Ardyn spent the night in the cathedral.
Not sleeping. Sleep had become a luxury he could no longer afford, a vulnerability the Hushed exploited. People who slept too deeply didn't wake up. Or they woke up changed, their voices gone, their eyes empty, their bodies moving through the world like puppets with cut strings. So Ardyn sat in one of the back pews, the vial clutched in his hand, listening to the dead woman sing her lullaby on infinite repeat.
The song never changed. Never varied. The same four lines, over and over, until the words lost all meaning and became pure sound. Pure rhythm. A heartbeat made of memory.
He wanted to open the vial. Wanted to consume the echo inside, to feel it slide down his throat and settle into the hollow place where his humanity used to live. But something stopped him. Maybe it was Lysithe's warning, still echoing in his mind. Maybe it was the fear that once he started working for Sahrin Korr, there would be no turning back. Or maybe it was simply that this echo felt different from the others. More deliberate. More like a test.
When the grey light filtering through the empty windows began to brighten—not much, but enough to mark the passage from night to whatever passed for morning in the Hushed—Ardyn stood. His joints cracked. His back ached. His stomach growled with a hunger that had nothing to do with food.
He needed another echo soon.
The transparency was already beginning to creep back into his fingertips, a faint translucence at the edges of his nails. Another day, maybe two, and he'd start to fade again. Start to become one with the silence that was slowly digesting the world.
He left the cathedral and began the long walk toward the eastern districts.
The city changed as he walked. The buildings grew shorter, squatter, built from cheaper materials that had weathered poorly in the absence of maintenance. Here the streets were narrower, more labyrinthine, twisting back on themselves in ways that made navigation difficult even for someone who'd lived in Veyra's Hollow his entire life. Ardyn had always avoided this part of the city when it was still alive, when it still had people and noise and the kind of desperate energy that came from too many bodies packed into too little space.
Now it was as empty as everywhere else.
But not as quiet.
He heard them before he saw them. Voices. Not echoes, but actual living human voices, speaking in hushed tones that seemed obscene in their normalcy. The sound drew him forward like a lure, and he followed it through a series of increasingly narrow alleyways until he emerged into a courtyard he didn't recognize.
The Hushed Market.
It was smaller than he'd imagined. Just a cleared space between buildings, paved with cracked stones and lit by lanterns that burned with a pale, sickly light. There were perhaps twenty people scattered throughout the courtyard, some standing in clusters, others sitting alone on overturned crates or the remnants of old furniture. They all spoke quietly, their voices barely above whispers, as if afraid that speaking too loudly might attract attention.
From what, Ardyn didn't want to know.
Stalls lined the edges of the courtyard. Not traditional merchant stalls with fabric canopies and wooden tables, but makeshift arrangements—blankets spread on the ground, boxes stacked to form displays, improvised shelves built from scavenged materials. The goods for sale were as varied as they were disturbing.
One stall sold bottles. Hundreds of them, all different sizes and shapes, each one containing a soft glow. Echoes. Trapped somehow, preserved, kept from dissipating. The vendor was an old woman with silver hair and eyes that had gone milky white. She sat behind her display like a spider at the center of a web, her hands folded in her lap, her head tilted as if listening to something no one else could hear.
Another stall sold what looked like jewelry. Necklaces made from small bones. Bracelets woven from hair. Rings set with stones that pulsed with light in rhythm with a heartbeat that no longer existed. The vendor here was young, barely more than a boy, with nervous hands and a smile that flickered on and off like a candle in the wind.
A third stall had no vendor at all. Just a table covered in photographs. Hundreds of them. Faces staring out from faded paper, eyes accusatory or pleading or simply empty. Above the table, written in chalk on the wall: REMEMBER US.
Ardyn walked slowly through the market, trying not to stare, trying not to draw attention to himself. But he felt eyes on him. Felt the weight of gazes from people who recognized what he was even if they didn't know his name. The way he moved. The way he listened. The slight transparency at the edges of his hands.
He was one of them now. A scavenger. A consumer of the dead.
"First time?"
The voice came from his left. Ardyn turned to find a woman watching him. She was middle-aged, with dark hair streaked with grey and a face that had once been beautiful but had been worn down by hunger and fear and sleepless nights. She wore a coat several sizes too large, and her hands were wrapped in cloth bandages that looked like they hadn't been changed in days.
"Is it that obvious?" Ardyn asked.
The woman smiled. It didn't reach her eyes. "You still look guilty. That fades. Give it time."
"I'm not sure I want it to fade."
"You will." She gestured toward the stalls. "What are you looking for? Echo? Memory? Something more exotic?"
"I'm looking for Sahrin Korr."
The woman's smile vanished. She took a step back, and Ardyn saw something flicker across her face. Not quite fear. More like respect mixed with revulsion, the way someone might look at a poisonous snake behind glass.
