Whispers of the Unspoken

Apurbo’s fingers traced the faint, inked numbers on his wrist, as if the sensation of touch could somehow slow their countdown. 3472. He whispered the number to himself, not with sound, but with a look, a breath—an instinct grown from years of conserving every syllable. Words were rationed here, more valuable than water in Dhaka's dusty sprawl.The library was hushed, a vast sanctuary where silence was both law and safety. Apurbo’s gaze drifted over the dim rows of ancient books with brittle, sunburnt pages, volumes on topics he knew would devour too many precious words to discuss. For Dhaka's people, reading was a luxury—stories could spark conversations they might never be able to finish.A hand on his shoulder made him jump. He turned to see Avishek, his friend with a sharp gaze and a wrist tattoo marked 1620—half of Apurbo’s count. The numbers on his wrist pulsed lightly as if with every breath, they might slip further away. Avishek looked down, then back up, his eyes intense.“Did… you hear?” Avishek’s voice was rough, pulled from him reluctantly. “The anomaly. North Dhaka.”Apurbo blinked, curiosity edging into his mind. Avishek’s words were measured, like they were each weighed for significance before they left his lips. This wasn’t the sort of thing anyone talked about. Apurbo wanted to ask for details, but he bit back the urge, feeling his own words press against his throat, fighting to be spoken.Avishek leaned closer, his breath nearly inaudible. “A boy…” he paused, swallowing hard. “…ran out of words. Kept speaking.”A chill tightened Apurbo’s throat. His own voice felt like a dangerous animal, straining against its leash, eager to burst out. He knew the stories, of course. When the numbers hit zero, silence followed—a silence that was binding, final. That was how it was supposed to be.Just then, Tirtho drifted into their circle, his gaze shifting from Apurbo to Avishek, then to the shadows stretching across the library floor. Tirtho rarely spoke—his word count was a closely guarded mystery. But he leaned in, glancing left and right, his body tensed with the weight of some concealed truth.2.
“Not just… one boy,” he breathed, voice barely there, like the faintest brush of wind through dead leaves. “Blank wrists. Talking.”Apurbo glanced down instinctively, his eyes locked on his own wrist, the numbers still there but somehow colder now. The weight of what Tirtho said pressed on him, tightening around his lungs, pushing his questions deeper inside.The three of them stood in silence, each holding back, letting their eyes ask what they dared not speak. A cold dread sank into Apurbo, a dread that ran deeper than numbers or rules

The rumors settled in Apurbo’s mind like a dark stain, spreading slowly through each thought and flickering at the edge of every silent moment. He sat alone that night in his narrow room, the city lights casting harsh, angular shadows through the window. His wrist rested against the edge of his desk, the numbers staring back at him like a sentence he couldn’t avoid. 3459. They felt smaller than they had the day before.He was no stranger to silence. In Dhaka, silence filled spaces where conversation would otherwise bloom; people learned early on to read each other’s movements, expressions, the tilt of a chin or the arch of an eyebrow. But this silence felt different. It felt… watchful.The next morning, Apurbo’s quiet resolve was shaken by an unexpected knock at his door. He opened it to find Urmi standing in the doorway, her expression tight, eyes darting down the hallway and back again.She raised her arm, revealing her wrist—845, her lifetime word count, clear as day. She rarely used her words. But today, she drew in a sharp breath, and her lips parted, voice soft, almost trembling.“Come with me.”3.

Nothing more. She turned, walking down the hall, her silence a call that Apurbo couldn’t ignore. He followed, his footsteps echoing faintly through the empty corridors, each step punctuated by the low hum of distant machines.They slipped out of the apartment building and into the quiet alley behind it. She led him to the edge of the city, where Dhaka's gray concrete gave way to a barren field. Urmi stopped and turned, her gaze fierce and piercing. For a moment, they stood face to face, just breathing, the cold air between them heavy.“People are disappearing, Apurbo,” she said, her words coming like stones dropped in water, each rippling through him. “People with… fewer words left.”He stared at her, uncomprehending, feeling a chill creep up his spine. “What are you talking about?”Her hand reached out, fingers barely grazing his forearm, grounding him. “I saw it happen. Two nights ago.” She faltered, her words dropping off like she couldn’t bear to finish. “Tirtho’s friend, Sudipto… he had 32 words left. That’s all. And… and he vanished. Right in front of me.”Apurbo felt his pulse quicken, felt the press of his own silence weighing on him, pushing back the words that wanted to spill out. A strange understanding dawned on him then. Words, once they were gone, seemed to take something else with them.“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” His own words came low, hoarse, more like a breath than a question.She glanced away, face shadowed. “If we speak of it, we get closer to our limit. You… you don’t know what it’s like, having so few words left.”He swallowed, resisting the urge to reach out, to say something comforting. But here, comfort was costly. They shared a look, a hollow understanding passing between them, their silence hanging in the air. Urmi’s lips pressed into a thin line, her eyes brimming with an intensity he hadn’t seen before.4.

