Ardyn didn't remember leaving the baker's shop.
One moment he was kneeling in the dust, staring at the space where Lysithe had stood. The next, he was walking through streets he didn't recognize, his feet moving without conscious direction, carrying him through the ruins of Veyra's Hollow like a body remembering a route the mind had long forgotten.
The grey light pressed down from above, thick and unchanging. It had been grey for months now. Or years. Time had a way of collapsing in the Hushed, folding in on itself until past and present became indistinguishable, until memory and hallucination blurred into a single continuous nightmare from which there was no waking.
He walked.
The streets were empty. They were always empty now. Buildings leaned against each other like drunks, their windows dark and hollow, their doors hanging open on broken hinges. Some structures had begun to melt, their edges softening and running like wax, as if the very concept of solidity had started to forget what it meant. Walls sagged. Roofs drooped. Corners refused to stay at right angles.
The world was forgetting how to hold itself together.
Ardyn understood the feeling.
His hands were shaking again. He looked down at them, watched the tremor run through his fingers like a current. They were solid now, opaque, real. The child's echo had bought him another day, maybe two. But already he could feel the hunger beginning to stir again in the hollow place behind his ribs, patient and insistent as a heartbeat.
You tried to save me, Lysithe had said. So you swallowed it. Piece by piece. Echo by echo.
He didn't remember. Couldn't remember. Every time he tried to think back before the silence came, before the world lost its voice, his mind hit a wall of static and noise. There were images, fragments, sensations that might have been memories or might have been dreams. A cathedral. Hands covered in plaster dust. The smell of incense and old wood. A woman's laugh, bright and sudden as breaking glass.
Was that Lysithe?
Had she laughed like that?
He didn't know anymore.
The street opened into what had once been a square, a wide plaza paved with stones that had been worn smooth by centuries of footsteps. In the center stood a fountain, dry for months, its basin filled with debris and the desiccated bodies of birds that had tried to drink from it before realizing there was nothing left to drink. Their corpses were perfectly preserved, feathers intact, beaks open in silent screams.
No echoes rose from them.
Birds had lost their voices first, before the silence learned to eat human sound. Ardyn remembered that much. Remembered waking one morning to the realization that the city was too quiet, that something fundamental was missing. It had taken him hours to understand what it was.
The birds had stopped singing.
And then, one by one, they had begun to fall from the sky.
He crossed the square, giving the fountain a wide berth. There was something about those preserved corpses that unsettled him more than the human bodies he found scattered throughout the city. The birds looked too perfect, too deliberate, as if someone had arranged them that way. As if the Hushed had a sense of aesthetics.
As if it wanted to be beautiful.
Beyond the square, the street began to climb. The buildings here were older, taller, built from a different kind of stone that seemed to drink the grey light rather than reflect it. Ardyn knew where his feet were taking him now. Knew and dreaded it in equal measure. But he couldn't stop. Didn't want to stop. Because if Lysithe was right, if he really had consumed her piece by piece, then maybe the answer to what he'd done to what he'd become was waiting for him in the one place he'd been avoiding for months.
The Cathedral of Resonant Prayer.
The place where he used to build miracles out of sound.
The structure came into view gradually, revealing itself in sections as he climbed the winding street. First the spire, reaching up into the grey like a finger pointing at an absent god. Then the flying buttresses, spreading from the main body like ribs, like the skeleton of something vast that had died in the act of breathing. And finally the façade itself, a wall of carved stone and empty windows, dark and waiting.
It looked smaller than he remembered.
Or perhaps he'd grown larger.
Or perhaps nothing in the world had a fixed size anymore.
The cathedral's doors stood open. They always stood open now. There was no one left to close them, no congregation to keep out or welcome in. Ardyn paused at the threshold, one hand resting on the weathered wood, feeling the grain beneath his palm. He had touched this door ten thousand times in his old life. Had pushed it open on winter mornings when his breath made clouds in the cold air. Had pulled it shut on summer evenings when the light slanted gold through the stained glass.
The stained glass was gone now. Shattered or stolen or simply dissolved, he didn't know which. The windows were empty sockets, and through them he could see the grey sky pressing close, intimate and suffocating.
He stepped inside.
The interior of the cathedral swallowed him whole. The ceiling vaulted overhead, disappearing into shadows that the grey light couldn't penetrate, and the nave stretched before him like a throat, rows of empty pews leading toward an altar that no one had approached in months. The air smelled of stone and time and something else, something he couldn't quite name. Not decay. Decay implied that something had once been alive. This was different. This was the smell of things that had forgotten they were supposed to exist.
