The Last Voice (eBook)

NOXEN (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025 | 1. Auflage
90 Seiten
Publishdrive (Verlag)
978-0-00-109436-9 (ISBN)

Infos

When the world falls silent, one voice can shatter everything.

One morning, the entire world loses sound. No wind, no music, no heartbeat of life - just silence. In the chaos that follows, Elior Reyes, a struggling musician in Manila, discovers he is the only person who can still make noise. But his gift is not a blessing. Every word he speaks shakes the world - glass cracks, flames tremble, and reality itself bends to his voice.

With his deaf sister Mara, Elior must navigate a world reborn in silence - where speaking is forbidden, where sound is feared, and where a secret group called The Choir Below seeks to weaponize the last remaining echoes of the old world.

As cities adapt through sign and light, Elior learns that sound has memory - and his voice might be the key to awakening something ancient beneath the earth. But every whisper comes with a price.

In this haunting, lyrical dystopian novel, silence becomes language, and words become power. The Last Voice asks: If your voice could change the world, would you dare to use it?

Textauszug

CHAPTER 1 – THE DAY SOUND DIED

The morning began like any other—except the air felt too still, like the world was holding its breath.

Elior Reyes woke to the absence of his alarm. The red digits blinked 7:00 A.M., but no shrill beep came. He frowned, tapping the clock, shaking it, pressing its buttons. Nothing. Not even a click.
Maybe the batteries died, he thought.

Then he realized he couldn’t hear the ceiling fan either. Or the jeepneys outside. Or the birds that usually argued on the power lines.
He snapped his fingers beside his ear. Silence. He clapped twice. Silence.

Something pressed against his chest—a panic that came with realizing the world had gone mute.

He rushed to the window. Below, Manila was frozen in confusion. A traffic jam clogged the street, drivers climbing out of their cars, mouths open, gesturing wildly. Street vendors waved, confused, their lips moving with no sound. Dogs barked soundlessly. A woman screamed at a child who could no longer hear her.

The city had lost its voice.

Elior stumbled back, knocking over his guitar. The strings trembled when they hit the floor—but there was no twang, no hum, nothing.
He crouched, touching the instrument as if it were a wounded friend. His whole life was music: busking in underpasses, open-mics at dim cafés, songs written for a sister who could never hear them.

Mara.

He sprinted to her room. She was sitting cross-legged on the floor, reading a comic book. When he flung the door open, she looked up calmly and smiled.
She signed, “Good morning. Why are you panicking?”

Elior’s hands shook as he replied in sign, “Can’t you tell? The world’s gone silent!”
Mara tilted her head, puzzled. “Really?” she signed, eyes curious, not scared. For her, silence was normal.

He exhaled, running a hand through his hair. “No one can hear anything. No music, no talking. Nothing.”

Mara stood, walking to the window. Down below, people were banging on car hoods and yelling without sound. She turned to him, eyes wide now. “So it’s not just me?”

Elior shook his head. His throat tightened. The silence was thick—it swallowed even his heartbeat.

They spent the first hour checking everything. Phones still worked visually, though calls were useless. Music videos played like ghosts, mouths moving to invisible songs. The news anchors on TV moved frantically behind captions that read:

“GLOBAL PHENOMENON: SOUND VANISHES WORLDWIDE. AUTHORITIES INVESTIGATING.”

Elior read the subtitles again and again. Worldwide. Not just Manila. Not just the Philippines.

He opened the window. The air carried no sound—but he could feel a hum, a vibration beneath his skin. Like the earth was straining to speak.

At noon, Mara tugged his sleeve, signing: “Food. We should go out. People might need help.”

He hesitated. The streets looked chaotic. But she was right. They couldn’t just hide.

Outside, the silence was unbearable. Hundreds of people moved through the streets in confusion—writing on cardboard, flashing phone screens with typed words:
“CAN YOU HEAR?”
“HELP!”
“IS THIS THE END?”

Elior felt the weight of every desperate gesture. No sirens. No laughter. Just movement and fear.

A boy tripped near him, cutting his knee. The mother mouthed words—probably comfort—but the child cried noiselessly. Elior’s throat ached watching them. He wanted to say something, anything.

And then he did.

“Hey—”

The sound exploded.

Everyone around him fell still. Heads turned. Dozens of eyes locked on him. The mother froze mid-gesture. The boy’s sobs cut off.

Elior’s voice echoed—not just through the street, but through the air itself, bending it. The buildings around them trembled as if the syllable carried weight. A car alarm flickered to life and died.

He stepped back, terrified. His own voice had shaken the world.

Mara stared at him, stunned. “You… you can talk?” she signed with trembling hands.

“I— I don’t know how—” he said, and this time the sound came softer, but still unnatural, like the air wasn’t built for it.

People fell to their knees. Some pointed. Some covered their ears out of reflex.
One man mouthed, “The Voice!” and took a step toward him. Another backed away in fear.