"You don't want to find him," she said quietly.
"Why not?"
"Because people who do business with Sahrin Korr don't stay people for very long." She paused, studying him more closely. "But you're not here to be warned off, are you? You've already made up your mind."
Ardyn didn't answer. Didn't need to.
The woman sighed and pointed toward the far end of the courtyard, where a building stood slightly apart from the others. It was taller than its neighbors, built from dark stone that seemed to absorb the lantern light rather than reflect it. The windows were covered with heavy curtains, and the door was painted red. The only splash of color in the entire market.
"He's in there," the woman said. "The Crimson Hall. But don't say I didn't warn you."
"Thank you."
"Don't thank me yet. You might not be thanking anyone by the time you come back out."
She turned and disappeared into the crowd before Ardyn could respond.
He crossed the courtyard, weaving between vendors and customers, his footsteps echoing off the stones in a way that made several people look up with expressions of alarm. Sound was dangerous here. Sound attracted attention. But Ardyn had spent years studying acoustics, understanding how vibrations moved through space, and he knew how to walk quietly when he wanted to.
He just didn't want to anymore.
Let them hear him. Let them know he was here. Let the Hushed itself hear, if it was listening. He was tired of hiding. Tired of pretending he could outrun what he'd become.
The red door stood before him, and Ardyn paused with his hand raised to knock. For a moment—just a moment—he considered turning around. Walking away. Finding another way to survive that didn't involve selling his skills to a man who collected dead people's voices like some kind of macabre hobbyist.
But then he thought of Lysithe. Of her faceless form standing in the ruins of the baker's shop, accusing him. Of the way her voice had sounded when she said You killed me.
He needed answers.
He needed to know what he'd done.
And if Sahrin Korr could give him that, then the price was worth paying.
He knocked.
The door opened immediately, as if someone had been waiting on the other side. But there was no one there. Just darkness and a smell like incense mixed with something organic and rotting. A voice emerged from the darkness, smooth and familiar.
"Ardyn Noir. I wondered if you'd come. Please, enter. Don't be shy."
Sahrin's voice.
Ardyn stepped through the doorway, and the door swung shut behind him with a sound like a coffin lid closing.
Inside, the building was larger than it should have been. The laws of architecture didn't seem to apply here. The entrance hall stretched back farther than the building's exterior suggested was possible, and the ceiling rose higher than the roof he'd seen from outside. Lanterns hung from chains, casting pools of amber light that didn't quite reach the walls, leaving the edges of the room in perpetual shadow.
The floor was covered in carpets. Thick, ornate carpets layered one on top of another, creating a soft, uneven surface that muffled footsteps completely. Ardyn took a step forward and heard nothing. It was like walking on silence made solid.
"Interesting, isn't it?" Sahrin's voice came from somewhere ahead, but Ardyn couldn't see him. "I had them specially made. Woven from the hair of people who died screaming. It absorbs sound. Every footstep, every breath, every whisper. Nothing escapes these carpets. They drink it all down."
Ardyn felt his stomach turn. "That's horrifying."
"That's practical." Sahrin emerged from the shadows at the far end of the hall. He looked exactly as he had in the cathedral—tall, gaunt, wrapped in his dark coat, his silver hair pulled back from his angular face. But here, in his own domain, there was something different about him. Something more confident. More dangerous. "In a world where sound can kill, silence is the ultimate defense."
"Is that what you're selling? Defense?"
"Among other things." Sahrin gestured toward an archway to the left. "Come. Let's talk somewhere more comfortable. I assume you've made your decision?"
Ardyn followed him through the archway into a room that defied description. It was part library, part museum, part mausoleum. Shelves lined every wall, floor to ceiling, and on those shelves were bottles. Thousands of them. Each one glowing with its own internal light, each one containing an echo. Names were written on labels in careful script. Dates. Causes of death. Final words.
In the center of the room was a table, and on that table was a map of Veyra's Hollow. But it wasn't a normal map. It was marked with pins, hundreds of them, each one topped with a small glass bead that glowed faintly. Ardyn realized with growing horror that each pin represented a death. Each bead contained a fragment of the person who'd died there.
Sahrin was mapping the dead.
"Impressive, isn't it?" Sahrin ran his fingers over the map, and the beads pulsed brighter at his touch. "Every echo I've collected, catalogued, preserved. Some people collect stamps. I collect last moments. Final breaths. The sounds people make when they realize they're about to die." He looked up at Ardyn. "You understand the appeal, I think. You're a collector too, in your own way."
"I'm not collecting," Ardyn said. "I'm surviving."
"Is there a difference?" Sahrin smiled. "But let's not argue semantics. You came here for a reason. You want my help finding Lysithe. And I want your help finding other echoes. Specific ones. Rare ones. The kind that require someone with your particular gifts to locate and extract."
