray man's scream, the people's cries of relief in the streets, the frantic tolling of the bell, Kael's hammering, the world's very breath. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever heard.
The gray man tried to run, but Liriel, with a gesture, froze his feet in place with a silver light.
I stood, my ears still ringing, and walked up to him.
"Tell Celine," I said, my voice sounding strangely loud and sweet in my own ears. "That chaos has its own music. And we're the band."
He spat — a mute gesture of defiance — before Liriel wrapped him in a prison of energy.
We looked out over the city, slowly coming back to life, the sounds filling every empty space. The price of silence had been high, but the victory of reclaiming our voices, our laughter, our arguments… was priceless.
Of course, the next day we received a bill from the Mayor for "damage to municipal property (town hall roof)" and from Melina for "unauthorized use and distortion of her artistic composition."
Some things, even in a world saved from silence, never change. But at that moment, hearing Vespera laugh loudly at something Elara said and Liriel's familiar grumble about the "unbearable noise of mortals," I didn't care. Sound was life. And we had it back.