Hole Beneath The World

The walls no longer recognized him.

He walked the inner tiers of the Choir's compound with the dislocation of someone drifting through a dream that had been dreamt by someone else. Rooms shifted in width. Corridors echoed with footsteps that weren't his. Doorframes no longer aligned with their own shadows. The architecture of the sect, once strange but consistent, now flexed against his presence like a body rejecting a foreign organ.

They were beginning to notice.

Not just Ashur. The others. Acolytes. Mid-voice initiates. Those who had once nodded in reverence as he passed now avoided his gaze. Masks remained drawn, tighter than before. Silence was no longer peace here. It had become tension, the heavy hush of a room holding its breath before a scream.

The Proxy understood.

He was no longer one of them.

He had never been.

But now, the gap was not philosophical. It was structural. He walked in different rhythm. His silences were deeper than theirs. His presence unmade memory the way others might dim a light.

And someone had begun to follow him.

Not openly. Not always. But enough. He could feel the gaze. Not from behind, from the walls. From the air. From the phrases that used to live between the stones, now gone.

He turned a corner and found a child kneeling by a shrine.

Small, curled, trembling. Hood too large for their frame. They looked up. Their mouth was sewn shut, thin threads crossing lips like ritual stitches. Eyes wide. Familiar.

She had followed him before.

He remembered her, or rather, he remembered her sound. A quiet breathing pattern in the prayer hall weeks ago, when he had first taken the feather into his throat.

She had never spoken.

And now, she couldn't.

She reached out a hand.

He didn't take it.

Not because he feared her, but because he feared what his touch might do. The boy's presence was growing increasingly volatile. Those who came too close began to lose context. Names slipped from their tongues. Memories rewrote themselves to place him at distances he had never been.

Still, the girl gestured, not to him, but behind.

He turned.

A Choir elder waited at the edge of the corridor, robed in black thread, mask etched with six vertical lines. The mark of a Voice Binder.

"The Ritual Chamber has been restored," the elder said. "The wound has calmed. We can offer you centering."

The Proxy said nothing.

The elder bowed faintly. "Come. You must not let it consume you."

The girl's fingers tightened into fists.

The Proxy looked down at her again.

A thread dangled from her sleeve. Unraveled slightly. It shimmered, not with light, but with memory.

She's afraid.

Not of him.

Of what they would do if he went.

And still, he followed.

The ritual chamber had not changed.

That alone made him wary.

The room was clean. Too clean. No residue from the previous collapse. No fractured floor. No stains. No record. As if it had been copied from memory, not rebuilt. As if those who entered here saw what they wanted to see, not what was.

The elder gestured toward the dais.

"Sit. We will bind the excess. Just enough to let you speak without unraveling."

Several others entered.

Ritualists.

Four stood at cardinal points. One behind. One in front.

Too many for centering.

Too few for a purge.

The Proxy stepped into the circle.

Not trusting.

Observing.

The ritual began.

Low hums. A chant without syllables. The mask of the frontmost ritualist cracked down the middle. Their voice was not human. It sounded like wind dragging metal through a cavern, a forgery of voice shaped from memory.

"We offer containment," it said. "A tithe to the Silence. Not your whole self. Just the tongue."

The Proxy blinked.

He had heard that phrase before.

In one of the false prayers, weeks ago.

A tithe to the Silence.

They were going to take his voice.

Not just its power, its shape. Its memory. Its future use.

His eyes narrowed.

The floor trembled.

One ritualist flinched.

The elder at his back placed a hand on his shoulder.

A mistake.

Contact broke the binding.

In that instant, the Proxy turned.

Not violently.

Not emotionally.

Simply turned.

And with that motion, the Second Truth responded.

There was no light. No crack.

Only absence.

A vacuum bloomed outward from his body. Not visible, felt. Pressure collapsed. Sound vanished. The hums cut off mid-breath. Masked mouths opened in horror, but no screams emerged.

One ritualist dropped, hands clutched to their chest, gasping for a sound that no longer existed.

Another tried to flee, and vanished at the threshold, memory unable to recall whether they had ever been present.

The Proxy stepped forward.

Not to attack.

To leave.

He walked through the silence he had made. The room no longer held shape. The altar bent sideways. Candles spun without direction. Shadows fell upward.

They had tried to bind the voice of Silence.

They had forgotten that silence does not answer when called.

It arrives.

And now, it had taken root.

He exited the ritual chamber.

The corridor was empty.

No acolytes. No followers.

But one figure waited.

The girl.

Still kneeling by the shrine.

Still reaching.

Her eyes searched his face, wide.

But something had changed.

She no longer recognized him.

And he—

He no longer remembered her name.

The memory was gone. Not destroyed. Eclipsed. A ripple of silence had erased the connection between their shared moments.

She had stayed too close.

And now, the silence had touched her, too.

The Proxy opened his mouth.

A single breath.

No words.

But enough to make her flinch.

She lowered her hand.

He turned away.

He did not speak.

Because to speak would be to destroy more.

And he understood now:

Even silence has a cost.