“Do you think the rumors are true?” he asked finally, his voice a whisper in the wind.“I don’t know. But if people like Sudipto are… reaching zero, then something’s happening. And we can’t ignore it.” Her voice faded, and she looked over her shoulder, as if expecting to see something there.Apurbo’s thoughts drifted back to the words that Avishek had said, words that had seemed absurd at the time: A boy in North Dhaka… ran out of words, but he kept speaking.Urmi’s gaze met his, something desperate in her eyes. “I don’t want to end up like him, Apurbo. I don’t want to disappear.”Neither did he. But standing there, he couldn’t help but feel that the silence they shared was already preparing them for it.

The tension hung thick as smoke in the days that followed. Apurbo, Avishek, Urmi, and Tirtho now gathered in furtive, quiet meetings, each of them measuring their words, each trying to find something they could barely name. Apurbo felt the weight of every syllable as they spoke in fragments, broken sentences, each word loaded with fear.Rumors of the “boy who kept speaking” had seeped through Azora like an infection. Stories cropped up about others—people who, like Sudipto, vanished after reaching zero. Yet in hushed, late-night whispers, there was a more disturbing twist: people who had disappeared were still… heard, as if their voices lingered, detached and wandering like echoes with nowhere to go.They had to know more.That evening, they decided to find someone who had witnessed the anomaly firsthand. According to Avishek’s older cousin, an older woman, Elara, who worked at Azora’s records center, had been one of the few to actually hear the boy speak. She was tight-lipped, known for her silence, and was rumored to be one of the last survivors of the city’s Old Generation—those who had lived before the word-count laws were introduced.5.

They agreed to meet her at the edge of the river, where the city lights glimmered on the water’s dark surface. Apurbo felt his pulse quicken as they made their way down the dimly lit path, each step a countdown to what might be another terrible revelation.Elara was waiting for them by the riverbank, her tall frame wrapped in a thick, dark coat. Her face was obscured by shadows, but her eyes, sharp and penetrating, cut through the night as she regarded each of them in turn. She gestured them closer, her lips pressed tight, a warning without words.When she finally spoke, her voice was soft and controlled, each word selected with deliberate precision. “So, you came to ask about him… the boy who kept speaking.”Apurbo nodded, the question forming on his tongue, but Elara silenced him with a raised hand. Her eyes darkened, as if remembering something too heavy to voice.“They don’t tell you what happens when the words run out, do they?” She stared into the river, as if it held answers. “I was there. I saw him.”She paused, and Apurbo noticed her hand tremble slightly as it brushed against her own tattooed wrist, the count nearly invisible in the darkness. “I thought he would just… stop, like everyone else,” she continued, her voice almost a whisper. “But he didn’t. He looked right at me, his wrist blank. And he spoke.”“What did he say?” Tirtho asked, voice tight, his hand unconsciously covering his own tattoo.Elara’s lips tightened, and she shook her head. “The words didn’t make sense. They came out like… fragments, like broken thoughts. They weren’t his words. I don’t think they even belonged to him. It was as if something… used him, took over his voice and spoke through him.”A silence fell over them, heavier than before. The image of the boy—speaking with words that weren’t his own, words pulled from somewhere else—settled in their minds like a dark seed.6.

“Did he disappear?” Urmi’s voice was barely audible.Elara’s face was grim. “I looked away, just for a moment. When I turned back, he was gone. All that remained was… an echo.” She turned to them, her gaze piercing. “I heard his voice after he was gone. It kept speaking, but it wasn’t him anymore.”The friends stood there, speechless, as if afraid that even thinking about it might bring the same fate upon them. They could barely meet Elara’s eyes, but Apurbo felt something pull at him—curiosity, yes, but also a chilling understanding.“Elara,” he asked, his words carefully controlled, “what happens to the words? The ones we don’t get to speak?”Her eyes softened, but her expression remained inscrutable. “They linger. They collect in the spaces we don’t see, in places where silence is supposed to be.” She took a shaky breath. “It’s why some of us hold back, keep words unspent. Because the unspoken doesn’t disappear; it waits.”Apurbo felt his skin prickle. The unspoken words—the ones they had swallowed, held back—were there, lurking. But if they lingered, it meant something could reach them.They left Elara at the river, her shadow long and distorted by the flickering lights of the city. As they walked back through the silent streets, a disturbing thought grew in Apurbo’s mind.If their own words, the ones they chose not to say, were gathering somewhere unseen… what would happen when they ran out?

Apurbo found himself haunted by Elara’s words in the days that followed, the idea that unspoken words collected somewhere, trapped in the empty spaces of their city, waiting for something to release them. He’d seen the fear in his friends’ eyes as well, though none of them dared bring it up again. They moved through their routines quietly, each avoiding too much time alone, each glancing over their shoulders when they thought no one was watching.7.