Elior’s heart pounded. “I’m sorry,” he said, raising his hands, but even that single word cracked a nearby window.

The silence that followed wasn’t peaceful anymore—it was frightened.

They ran.

Through alleys painted with graffiti that no longer echoed footsteps. Past a cathedral whose bells hung frozen. Past street vendors who bowed as he passed, thinking he was some kind of curse.

When they reached the bridge overlooking the Pasig River, Mara tugged his arm.
“You spoke,” she signed. “You made sound come back.”

He shook his head, breathing hard. “No. I made it worse.” He pointed to the cracked glass on a building across the street. “That was me. I said one word and the world reacted.”

Mara stared at him. “Maybe your words have power now.”

He wanted to laugh, but there was no humor in it. “Power? I’m scared to open my mouth.”

“Then don’t,” she signed. “Not until we understand.”

He nodded.

By nightfall, makeshift signs appeared on walls:

DO NOT SPEAK. WORDS DESTROY.
THE SILENCE IS SACRED.
THE ONE WHO SPEAKS IS DEATH.

Elior’s face burned with guilt. He hid his mouth with a scarf as they walked home.

The city, once filled with endless honking and shouting, now pulsed with silent candles. People prayed without sound. Musicians strummed invisible notes. The stars above seemed brighter in the absence of noise.

Inside their apartment, Mara lit a single candle and placed it beside his guitar. She signed slowly, “Maybe this is punishment. For taking sound for granted.”

Elior sat beside her. “Or maybe it’s a test,” he said softly, and the flame trembled.

She reached out, touching his arm. “Then be careful, Kuya. The world might be listening in a different way now.”

He looked at the city outside—the vast ocean of quiet lights—and whispered a single word to himself, almost too faint to hear.

“Why?”

The air rippled, and somewhere in the distance, a church bell rang once before falling silent again.

CHAPTER 2 — ECHOES OF THE PAST

Morning arrived without birdsong.

Light crept through the blinds like a thief, stealing across the floorboards and the foot of Mara’s bed. Elior watched it from the doorway, counting his breaths to keep panic from scaling his ribs. In the next room the ceiling fan turned smoothly, blade to blade, without the slightest motor hum. The silence wasn’t empty; it was heavy. It felt like standing under deep water.

Mara was already awake, propped against pillows, hair tied up messily, scrolling headlines with captions clustered like barnacles.

GLOBAL: AIRPLANES GROUNDED.
HOSPITALS ADAPT TO VISUAL ALARMS.
TEMPORARY CURFEWS IN EFFECT.
DO NOT SPEAK.

She looked up and raised her brows. Coffee? she signed.

Elior nodded, grateful for the ordinary choreography of their mornings. He moved around the tiny kitchen on muscle memory: kettle, mugs, instant coffee, powdered creamer. The kettle never whistled. Steam unspooled like a ghost.

He set a mug near her hand and sat on the floor. She tapped his ankle—eat. He tore a pandesal in half and passed her the softest piece. For a few minutes they chewed quietly, the way they always had when conversation meant hands and eye contact rather than idle sound. Mara had taught him that if you listen with your eyes, even chewing can be polite.

She nudged her phone between them, screen bright.

MAYOR’S OFFICE: USE WRITTEN NOTES. FLASH LIGHTS AS WARNING.
MASS TEXT: DO NOT PANIC. SILENCE IS TEMPORARY.

There were shaky videos, too: a street preacher mouthing with furious eyes, flames dancing at the edge of his cardboard sign; a flurry of hands spelling out STAY HOME at a hospital entrance; a choir filmed in a church, mouths open in perfect O’s as if the sound itself had been erased in post-production. Elior couldn’t stop staring. He’d spent his whole life finding beauty in vibration, rhythm, resonance. Now the world was a movie on mute.

Mara set the phone down and signed slowly, shaping each word with care. We should test it.

He didn’t answer. He knew what she meant.

Your voice, she added. We can learn rules. Safely.

He rubbed his thumb against the cup’s handle until the porcelain warmed his skin. The memory of yesterday rattled behind his sternum: the single “Hey” that had cracked glass and made a car alarm convulse, the way the air itself had flinched.

Not here, he signed. Outside. Somewhere empty.

She nodded. But first, write rules.

They found a notebook—his lyric book, ironically—and drew a line down the middle of a blank page. On the left, Mara wrote in neat print: WHAT WE THINK WE KNOW. On the right: WHAT WE DON’T.

She handed him the pen.

He wrote:

• Speaking causes physical effects (windows, flame).
• Volume increases effect (whisper vs...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 3.11.2025
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Fantasy / Science Fiction ► Science Fiction
• ISBN-10: 0-00-109436-X / 000109436X
• ISBN-13: 978-0-00-109436-9 / 9780001094369