Mouthless Whispers

Chapter Ten : The First Voice That Wasn't Heard

The light was no longer white, nor black.It was a color without a name—a shade caught between memory and forgetting.

When Lucien emerged from the mirror's depth, he found himself not in a place, but in something remembering itself.

A living archive.

The ground beneath him was made of fractured glass, shifting with each step, revealing glimpses of moments not his own—births, deaths, silences.Above, the sky was suspended by threads of words too ancient to pronounce, each letter vibrating as if struggling to hold form.And the air... the air tasted like muffled crying.

A presence stirred. Not near. Within.

❖ Zone: Echo Layer — Archive of the UnspokenClassification: Passive Reality ConstructAccess Level: Granted (System Anchor Detected)Note: Remain silent

Lucien took a breath—and said nothing.

Voices began to unfold.

Not spoken aloud. Not even whispered. They rose from the glass at his feet, bloomed across the cracked horizon, each sentence a root branching into meaning.

He began walking.

Each step brought him to a different echo—a suspended thought, aborted before birth.

"I wish I had told her."

"I never meant to leave."

"I wasn't ready to die."

Some were human. Some were… not.

The Archive was endless. Towering spires made of translucent bone spiraled from the ground, each filled with scrolls written in languages Lucien couldn't read but somehow understood. They weren't meant to be read with eyes, but felt.

One tower blinked at him.

Yes—blinked.

And from within, a voice called.

"You are not empty enough."

Lucien turned.

A figure stood between the towers. Not cloaked. Not shadowed. Simply unformed—its body a smear of colors that didn't belong together, constantly rearranging itself as if unable to decide what to be.

"I wasn't told to be empty," Lucien said.

The figure tilted its head in a ripple.

"Then you will not survive the next silence."

❖ System Message:Fragment Detected – Voice of the Unborn ThoughtRisk: InstabilitySuggestion: Absorb only under willful intent

Lucien approached.

The figure didn't resist. It opened—splitting down the center—and inside was a sphere, hovering, filled with a single sentence pulsing over and over:

I should have stayed quiet.

Lucien touched it.

A surge of thought hit him—not knowledge, not memory, but pressure. The overwhelming weight of all the things people wanted to say but couldn't. Words buried so deeply they grew roots in the bones.

❖ Fragment AbsorbedTrait Gained: Silent WitnessDescription: Sense unspoken thoughts and intentions in any entity with conscious willSide Effect: Gradual detachment from emotional tone

Lucien staggered, held himself steady.

His thoughts were louder now. Not in volume—but in clarity. He could feel questions trying to form before he asked them. Doubts before they took shape.

Then the system pulsed again.

❖ Objective CompleteYou have heard what was not meant to be heardNext Directive: Seek the Labyrinth of Names

A passage opened in the sky.

A staircase—made not of matter, but of phrases.

Each step a sentence never finished.

Lucien stepped onto the first.

It said: "If only I had—"

And the sky closed behind him.