His footsteps echoed.
The sound was so unexpected, so shocking in its normalcy, that Ardyn stopped mid-stride and held his breath. But the echo continued, bouncing off the stone walls, multiplying and layering until it sounded like a dozen people walking in perfect unison. He took another step. The echo followed, faithful and precise.
This was why he'd come here.
This was why the cathedral still existed when so much else had crumbled or melted or simply ceased to be.
He had built this place to hold sound. Had spent years calculating angles and curves, studying the way vibrations moved through stone and wood and air. Had designed every surface, every alcove, every vaulted arch with one purpose in mind: to make prayer audible to God.
The Hushed couldn't touch it.
Not completely.
Not yet.
Ardyn walked down the center aisle, his footsteps creating a small symphony of echoes. Each pew he passed was empty, but he could almost see the ghosts of the people who used to sit there. The old woman who always arrived first, her hands clasped in her lap, her lips moving in silent prayer. The young couple who came every Sunday, their fingers intertwined, their heads bowed together. The priest
Father Helvyr.
The name surfaced in his mind like something rising from deep water, bringing with it a cascade of memories. Helvyr standing at the altar, his voice resonant and sure, speaking of faith and devotion and the eternal love of a god who listened. Helvyr in the workshops beneath the cathedral, helping Ardyn test acoustics, his laughter echoing off the walls. Helvyr in the garden, tending to the herbs he used for incense, his hands gentle as he pruned and watered and spoke to the plants as if they could understand him.
Helvyr on the day the silence came, standing at the altar with his arms raised, trying to lead the congregation in prayer.
His voice getting quieter.
Quieter.
Gone.
And the look on his face when he realized that God wasn't listening anymore. Had never been listening. Had perhaps never existed at all.
Ardyn reached the altar and stopped. The stone was bare, stripped of its cloth and candles and holy implements. Someone had scratched words into the surface, deep gouges in the marble that looked almost deliberate. He leaned closer, trying to read them in the dim light.
WHEN GOD STOPS LISTENING, WHAT IS THE POINT OF PRAYER?
Helvyr's handwriting. He recognized it. The same careful script the priest had used to keep records, to write sermons, to leave notes for Ardyn about acoustic adjustments that needed to be made.
Below it, in smaller letters, barely visible:
OR WE STOP PRETENDING HE WAS EVER THERE.
Ardyn ran his fingers over the words, feeling the rough edges of the carved stone. When had Helvyr written this? Before he left? After? Was he still alive out there somewhere, wandering the ruins, or had the Hushed taken him too?
"He's alive."
The voice came from behind him, and Ardyn spun around so fast he nearly lost his balance. His heart hammered against his ribs, and for one terrible moment he thought it was Lysithe again, emerging from the shadows to accuse him of more crimes he couldn't remember.
But it wasn't Lysithe.
It was a man. Tall, gaunt, wrapped in a coat that might have been black or might have been a grey so dark it absorbed light. His face was sharp, all angles and planes, with eyes that glittered in the dim light like chips of glass. His hair was silver, pulled back from his face in a way that made his features look even more severe.
Ardyn didn't recognize him.
But the man seemed to recognize Ardyn.
"You're the architect," the man said. It wasn't a question. His voice was smooth, cultured, with an accent Ardyn couldn't place. "Ardyn Noir. The one who built this place. The one who can still hear."
Ardyn took a step back, his hand instinctively reaching for something to defend himself with. But there was nothing. Just empty air and the stone altar between them.
"Who are you?" His voice came out rougher than he intended, scraped raw by fear and suspicion.
The man smiled. It was not a comforting expression.
"My name is Sahrin Korr," he said, taking a step closer. "And I'm a collector of rare and beautiful things. Voices, mostly. Echoes. The last words of the dying. The first cries of the newborn. Prayers that were never answered. Screams that no one heard." He paused, his smile widening. "I have quite an extensive collection, actually. And I think you might be interested in some of my inventory."
Ardyn's throat tightened. "I'm not interested in anything you're selling."
"Oh, but you are." Sahrin's eyes gleamed. "Because I have something you've been looking for. Something you need more than food, more than water, more than your next breath."
He reached into his coat and withdrew a small glass vial, no larger than his thumb. Inside, something glowed with a soft, pale light. Even from across the altar, Ardyn could hear it. A voice. A woman's voice. Singing.