One evening, he received a message from Tirtho—a single line that appeared on his screen, like a call to arms: Meet me at the Abandoned Quarter.The Abandoned Quarter was a forbidden place, once a vibrant hub of Azora’s factories and housing complexes. Now, it was desolate, ghostly. People avoided it instinctively, as if the silence there was different, something more suffocating.Apurbo arrived first, his footsteps echoing in the empty streets. Gray buildings towered around him like silent sentries, their windows broken and hollow. As he waited in the cold, his breath fogged the air, the only sound in an otherwise soundless place.Moments later, he saw his friends approaching, their faces shadowed with unease. Avishek, Tirtho, and Urmi came to stand in a rough circle, each of them tense, alert, the flickering streetlights casting long, dark shapes on the cracked pavement.Tirtho broke the silence, his voice a mere murmur. “I think… I heard one of them.”Apurbo’s skin prickled, but he forced himself to speak. “One of who?”Tirtho’s gaze shifted to the shadows around them, his expression guarded. “Someone who ran out of words. It was last night. I was by the river… and I swear, I heard a voice, faint but clear. It kept saying my name.”Urmi shuddered, clutching her arms around herself as if to hold back a chill. “You’re sure it wasn’t just… someone nearby? It could’ve been an echo or—”“No,” Tirtho cut her off, his voice fierce. “It wasn’t an echo. It was like the voice was… inside my mind.” He looked down, his fingers unconsciously brushing his tattoo, as though searching for reassurance in the numbers. “It kept repeating, calling me. And then… it said something else.” His voice dropped, barely above a whisper. “It said, I’m waiting for you.”8.

A cold, sinking feeling washed over them, thickening the silence between them. They looked at each other, each wondering if any of them had felt this strange pull, this sense that silence itself had turned against them.“Maybe it’s just in our heads,” Avishek suggested, his face taut with fear he was trying to hide. “Maybe Elara’s stories got to us, and now we’re seeing things that aren’t there.”But Apurbo wasn’t convinced. “We’ve all heard it. The rumors, the sightings… they aren’t just stories anymore.”Urmi’s face was pale, her eyes fixed on something in the distance. “If we keep going like this, won’t we all… end up like them? Vanishing?”Apurbo’s mind raced. The reality of it all was beginning to settle like a weight in his chest. If the unspoken words did linger, if they were waiting, then maybe they were drawing people in, luring them out.They stood in silence, the weight of their thoughts pressing down on them. Apurbo felt his eyes drawn to a nearby building—a tall, cracked structure with a broken window near the top. He squinted, a feeling of unease prickling through him as he realized he was staring at a shadow that didn’t quite belong.“Do you see that?” he whispered, his voice barely carrying.The others followed his gaze, and they saw it too—a faint shape, moving within the building, but without a source, like a dark smear across the glass. It shifted, and they could almost make out something… someone… standing behind the fractured glass, watching them.And then, as they stared, a sound broke through the silence—a faint whisper that seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at once.“Apurbo.”9.

The voice was familiar, low and calm, yet hollow, as if filtered through layers of darkness. It was a voice he had known since childhood, a voice he had laughed with, confided in, a voice he thought he would never hear again.It was Sudipto.He froze, heart hammering, his gaze locked on the figure in the window. The whisper was thin, barely there, yet sharp enough to slice through his thoughts.“You’re… here,” the voice said, almost as if in disbelief. And then, the voice took on a pleading edge. “I don’t know… I don’t know how I got here, but it’s so dark… Please.”The last word lingered, fading into the air around them, and Apurbo’s hand tightened into a fist as he fought the urge to respond. Every instinct screamed at him to call out, to reach for his friend, but he knew—somehow, he knew—that speaking back might be a step too far.Urmi grabbed his arm, pulling him back. “Don’t,” she whispered, her voice trembling. “He’s not… he’s not really here.”The figure in the window seemed to flicker, like an image in a fading memory, and the voice came again, softer, fainter.“Apurbo… don’t let them… don’t let them take you.”And then, as quickly as it had come, the shadow vanished, dissolving into the dark. The silence that followed felt like a gaping void, a suffocating, unnatural stillness that none of them dared break.They stood frozen, hearts racing, each afraid that a single word might bring it back.

They fled the Abandoned Quarter in silence, each step heavy with the memory of Sudipto’s voice. It haunted them, a whisper lodged in their minds that no amount of quiet could dispel. Apurbo felt his own words pressing on him, a thrumming urge to say something, to release the tension that coiled in his throat—but he resisted. They all did.As they walked back through Azora’s empty streets, Urmi suddenly spoke, her voice strained. “If… if that was really Sudipto, then where is he? Where do people go when they vanish?”Avishek looked away, his expression pained. “I don’t think they go anywhere. It’s like they’re trapped, caught somewhere between here and… whatever’s waiting.”Apurbo swallowed hard. He felt the truth of those words echoing inside him, filling his mind with images of people lost in dark, empty places, spaces between sounds, between breaths.A question rose within him, one he had been dreading. “What if the words we never speak are… are what trap us?” He paused, feeling the weight of his own words. “Elara said the unspoken words don’t disappear. They gather somewhere. What if they’re… calling us?”Urmi’s face was pale. “Do you mean… our own silence is pulling us into this? Like it’s not just our words that count, but what we hold back?”Tirtho nodded slowly, his gaze distant. “That would mean we’re all carrying this… this weight. Words we can’t use, thoughts we’ll never voice. They’re waiting, building up.”Avishek exhaled sharply, his expression dark. “Then maybe there’s a way to stop it. If it’s unspoken words that trap us, what if we find a way to release them before it’s too late?”The idea hung between them, fragile yet powerful, like the first light at dawn. Could they save themselves by speaking the words they had been holding back?11.