"What kind of echoes?"
Sahrin walked to one of the shelves and selected a bottle. Unlike the others, this one was dark. Empty. No glow emanated from within.
"This," he said, holding it up, "is for an echo I've been hunting for months. The last words of Father Helvyr."
Ardyn's blood went cold. "Helvyr isn't dead."
"Isn't he?" Sahrin's smile widened. "Are you certain? When was the last time you saw him? When was the last time anyone saw him?"
"He left a message. In the cathedral. I saw it yesterday."
"Messages can be old, Ardyn. Words carved in stone don't tell you when they were written. Only that they were." Sahrin placed the empty bottle on the table. "Father Helvyr was last seen three months ago, leading a group of followers into the Deep Silence—the part of the city where the Hushed is strongest, where sound goes to die. He was preaching about a new faith. About embracing the silence instead of fighting it. About finding God in the absence of prayer."
"What happened to him?"
"That's what I need you to find out. I need you to go into the Deep Silence. I need you to find what's left of Helvyr and bring me his echo." Sahrin's eyes glittered. "He knew things. Secret things. Things about what the Hushed really is. And I need those secrets."
"Why?"
"Because knowledge is power. Because the people I work for believe that the Hushed can be controlled, harnessed, weaponized. And because Father Helvyr was the closest anyone has come to understanding it." Sahrin paused. "Do this for me, and I'll give you what you want. I have seven echoes that contain fragments of Lysithe. Seven pieces of her voice, her memory, her essence. Bring me Helvyr, and they're yours."
Ardyn stared at the empty bottle. At the map with its constellation of death. At the shelves full of trapped voices, each one a life reduced to a commodity.
This was wrong.
Everything about this was wrong.
But he was so tired. So hungry. So desperate.
"How do I know you're telling the truth?" he asked. "How do I know you actually have echoes of Lysithe?"
Sahrin smiled and reached into his coat. He withdrew another vial, larger than the first, and placed it on the table beside the empty bottle. Inside, something glowed with a soft rose-gold light. Even without opening it, Ardyn could hear the voice inside.
A woman.
Laughing.
Bright and sudden as breaking glass.
His heart stopped.
He knew that laugh. Had heard it in his fragmented memories, in his dreams, in the spaces between his thoughts. It was her. It was Lysithe. Not an echo of someone else, not a voice that merely resembled hers. This was her.
"Where did you get this?" His voice came out as a whisper.
"From a woman who died in the gardens near the western wall. She was laughing when the Hushed took her. Laughing at something her lover said. She died happy, Ardyn. Isn't that rare? Isn't that precious?" Sahrin picked up the vial. "This is yours. A down payment. Proof of my good faith. Take it. Listen to it. Remember her. And when you're ready to find the rest of her, you know where to find me."
He held out the vial.
Ardyn's hand moved on its own, reaching across the table, fingers closing around the glass. It was warm. Warmer than the first vial had been. It pulsed against his palm like a second heartbeat.
"The Deep Silence," Sahrin continued, "is in the northern districts. Follow the Street of Broken Bells until you reach the Ossuary Gate. Beyond that gate, sound doesn't travel. Words die before they leave your mouth. Echoes evaporate instantly. It's where the Hushed is strongest. Where it's most hungry." He paused. "You'll need to be careful. You'll need to be quick. And you'll need to remember that in the Deep Silence, you can't trust what you hear. Or what you see. Or what you remember."
"Why would Helvyr go there?"
"Because he was looking for God in all the wrong places. Or perhaps all the right ones. It's hard to say." Sahrin walked Ardyn back toward the entrance. "You have three days. If you're not back by then, I'll assume the Hushed has taken you, and I'll send someone else. Someone less talented, perhaps, but more desperate. And you'll have missed your chance to find her."
The red door opened, and grey light spilled in.
Ardyn stepped out into the courtyard. The market was still there, still conducting its quiet business, but it felt different now. Smaller. Less real. As if he'd stepped sideways into a different version of the world, one where people bartered in death and no one seemed to notice how wrong it all was.
The door closed behind him.
Ardyn stood there for a long moment, the vial clutched in his hand, listening to Lysithe's laughter coming from inside the glass. It was the most beautiful sound he'd ever heard.
It was also the sound that would damn him.
He slipped the vial into his pocket, next to the first one, and began the long walk toward the northern districts.
Toward the Deep Silence.
Toward whatever waited for him in the place where sound went to die.
Behind him, in the Crimson Hall, Sahrin Korr returned to his map. He placed a new pin at the location of the cathedral, topped with a bead that glowed faintly blue. He smiled.
"One more collector joins the collection," he murmured to the empty room. "And the silence grows fatter still."
The bottles on the shelves pulsed in unison, a thousand dead voices agreeing with him.