Four notes.
The same lullaby the child had been singing.
The same melody Lysithe had hummed.
"This," Sahrin said, holding the vial up to the light, "is from a woman who died three years ago in the lower districts. She was singing to her daughter when the Hushed came. This is all that's left of her. All that's left of that moment. That love."
Ardyn couldn't look away from the vial. The light pulsed in time with his heartbeat, or perhaps his heartbeat was syncing with the light. He couldn't tell anymore.
"Why are you showing me this?" he asked.
"Because I know what you are," Sahrin said. "I know what you can do. And I know what you're trying to do." He took another step closer, and Ardyn could smell him now cologne and copper and something sweetly rotten underneath. "You're trying to bring her back. The woman you loved. The woman whose voice you swallowed. You think if you collect enough pieces, enough fragments, you can reconstruct her. Make her whole again."
"You don't know anything about me."
"Don't I?" Sahrin's smile never wavered. "I've been watching you, Ardyn. Following you through the ruins. Observing. And I've seen the pattern. You don't eat just any echo. You're selective. You're searching for something specific. A particular timbre. A certain frequency. You're looking for her in every voice you steal."
Ardyn's hands clenched into fists. "Get out."
"I'm not your enemy," Sahrin said. "In fact, I want to help you. I have echoes you need. Fragments of the woman you're searching for. Pieces of Lysithe scattered across the city, hiding in the voices of the dead. I can give them to you." He held up the vial again. "This is just a sample. A taste. To show you what I can offer."
"What do you want in return?"
Sahrin's smile finally faltered, replaced by something colder. More honest.
"Your skills," he said. "Your gift. There are people in this city powerful people who want to understand what the Hushed is. Who want to control it, harness it, use it. They need someone who can still hear. Someone who can navigate the silence without being consumed by it." He paused. "Work for me, Ardyn. Hunt the echoes I need. Bring them to me. And in return, I'll give you every piece of Lysithe I can find. I'll help you bring her back."
Ardyn stared at him. At the vial glowing in his hand. At the promise of answers, of absolution, of a chance to undo what he'd done.
It was a devil's bargain.
He knew that.
But he was so tired. So hungry. So desperate to hear her voice again, to know that she was real, that he hadn't invented her out of guilt and madness.
"I need to think about it," he said finally.
Sahrin's smile returned. "Of course. Take your time. I'll be at the Hushed Market tomorrow evening. East side, near the old courthouse. Ask for me. Everyone there knows who I am."
He placed the vial on the altar between them, the glass clinking softly against stone. The light inside pulsed once, twice, and then went still.
"A gift," Sahrin said. "To help you decide. Listen to it. Really listen. And ask yourself: how far would you go to hear her voice one more time?"
He turned and walked down the aisle, his footsteps creating no echoes at all, and Ardyn realized with a chill that Sahrin Korr moved through the world the same way the Hushed did.
Silently.
Completely.
As if he didn't exist at all.
When the cathedral doors closed behind him, Ardyn was alone again. He looked down at the vial on the altar, glowing softly in the grey light. His hand moved before his mind could stop it, reaching out, fingers closing around the glass.
It was warm.
He lifted it to his ear.
Inside, the woman's voice was singing. Not the lullaby. Something else. Something older. A song his mother used to sing when he was a child, back when the world still had music, back when voices were abundant and cheap and no one thought to treasure them.
Sleep, my darling, sleep and dream,
The world is kinder than it seems,
Close your eyes and drift away,
Tomorrow brings another day.
Tears burned in his eyes. He hadn't heard that song in decades. Hadn't thought about his mother in longer still. She'd died when he was young, too young to remember her face, but he remembered her voice. God, he remembered her voice.
Was this her?
Was Sahrin lying?
Or had the echoes somehow blended together, mixing and merging until individual voices became indistinguishable from each other?
He didn't know.
He didn't know anything anymore.
Ardyn stood there for a long time, the vial pressed against his ear, listening to a dead woman sing a lullaby he'd thought he'd forgotten. And somewhere in the back of his mind, in the place where Lysithe's voice lived, he heard her whisper:
Don't trust him. Don't trust anyone. Especially not yourself.
But he was already slipping the vial into his pocket.
Already planning to go to the Hushed Market.
Already making the choice that would damn him.
The cathedral's echoes faded one by one, and by the time Ardyn left, the building was as silent as the rest of the city.
The Hushed was learning.
And it was hungry too.