The next day, they gathered at Apurbo’s place, each bringing an old notebook or blank page, their faces tense and resolved. They sat around a table littered with scattered pens, nervous glances darting between them. Writing was safer than speaking, safer than letting their voices take what words they had left. And maybe, if they wrote their words down, they could find a way to release them without losing themselves.Apurbo gripped his pen, feeling the ink pulse beneath his fingers, feeling the potential in it to capture what he hadn’t dared say aloud. He wrote slowly, each word like an exhale, freeing fragments of himself onto the page:I remember the first time I heard about the boy who kept speaking. I thought it was impossible, thought I could never be that close to the end. But now, I feel it. I feel the weight of each word, like a ticking clock, like my own voice is counting me down.Beside him, Urmi’s hand moved rapidly, her writing filling pages in tight, frantic lines. She was letting out confessions, fears, hopes she’d never spoken of. Tirtho and Avishek did the same, each bent over their papers as if they could somehow expel the darkness gathering inside them.When they finished, their hands were cramped, fingers stained with ink. They looked at each other, their silence deeper than ever but somehow lighter. Apurbo gathered the pages carefully, feeling the importance of each one, and slid them into an envelope.“What do we do now?” Avishek asked, his voice barely audible.“We have to destroy them,” Apurbo said. “We can’t keep carrying them. We’ll burn them, let the words go.”They found themselves at the river again, the cold water glinting beneath the moonlight. Apurbo held the envelope over the flame of a lighter, watching as the edges caught fire, the words disappearing in a flicker of heat and smoke. The others stood beside him, their faces solemn, and one by one, they added their pages to the blaze.As the last page burned, Apurbo felt something shift, as if a pressure he hadn’t noticed before had been lifted. They stood there in silence, but it was a silence that felt freeing, not suffocating.12.

But then, a voice broke the quiet—a voice that wasn’t one of theirs. Low, hollow, and unmistakable, it was the same voice they had heard in the Abandoned Quarter.“Why?” it asked, echoing through the night. “Why did you let them go?”Apurbo’s heart pounded as he turned, searching the shadows, but there was no one there. The voice came again, closer this time, like it was slipping between them, weaving into their thoughts.“Words are all we have… all that holds us here.” The voice was pleading now, growing weaker, as though it were fading with each word. “Don’t let us go.”And then, it stopped. The silence that followed was absolute, thick with the weight of what they had done.They stood there, shaken, as the ashes of their words drifted into the river and disappeared. The voice was gone, but something lingered—a presence, a sense of relief mixed with sadness, like they had finally broken free of something… and lost something all at once.They left the river in silence, each feeling a strange emptiness, an aching absence where their words had been. It was as if they had released something beyond themselves, something they couldn’t quite grasp. But as they walked back to their lives, each of them knew one thing:They were no longer the same.

In the days following the ritual by the river, Apurbo noticed a change—subtle, but undeniable. The city felt different. Conversations seemed more strained, silence heavier, almost as though everyone around him sensed that something had shifted but couldn’t explain it.Apurbo’s friends, too, had become distant. They still gathered, still shared uneasy glances, but words between them were sparse, their voices quieter than before.
It was as if the ritual had left them emptied, each struggling with the haunting aftereffects of the voices they’d heard. The freedom they’d hoped to feel had been replaced by something darker, a feeling that they’d left a part of themselves behind in the fire.13.

One night, as Apurbo lay in bed, staring into the darkness, a faint noise reached him—a whisper, like wind, but shaped into something almost intelligible. He strained to listen, holding his breath as the sound grew clearer."Apurbo..."The voice was thin and fragmented, but he recognized it. It was Sudipto.He sat up, his pulse racing as the voice came again, more distinct, though tinged with an unearthly quality, hollow and drawn."They’re… coming for you."Apurbo’s heart thundered in his chest. He wanted to respond, to reach out, but fear rooted him to the spot. Instead, he listened, feeling as though any movement would bring him closer to whatever the voice was warning him of.“You… released us,” the voice continued, “but it was… not enough. They want what you have left.”Apurbo felt his throat tighten as a wave of dread washed over him. What they had left—the remaining words, the fragments of their voices. He sensed, instinctively, that the ritual had only half-emptied them, a temporary relief that had merely drawn something closer.The following day, he gathered his friends. He didn’t need to explain much; one look at his face, and they knew. They all had heard something similar, faint voices in the night, fractured echoes of the past creeping into their thoughts.14.

