The silence hadn't always been so dense. There was a time—before the silence settled into the bones of the city—when voices were weightless, unburdened, and free. A time when children's laughter filled the streets like the aroma of ripening fruits, when mothers called out to their sons without fear, when words did not have to be calculated, rationed, or weighed like grain. It was a time when names had meaning and speaking meant to exist. But that was before the air became heavy, before the Keepers wove silence into the city's fabric, before the Quiet Order reshaped the world.

It had begun as a whisper, like all things did. A decree meant to "preserve peace" and "maintain stability." In those days, the city seemed restless—too many voices rising at once, too many questions launched into the air like restless birds. The Keepers had claimed that words were hazardous, and that too many of them caused revolt. So, they took them. Initially, they suppressed the revolutionaries. Then they came for the poets, singers, and teachers. Even regular citizens were soon obliged to give up their voices, limited to only the words they could afford to buy. The streets became devoid of sound. The air became silent, heavy with the weight of things unsaid. Those who talked too freely vanished, and their names were erased as if they had never existed. 

Jide knew this weight well. As he walked, it rested in his chest like a stone, pressing on his ribs and coiling around his gut. He had grown up in its hold, learning to navigate it in the same manner others learned to navigate streets. He had learned it from the way his mother's voice had shrunk over the years, rationed like the tiny bowls of grain they counted after sunset. He'd learned it from the watchful hush that fell when a question was asked too boldly, when someone's voice stretched too far. He had learned it from the disappearances, the way people vanished like ink washed from paper, their names swallowed whole, and their existence reduced to whispers. The Keepers did not need walls or chains to keep the city confined. They only needed silence. 

As Jide wove through the alleys, clutching Nnenna's little hand in his own, he felt the stillness pressing in from all sides. The streets pulsed with the now usual silence. Doors were quickly shut, windows were closed, and the air was brittle with unspoken words. His sister's breath was shallow, and her voice was nearly spent. She had always spoken too freely, too fully, as if she had never learned the shape of silence. And now, she was paying the price.

They passed a group of men hunched in the shadows, their eyes flickering and their mouths set tightly. One of them held a small vial between his fingers, watching the way the light caught the words trapped within. A child stood by his side, empty-handed, her lips quivering in quiet protest. She had run out of things to say. Jide averted his gaze. He'd seen far too many people like her-  fading, erased.

The market loomed ahead, hidden in plain sight beneath the crumbling remains of the old city. It was not a market for food, textiles, gold, or trinkets. Voices were being sold here. Words, once abundant, were now precious, hoarded, stolen, and sold. The kiosks sprawled beneath the decaying buildings, their owners shrouded in shadow and their wares gleaming in glass vials.

A mother crouched behind a stall, her face lost in the folds of her shawl, murmuring the last of her son's laughter in exchange for a single word of comfort. A man, stooped and desperate, bartered away the memory of his father's farewell for a whisper of something forgotten—an old truth, perhaps, or a forbidden question, one that had long been erased from permitted speech.  A child sat on the ground, clutching a little vial, the last trace of her mother's lullaby trembling between her fingers.

Jide moved carefully, his hold firm around Nnenna's wrist. She was too little to comprehend the gravity of the world they lived in, but she did understand this: without a voice, you were nothing.

The merchant they saw was an old woman, her hands as brittle as paper and her eyes as clear as glass. She did not extend a greeting. Words were too expensive for pleasantries. Instead, she stroked her fingers over the vials laid in front of her, listening to the faint echoes trapped inside. When Jide approached, she exhaled softly, tilting her head.

"What do you need?" Her voice sounded thin and rusty.

Jide hesitated, looking at Nnenna. "Something warm," he muttered. "Something soft." 

The woman studied them, measuring, weighing. Then she reached for a small vial and held it up to the dim lighting. "A mother's farewell," she said. "It is not much, but it is gentle." 

Jide swallowed. "And the price?"

The woman dug deep into her shawl, withdrawing another vial. She rolled it in her palm, letting the words sparkle inside. "Something of equal weight," she finally said.

Nnenna's fingers trembled as she reached into her pocket for the final remnants of their mother's voice—a lullaby preserved in glass. The woman took it carefully, listening. Then she nodded and placed the new vial in Jide's hand.

As they returned to the city, the stillness became more intense. The market faded behind them, swallowed by the alley's shadows, its existence a secret known only in whispers. They moved swiftly, silent feet against the crumbling pavement, past the ghostly shapes of once-busy streets. Jide kept his gaze forward, but he sensed the city watching—shuttered windows like empty sockets, walls squeezed too close, listening. There was always the fear that a Keeper was lurking in the dark, ready to drag them away for speaking when they should not have. A solitary, choked-off cry erupted in the distance, but was muffled before it could spread. Jide tightened his hold on Nnenna's hand.

They passed a rusted signpost covered in old notices, the ink long faded. But, beneath the layers of time, faint words still clung to the signpost’s surface, barely visible in the weak light. To speak is to resist. To be silent is to die. The words had been scratched over, erased, but not completely. Someone had dared to remember. 

That night, in their small, quiet room, Nnenna opened the vial and let the words out into the air. 

“Be strong, my child. I will always love you.”

For a moment, just a moment, the silence was not so heavy.

But outside, the hush was shifting.

Jide sensed it before he saw it: a subtle shift in the air, a faint echo of something forbidden. A whisper carried by the wind, too faint to hear. He sat up, heart thumping, and moved to the window. In the alley below, a stranger stood wrapped in shadow, its face hidden behind a hood. It then raised its hands slowly and deliberately, tracing a symbol in the air.

A circle, with a line through it.

Jide's breath caught. He'd seen it before, etched into old walls and left behind in areas only the brave dared to go. The mark of those who refused to be forgotten. Those who spoke in the dark, who remembered what had been stolen, and had the will to say no.

The figure waited.

Jide thought of Nnenna, of the vial now empty in her hands, of the silence that stretched over the city like a cage. He thought of the voices that had been lost, the names that had been swallowed, the questions that had been buried beneath silence.

And then, carefully, he lifted his fingers and traced the symbol in return. 

The silence had gone on for too long.