The bells did not ring.

  Not for the dead.

  Not for the living.

  And yet, the silence weighed as though it had always been there. As though it had always been the truth — a constant companion, a weight upon the soul of the city.

  It was not the kind of silence that could be filled with words. Not the kind of silence that could be made comfortable or forgotten.

  No.

  This was the kind of silence that left a person empty.

  Ithan walked through the streets, the city strangely still, as though time itself had paused in disbelief.

  There were people — here and there, milling about — but they were different now. Their eyes were lost, not in a way that spoke of grief or sorrow, but in a way that spoke of something missing.

  A disconnect.

  A part of themselves absent, and they did not know what it was.

  Or perhaps they did, and could not speak it.

  Ithan could feel the weight of their glances, the way their gaze slid away from his.

  But he couldn’t bring himself to speak to them. He no longer had the right to.

  The tavern at the edge of town was quieter than usual, save for the clinking of cups and the low hum of muted conversations. The Keeper of Voices, a former bard who had sung songs now lost to time, sat by the hearth, his fingers tapping rhythmically against his mug.

  When Ithan entered, the Keeper looked up, his eyes dark and tired.

  “You came back,” he said, his voice rough.

  “I had to.”

  “Why?”

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Ithan sat opposite him, drawing in a breath.

  “To remember.”

  The Keeper chuckled, but it was a hollow sound, like something trying to pass through a closed door.

  “You’re chasing ghosts,” he muttered, more to himself than to Ithan. “Madeline is gone. The city has forgotten.”

  “I haven’t.”

  “No.” The Keeper’s gaze grew distant. “No, you haven’t. But it’s not enough. You can’t hold the city together with your memories alone.”

  Ithan looked away.

  “I know.”

  The Keeper leaned forward, studying him. “You know what happens when a memory outlives the person who holds it?”

  Ithan stared at the ground, his fingers brushing over the rough wood of the table.

  “It breaks,” he whispered.

  The sun fell behind the mountains, casting the city in a cold twilight that seemed to stretch into eternity. Ithan walked out into the square, the same square where the bell tower had once stood, its chimes calling all who would listen to the rhythm of the day.

  Now, nothing.

  Just empty space.

  The stones of the square had grown over with weeds, and the once-bustling market was silent, save for the occasional rustle of wind through broken stalls. People drifted in and out, their faces blank, their movements mechanical.

  Ithan stopped at the foot of the bell tower, the space where the great bells once hung now vacant, stripped of purpose. A broken relic.

  He could almost hear it — the tolling, the ringing that used to mark time and life itself. But now, there was only silence.

  And it felt like a weight pressing against his chest.

  Ithan returned to the place where it all began. The ruins of the palace. The ruins of everything.

  The floor where Madeline had fallen, where she had made her final choice.

  Where she had become everything and yet nothing.

  It was here, among the remnants of her sacrifice, that he knew he had to face the truth.

  She was gone.

  And no one would remember her.

  The world would carry on — the echoes of her name fading to a whisper, then to nothing.

  But he could not let it go. He had no choice but to carry her with him, to remember what she had done — and what it had cost.

  Ithan sat among the ruins, the wind biting at his skin, and for the first time since her death, he allowed himself to cry.

  The world had moved on.

  But he would not.

  There were no songs left in the world, not anymore.

  Not without her.

  The Keeper of Voices had sung them once, but his throat had grown raw from the loss of words. There were no songs left for the dead. There were no songs for the forgotten.

  But Ithan knew what he had to do.

  He left the ruins, and with a heavy heart, he gathered the last of the people who still wandered the streets. The empty-eyed folk who could no longer recall their own names, let alone the stories of the ones who had fallen.

  He told them of Madeline — her bravery, her sacrifice, and how she had given herself so they might forget.

  And as the night drew on, he sang the song she would never sing again.

  A song of remembering, even in the silence.

  A song of loss, of grief, of truth.

  And in the silence that followed, there was nothing left but the memory of her.