“Sudipto’s voice… it’s still there,” Apurbo said quietly, looking around the small, dimly lit room where they met. “He said that what we did… wasn’t enough. That they still want something from us.”Avishek frowned, but his face was pale. “What do they want? We gave up the words. Burned them. Isn’t that what they needed?”Urmi shook her head, her eyes shadowed. “Maybe it wasn’t the words themselves. Maybe… they want more than what we can give. Like they’re hungry for everything we say, every thought we have.”Tirtho shivered, looking at the darkened window. “You mean we’re just… food for them? That they feed on what we don’t say?”Apurbo nodded slowly. “That’s what it feels like. As if by holding back, by counting our words, we’ve created something that feeds on silence itself.”They looked at one another, the weight of it settling heavily. If they were being drained by these unspoken forces, then each of them was at risk of being taken, swallowed by the void that held Sudipto and others like him.“Then we have to find out where they are,” Apurbo said, feeling a rush of determination. “Where this… silence lives. And if we can’t free ourselves, maybe we can stop them.”The others stared at him, uncertain, but they all felt it—the urge to do something, to break free from whatever fate awaited them in the silence. They agreed to meet later that night, back in the Abandoned Quarter. They would bring anything that might help—anything that had words, memories, fragments of themselves that they could use to lure the echoes out of hiding.As darkness fell, they slipped through the quiet streets of Azora, reaching the Abandoned Quarter, where silence pressed down on them with an unnatural weight. Their breaths fogged the cold air as they looked around, each of them carrying old photos, letters, notebooks—all the pieces of themselves they hadn’t dared to burn.15.

They gathered around an old fire barrel in the center of a desolate square, lighting a small flame and feeding it with scraps of their lives, memories they could bear to part with. One by one, they threw in pages of faded handwriting, torn photographs, poems they’d written in secret.Each memory seemed to draw something into the square, a subtle, creeping presence that coiled around them, like smoke from an unseen fire.And then… the voices began.Low at first, indistinct, then stronger, clearer, until each of them could hear a voice they knew, someone who had disappeared. Urmi’s older sister, who had run out of words years ago. Tirtho’s childhood friend, whom he hadn’t seen since his count reached zero. Avishek’s mother, whose voice trembled as it slipped into the air around them.They listened, unable to move, transfixed as the voices grew louder, mingling into a discordant chorus. The air grew thick with it, oppressive, as though the silence was stretching, reaching out to pull them in.Apurbo clenched his fists, resisting the pull. “We didn’t come here to listen,” he said, his voice cutting through the voices, addressing the invisible presence. “We came to end this. Tell us what you want.”The voices quieted, their murmurs turning into a single, dark whisper that seemed to come from the ground beneath them.“Life,” it hissed, a sound that echoed through their bones. “The life in each word, the part of you left unspoken. That is what feeds us.”Apurbo felt his throat go dry. They were right—by saving their words, by keeping silence, they had created something, something that thrived on what they held back.Avishek took a step forward, gripping a worn notebook in his hand. “Then take it,” he said, his voice filled with defiance and fear. “If that’s what you want, take it. But let us go.”16.

He opened the notebook, reading aloud the words he had kept inside for years—stories, confessions, thoughts he had never dared share. Each word seemed to pull something from him, a brightness in his eyes dimming as he spoke. The others watched, horrified, as the words drained him, leaving his voice weaker, his body swaying.As the last word left his lips, the whisper returned, more urgent this time. “More. We need more.”Urmi stepped forward, her hand trembling as she took out a faded letter, one she had written to her sister but never sent. She read, her voice cracking, each word feeling like a piece of herself slipping away, as if they were leaving marks, wounds, as they escaped.One by one, they each did the same, releasing their unspoken words, their hidden thoughts, until only Apurbo was left.He looked at the fire, feeling the pull of silence stronger than ever, as though it were clawing at his thoughts, trying to drag him down. His hand went to his pocket, where he kept an old, crumpled note he had written years ago—a confession, one he had never dared share with anyone.With a deep breath, he unfolded it and began to read, each word feeling like a final breath, a release of everything he was. And as the last word slipped into the air, the silence surged forward, thickening, curling around him.And then… it broke.A wave of emptiness washed over them, as if the presence they had felt had been pulled back, scattered, dissolved by their voices. The silence was complete now—not oppressive, but whole, as though it had finally found what it was seeking.They stood in the empty square, exhausted, feeling hollowed yet somehow lighter, as though they had shed the weight of years of unspoken words.17.

In the quiet that followed, Apurbo looked at his friends, their faces pale, their expressions haunted but resolute. They had faced the silence and come out on the other side, and though they were changed, they knew they had finally freed themselves from its grasp.Or so they thought.Apurbo and his friends returned home that night feeling a strange lightness, as if they had left pieces of themselves back in the Abandoned Quarter. For the first time in weeks, the voices ceased, and the oppressive silence that had once loomed over them felt like nothing more than a memory.But as the days passed, they began to realize something was different—profoundly, terrifyingly different. Their words didn’t carry the same weight anymore. It was as though the words they spoke drifted away, hollow, without meaning. Even laughter felt thin, ghostly, like it lacked the spark of life it once held.One afternoon, Apurbo sat alone in his room, replaying the events by the river in his mind. He remembered the voices, the whispers in the darkness. Had they truly freed themselves? Or had they given up something they could never regain?A soft knock interrupted his thoughts. It was Urmi. Her face was pale, her eyes shadowed, and there was an emptiness in her expression that made his skin prickle."Do you… feel different?" she asked, her voice barely more than a whisper.Apurbo nodded slowly. “It’s like… like something inside me is gone. I talk, but it feels empty.”Urmi shivered, looking down. “I tried to write last night. Just something simple, a note. But the words… they wouldn’t come. It was like I didn’t know them anymore.”18.

