All The Silence Novels & Stories

Book 2: The Architecture of Light [The Geometry of Silence] The world did not end with a bang or a whimper; it ended with the most beautiful silence I have ever known. In the old world—the world of the Firm, the Grid, and the endless, artificial ticking of Jinyan’s clockwork heart—silence was a predatory thing. It was the space between heartbeats where a sniper aimed; it was the dead air on a comms line that meant your partner was gone. But here, in our villa perched on the jagged cliffs of the Adriatic, silence is a living, breathing tapestry. It is the sound of the tide pulling at the white pebbles below, the rustle of lemon leaves in the salt-heavy breeze, and, most importantly, the stead

"I'm sorry, Grace. The forest really isn't safe. I have to find him. I promise I'll come back and finish this with you." I gave him a faint smile, though I could barely breathe through the pain in my chest. He would not come back once he left. That was always how it ended. As he bent down to comfort Laila, I quietly poured the bond-breaking potion into the wine glass. I walked over and held it out to him, my voice soft but firm. "Finish this, and I'll forgive you." Philip smiled and finished it in one gulp. He put the glass down and left with Laila without a second glance.

"With cameras on every corner, Charles won't be able to hide for long. He's bound to be caught any minute now." Olivia had barely hung up when a loud knock rattled my door. I did not bother opening it. Instead, I peered through the digital peephole and saw the unmistakable silhouette. "Charles, I can see you out there. Don't mess up again. Turn yourself in, and maybe you can get a second chance," I called out. The knocking grew fiercer as Charles heard me. He was cursing up a storm, but I tuned him out, still pushing for him to give up.

Thud. Thud. Thud. "What the hell is that?" Sam asked as something hit the wall in a continuous motion. It was coming from the room next to ours. Sam and I stared at the wall, wondering what Grace- the girl in the next room- was doing. The thuds grew louder and faster, then it finally dawned on me. My face reddened like a tomato as sounds of Grace moaning filled our whole room. "Holy shit. Grace, it's too early for this." Sam shouted but I knew Grace wouldn't hear anything, she was preoccupied at the moment.

I glare at him, my brows frowned. "She most certainly does. See I pretty much know everything about our students except her. She doesn't talk about her family and nobody at The Academy seems to know anything either. Even the information given to the school after she joined was vague...” He takes a sip of his beer, his eyes trained on me, “All the school knows about the Silent Student is that she comes from a rich family that possibly has connections to the chairman and that her name is Atlas Winters. She's practically a ghost at The Academy. Did you know that her age isn’t even in our system?"

August repeated to the silence. ​---

Silent. Staring at her with those dead eyes. More seconds passed. The air in the room felt wrong. Too thick. Too cold. Carmina took a step backward without meaning to. Then another. Her back hit the door. "Killian," she whispered. Nothing. The silence was worse than shouting. Worse than violence. It was the silence before something terrible happens. Carmina's heart was hammering in her chest. Her hands shaking so badly she could barely hold her cane. "Say something," she said.

The absolute absence of everything, including the concept of absence. "It is a Silence," the Utterance whispered in Jack's mind, and the ancient consciousness's voice carried a terror that Jack had never heard from it. Not even when facing the Devourer. Not even when meeting the Gravedigger. The silence that exists when a song ends. The pause between notes. It has always been there, between every sound the choir makes. We never noticed it because it was small. But the choir grew too loud. It woke the spaces between the music.

Diane The silence after the gunshot is a living entity. It settles, dense, heavy, replacing the very air. It absorbs the last echo of my own broken voice, the guards' grunts, Volkov's breathing. It clings to the padded walls, the silk drapes, making everything deaf, muffled, unreal.

He put his arm around her and looked at the ceiling and thought about a woman who was scared of the dark and was somewhere in this city right now and had not replied. He was annoyed. He was not going to think about why he was annoyed. He closed his eyes. She would reply or she wouldn’t. He put the phone down. Picked it up again. Put it down harder this time, like that changed anything. Liyana shifted closer in her sleep. His arm tightened automatically. The phone stayed dark. And for reasons he did not give a name to, that silence felt louder than the earthquake. he unlocks his phone, sees nothing, locks it again then places it face down more deliberately this time.