The skies over Northel Hollow darkened before dawn.
Not from storm clouds—
But from silence.
A blanket of absolute, unnatural quiet rolled across the land. Birds froze mid-flight. Insects vanished. Even the wind halted, as if the world had stopped to listen.
Orca stood at the edge of the ruined balcony.
"They've launched it."
Nima gripped her rifle. "Launched what?"
Kes turned pale.
"Project Echo Null."
---
The crawler shook violently as they powered through the last leg of frost-cracked terrain. Orca patched into the crawler's systems and pulled blueprints from buried data.
"Echo Null was built as a fail-safe. A weapon that erases voice itself—all voice. Biological, synthetic, memory, imprint."
Arian clenched his fists.
"And they're using it now?"
"They weren't supposed to," Kes said. "It would destroy their own systems too. Their VoiceNet. Their code registry. Their Host control algorithms."
Orca corrected him.
"They found a way to limit the radius. A directed sphere. It's aimed at you, Arian."
---
They arrived at an abandoned relay tower that stood like a skeleton of steel.
It had once been used to amplify war songs during the uprising.
Now, it pulsed faintly with a signal—
A countdown.
02:43:12
Nima stepped forward. "Two hours until detonation?"
Kes nodded grimly. "They'll detonate it when we enter the Capitol."
"They're trying to erase me," Arian said.
"No," Orca replied. "They're trying to erase us. Every voice inside you."
Arian stared at the disk.
Six lights pulsed.
The seventh—still dormant.
He whispered, "Then we need to wake the last one."
---
Their next stop was Haven Vault—buried beneath the Capitol's undercity. A place once used by Elin Thorne to hide refugees and unregistered Hosts. It now held her last message, encoded in the wax cylinder.
They moved under cover of fog, weaving through old sewers laced with motion sensors and sonic mines.
Orca hummed to deactivate them.
As they reached the vault's inner chamber, Arian placed the cylinder into the reader.
A projection bloomed before them—
A woman with fire in her eyes.
Elin Thorne.
---
Her voice cracked as she began:
"If you're hearing this… I am gone. But the Silence is not eternal. Sound can be rewritten. What they took from you… was never truly theirs."
"There are seven voices. One for each path forward. One must remember. One must defy. One must weep. One must rage. One must betray. One must transcend…"
She paused, eyes brimming.
"And one… must choose."
"That's you, Arian."
"You are the key. Not because you were made special—but because you were broken."
"Only the broken can carry all our echoes and remain human."
"Take the final voice from this place, and go to the Spire. Let the Republic hear what they buried."
The projection flickered.
"They erased our song."
"But they forgot one truth."
"Silence is never empty."
"It is full of the things we were too afraid to say."
And then she vanished.
---
In the vault's center, the floor split open.
Arian stepped into the hollow space.
There sat a crystal sphere.
He touched it.
It cracked.
Light shot into his chest.
And the final echo awakened.
It wasn't a word.
It was a decision.
A vibration that didn't say "I am."
It asked—"Will you?"
And Arian whispered back—
"Yes."
---
Outside, sirens screamed.
Echo Null was in its final phase.
Nima turned to the others.
"They'll expect us to run."
Arian stepped forward, eyes blazing.
"Then we walk straight through the Capitol."
Orca smiled. "And what if we don't make it?"
Arian placed the disk inside his chest harness.
"Then the Silence wins."
"But not without hearing our song."
---
In the Capitol's highest tower, a man in silver robes stood before a wall of monitors.
Director Vohl.
He watched the final satellite lock onto the vault.
He smiled.
"All notes must end," he whispered.
Then pressed the button.
00:00:01
---
And across the city, every speaker, every drone, every sensor blared a single line of corrupted music.
And then—
Nothing.