Apurbo felt his stomach twist. "Do you think… do you think the silence took part of us? Like we offered it something it could keep?”Urmi nodded, her face stricken. “I think we gave it more than just our unspoken words. We gave it parts of who we are, fragments of our voices… maybe even our memories.”The next day, they gathered the others—Avishek, Tirtho—and shared their fears. One by one, they recounted their experiences: moments of speech that felt hollow, memories they could no longer recall, a sense of themselves slipping away, piece by piece.Tirtho spoke up, his face drawn. “Last night, I tried to remember something… just a small thing, my grandmother’s face. I couldn’t. It was like… it was fading. Like my memory of her was being erased.”The weight of his words settled heavily over them. They hadn’t just sacrificed the words they’d never spoken; they had sacrificed the foundation of who they were. Their voices, their memories, their very essence—all now felt fragile, incomplete, as if the silence had reached inside them and taken what it needed to exist.Suddenly, Avishek turned to Apurbo, his eyes wide. “What if this was the silence’s plan all along? To make us hollow, to take what makes us us.”Apurbo swallowed, the realization chilling him. “So, we’ve become like them. The lost voices… people who spoke and left pieces of themselves behind until there was nothing left. We’re becoming… hollowed.”A heavy silence filled the room, pressing down on them with an oppressive familiarity. They looked at one another, each feeling the depth of the loss inside themselves, as though they were looking into mirrors that only reflected emptiness.“We can’t let this happen,” Urmi whispered, her voice trembling. “There has to be a way to reclaim what we’ve lost.”19.

Apurbo clenched his fists, his mind racing. “If we’re hollowed now, then maybe there’s still a way to find what was taken. Maybe… maybe it’s still trapped there, in the silence. If we go back, we might be able to reclaim it.”Avishek’s face darkened. “But how? It’s not like we can just… ask for it back. Whatever took it doesn’t want us to have it.”Apurbo looked around at his friends, his voice filled with a fierce determination. “We gave it willingly, didn’t we? Maybe we can take it back the same way.”Urmi nodded, her expression resolute. “We need to confront it. Demand back what it took.”And so, as the last light faded from the sky, they made their way back to the Abandoned Quarter, where echoes of their memories lingered in the shadows.The square was silent as they arrived, the same barrel where they’d burned their memories standing empty and cold. They gathered around it, each feeling the weight of their hollowed voices, the spaces within themselves that had once held memories and thoughts they could no longer grasp.Apurbo stepped forward, his voice low but firm. “We came to release what we couldn’t speak. But we didn’t understand what we were giving. Now we want it back.”The silence around them seemed to thicken, as though the air itself was listening.One by one, the others spoke, voices thin but strong. They each named the memories they had lost, fragments of themselves they couldn’t reach, demanding them back from the darkness that had taken them.And then, like a slow ripple spreading through the silence, they heard it—a faint whisper, an answer coming from somewhere deep within the night.20.

“We… do not give back what was given,” the voice murmured, distant yet overwhelming, a presence that pressed down on them with a force that stole their breath. “You offered your words, your memories, your essence. They are ours now.”Apurbo stepped forward, clenching his fists, desperation filling his voice. “You took what we didn’t understand. We didn’t know it would hollow us. You have no right to keep it.”The silence pulsed, like a heartbeat in the dark. And then, they heard it—a multitude of voices, rising together, fragmented and chaotic. It was the voices of those who had disappeared, the lost ones, all speaking at once in broken sentences, echoes of lives that had been erased.“You are becoming… like us,” the voices whispered, filling the air around them. “Hollowed, fragment by fragment, until you fade into the silence.”Urmi shivered, her face pale. “Then what are we supposed to do? How do we stop this?”A shadow shifted within the darkness, a figure emerging, one that looked achingly familiar. It was Sudipto, or at least a version of him, his face pale and his eyes hollow, as though he were made of shadows stitched together by fragments of memory.“You must take back your words… before you lose them completely,” Sudipto’s voice whispered, brittle and fading. “Go… find what you’ve lost, remember what you’ve forgotten. Only then can you reclaim yourselves.”And with that, he faded into the dark once more, leaving them alone in the silent square.Apurbo and his friends looked at one another, each realizing the gravity of the task ahead. They had to remember, to reclaim the pieces of themselves they had lost to the silence, before they, too, became nothing more than hollowed shadows.Without another word, they left the square, each feeling a gnawing emptiness within—a race against time to find themselves before they faded into echoes, the same way Sudipto and so many others had.21.

