Riddle About Silence Novels & Stories

Scattered across the ruins like broken jewelry nobody wants to pick up. The silence is the strangest part. I've been in silent places before. Deep ruins. The space between realms. The hour before a battle when everyone is too afraid to breathe loudly. But this silence is different. This silence feels like the universe exhaled and forgot to inhale again. Like reality itself is sitting very still, waiting to find out what happens next. I know what happens next.

The moon hung low, swollen and bright, like it was listening in. He leaned against the railing again, same posture as earlier, except now the anger had cooled into something sharper. Disappointment, maybe. Or worry. That one always cut deeper. “Funny thing about silence,” he said after a while. “People think it means control. Most times, it just means you’re scared to say the wrong thing.” I let out a breath through my nose. “You always this philosophical at night, or am I special?” He huffed. “Congratulations. You bring out my inner elder.”

Behind his eyelids, the Utterance stirred with ancient, weary understanding. Before I asked WHY, the nine-billion-year-old consciousness whispered, there was Silence. Not emptiness. Silence. The Silence that precedes every word. The Silence that makes speech possible. Without the pause before a sentence, the sentence has no beginning. Without the Silence before creation, creation has no origin. "The Silence is not our enemy," Jack said, opening his eyes. "It is eating our choir," Marcus growled.

Silence has a sound when you’ve been hunted. It isn’t peace. It’s the absence of footsteps you were bracing for. It’s the part of your brain that keeps leaning toward the door anyway, waiting for the next impact. It’s the quiet that makes you hold your breath without noticing.

He blushed as he was congratulated. One spectator from afar didn't like any of it. "Fast. Ingenious. Tsk. But he's still deaf. He's useless."

Because silence is never empty. Silence is surrender in disguise. And with the candlelight flickering between us, her pulse thrumming in the stillness, I knew— The game was no longer if she would break. The game was when.

He didn’t answer. Enzo cracked his knuckles. Ricci stood silently in the corner like a shadow. I didn’t need to yell. Men like this? They were used to noise. They tuned it out. What got under their skin was silence; controlled stillness, patience. So, I let it hang. Ten seconds. Then twenty. The quiet pressed on him harder than a fist could. Finally, he shifted in his seat. The ropes creaked against the steel arms of the chair. “You think this’ll change anything?” he said. “Your little empire’s already bleeding.”

The silence in the room grew heavier with each passing moment, and I focused on the task at hand, hoping to disappear into the background. But Aaron broke the silence with a simple question that caught me off guard. "Are you always this quiet?" His voice cut through the stillness, the sound resonating within me. I froze for a brief moment, unsure of how to respond. I turned my head slightly, stealing a glance at him from the corner of my eye. His gaze was steady, his expression a mix of curiosity and intrigue. My throat felt dry as I searched for the right words, struggling to find a way to explain the weight that silence carried for me.

Did he know I was here? "rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr" A strange rattling noise made me stop walking. I straightened my back and opened my ears for any sound. I am as silent as the night. I have no smell. I am invisible. I willed the mantra in my head. I would not be found. "RRRRRRRRRRRR" The horrible sound was louder this time. And it didn't sound like one, it sounded like multiple sources were producing the sound. I stepped closer to a big tree, deadly silent.

The drive over to the apartment was filled with an uncomfortable silence. Unasked questions hung in the air like a thick fog. Beads of sweat prickled on the back of the drivers neck as he too was smothered by the tension in the car. The seconds felt like minutes as the road seemed to stretch longer and longer before her eyes. Letting her eyes close, Thea suppressed a sigh as she leant her head against the window, she ignored the drumming of her head against the window as they drove over the bumpy terrain. Bellamy’s words playing on repeat in her head, ‘like our souls recognise each other’.