As they stepped back into the quiet streets, Apurbo knew that this was only the beginning.Apurbo and his friends returned home that night feeling a strange lightness, as if they had left pieces of themselves back in the Abandoned Quarter. For the first time in weeks, the voices ceased, and the oppressive silence that had once loomed over them felt like nothing more than a memory.But as the days passed, they began to realize something was different—profoundly, terrifyingly different. Their words didn’t carry the same weight anymore. It was as though the words they spoke drifted away, hollow, without meaning. Even laughter felt thin, ghostly, like it lacked the spark of life it once held.One afternoon, Apurbo sat alone in his room, replaying the events by the river in his mind. He remembered the voices, the whispers in the darkness. Had they truly freed themselves? Or had they given up something they could never regain?A soft knock interrupted his thoughts. It was Urmi. Her face was pale, her eyes shadowed, and there was an emptiness in her expression that made his skin prickle."Do you… feel different?" she asked, her voice barely more than a whisper.Apurbo nodded slowly. “It’s like… like something inside me is gone. I talk, but it feels empty.”Urmi shivered, looking down. “I tried to write last night. Just something simple, a note. But the words… they wouldn’t come. It was like I didn’t know them anymore.”18.

Apurbo felt his stomach twist. "Do you think… do you think the silence took part of us? Like we offered it something it could keep?”Urmi nodded, her face stricken. “I think we gave it more than just our unspoken words. We gave it parts of who we are, fragments of our voices… maybe even our memories.”The next day, they gathered the others—Avishek, Tirtho—and shared their fears. One by one, they recounted their experiences: moments of speech that felt hollow, memories they could no longer recall, a sense of themselves slipping away, piece by piece.Tirtho spoke up, his face drawn. “Last night, I tried to remember something… just a small thing, my grandmother’s face. I couldn’t. It was like… it was fading. Like my memory of her was being erased.”The weight of his words settled heavily over them. They hadn’t just sacrificed the words they’d never spoken; they had sacrificed the foundation of who they were. Their voices, their memories, their very essence—all now felt fragile, incomplete, as if the silence had reached inside them and taken what it needed to exist.Suddenly, Avishek turned to Apurbo, his eyes wide. “What if this was the silence’s plan all along? To make us hollow, to take what makes us us.”Apurbo swallowed, the realization chilling him. “So, we’ve become like them. The lost voices… people who spoke and left pieces of themselves behind until there was nothing left. We’re becoming… hollowed.”A heavy silence filled the room, pressing down on them with an oppressive familiarity. They looked at one another, each feeling the depth of the loss inside themselves, as though they were looking into mirrors that only reflected emptiness.“We can’t let this happen,” Urmi whispered, her voice trembling. “There has to be a way to reclaim what we’ve lost.”19.

Apurbo clenched his fists, his mind racing. “If we’re hollowed now, then maybe there’s still a way to find what was taken. Maybe… maybe it’s still trapped there, in the silence. If we go back, we might be able to reclaim it.”Avishek’s face darkened. “But how? It’s not like we can just… ask for it back. Whatever took it doesn’t want us to have it.”Apurbo looked around at his friends, his voice filled with a fierce determination. “We gave it willingly, didn’t we? Maybe we can take it back the same way.”Urmi nodded, her expression resolute. “We need to confront it. Demand back what it took.”And so, as the last light faded from the sky, they made their way back to the Abandoned Quarter, where echoes of their memories lingered in the shadows.The square was silent as they arrived, the same barrel where they’d burned their memories standing empty and cold. They gathered around it, each feeling the weight of their hollowed voices, the spaces within themselves that had once held memories and thoughts they could no longer grasp.Apurbo stepped forward, his voice low but firm. “We came to release what we couldn’t speak. But we didn’t understand what we were giving. Now we want it back.”The silence around them seemed to thicken, as though the air itself was listening.One by one, the others spoke, voices thin but strong. They each named the memories they had lost, fragments of themselves they couldn’t reach, demanding them back from the darkness that had taken them.And then, like a slow ripple spreading through the silence, they heard it—a faint whisper, an answer coming from somewhere deep within the night.20.

“We… do not give back what was given,” the voice murmured, distant yet overwhelming, a presence that pressed down on them with a force that stole their breath. “You offered your words, your memories, your essence. They are ours now.”Apurbo stepped forward, clenching his fists, desperation filling his voice. “You took what we didn’t understand. We didn’t know it would hollow us. You have no right to keep it.”The silence pulsed, like a heartbeat in the dark. And then, they heard it—a multitude of voices, rising together, fragmented and chaotic. It was the voices of those who had disappeared, the lost ones, all speaking at once in broken sentences, echoes of lives that had been erased.“You are becoming… like us,” the voices whispered, filling the air around them. “Hollowed, fragment by fragment, until you fade into the silence.”Urmi shivered, her face pale. “Then what are we supposed to do? How do we stop this?”A shadow shifted within the darkness, a figure emerging, one that looked achingly familiar. It was Sudipto, or at least a version of him, his face pale and his eyes hollow, as though he were made of shadows stitched together by fragments of memory.“You must take back your words… before you lose them completely,” Sudipto’s voice whispered, brittle and fading. “Go… find what you’ve lost, remember what you’ve forgotten. Only then can you reclaim yourselves.”And with that, he faded into the dark once more, leaving them alone in the silent square.Apurbo and his friends looked at one another, each realizing the gravity of the task ahead. They had to remember, to reclaim the pieces of themselves they had lost to the silence, before they, too, became nothing more than hollowed shadows.Without another word, they left the square, each feeling a gnawing emptiness within—a race against time to find themselves before they faded into echoes, the same way Sudipto and so many others had.21.

As they stepped back into the quiet streets, Apurbo knew that this was only the beginning.The days that followed were a blur of silence and desperation. Each of them, Apurbo, Urmi, Avishek, and Tirtho, felt the hollowness growing within, as if pieces of themselves were slipping away each time they tried to speak. Memories flickered, words lost their shape, and thoughts drifted like smoke. They were forgetting who they were—becoming whispers in a world of silence.Apurbo, determined not to let them fade, led his friends to one final place—the heart of the old city, where the oldest buildings stood abandoned and overgrown, places where even silence seemed ancient, rooted deeply into stone and shadow.They moved through the ruins, past walls scrawled with the faint remnants of lives before them—names, fragments of poems, words carved and painted by people who had perhaps tried to hold onto themselves in a similar struggle. It felt like a graveyard of voices. The silence here was heavier, almost sentient, a darkness that reached out with invisible hands, clutching at their throats, their memories, their very sense of being.Apurbo stopped in a courtyard lined with broken statues. It was here, he felt, where the silence was at its strongest, where it seemed to breathe. He turned to his friends, each of whom looked drained, shadows of themselves, eyes clouded and voices barely a whisper.“We can’t run from this anymore,” Apurbo said, his voice thin but steady. “If we’re going to reclaim what we’ve lost, we have to face it—whatever it is. We have to make it give us back what it took.”They nodded, and in that moment, Apurbo saw the spark of something they’d all thought was lost. The last fragments of who they were—the memories of laughter, of friendship, of all the words they’d once freely spoken. But they were fading fast.Together, they held hands and closed their eyes, calling to mind every memory, every thought they could still grasp, even if it was only a sliver.
They remembered each other: Tirtho’s laugh, Urmi’s gentle voice when she’d comforted them, Avishek’s endless stories, Sudipto’s thoughtful silences. And in the depths of their minds, they called to the presence that had taken these things from them, the force that lay in wait within the silence.22.

The air grew thick, pressing down as the shadows seemed to deepen, curling around them. They heard whispers, faint and fragmented, as if spoken from behind a wall. The voices of the lost, of those who had vanished into the silence, began to surface, merging with their own.And then, like a gust of icy wind, a voice more ancient than any they had heard whispered from the darkness.“You called us… and now you wish to leave. But the words you gave us have rooted within you. To reclaim what you have lost is to face all you have hidden, all you have feared.”The silence felt like a living thing now, a presence that pulsed and grew, wrapping around them, creeping into their minds, showing them memories they’d forgotten—painful, joyful, all the moments they had tried to bury in silence.“Speak what was unsaid,” the voice commanded, a dark resonance in its tone. “For only in truth can you reclaim what you are.”Apurbo felt a lump in his throat. He knew that the silence fed on what was hidden, what was left unsaid. But now, to face it, they would have to break that silence, to speak what they had kept buried.Urmi stepped forward first, her voice trembling but resolute. “I never forgave myself for my sister’s disappearance. I thought… I thought if I stayed silent, it wouldn’t hurt so much.” Her voice cracked, and the air around them pulsed as though the silence itself recoiled.Tirtho followed, his voice a shaky whisper. “I was afraid of losing… of losing all of you. I thought if I didn’t say anything, maybe I could keep everyone close.”23.

Avishek spoke next, his eyes glistening. “I never told my mother I loved her. I thought… I thought she would always be there. And then she was gone, and I couldn’t find the words.”Finally, it was Apurbo’s turn. He swallowed hard, his voice thick. “I was afraid of silence, afraid of what it meant. I thought by keeping everything hidden, I’d protect myself, protect all of you. But it only made things worse. I know that now.”As each confession fell into the darkness, the silence around them rippled, shuddering like a wounded creature. And with each word, Apurbo felt a piece of himself return, as though the silence had begun to release the fragments it had taken.The shadows in the courtyard pulsed one last time, the oppressive weight lifting as though peeled away layer by layer. The presence, that dark entity within the silence, wavered, its strength weakened by their words, their shared truth. And in a final, echoing whisper, it spoke, its voice laced with resignation.“You are free… but remember, silence is never empty. Speak, or it will claim you again.”With that, the shadows dissipated, and the silence lifted, leaving only the faintest echoes of all that had been taken. The weight was gone, replaced by a profound stillness that no longer threatened to consume them. The hollow places within them felt whole once more, filled by the words they’d reclaimed.They left the ruins together, stepping back into the city that felt new, brighter, as if the silence had retreated, leaving them whole. Each felt a lightness, a freedom they had not known in a long time.For the first time, Apurbo let himself laugh—a real laugh, filled with the richness of his own voice. His friends joined him, their voices filling the air, no longer empty or thin, but alive, each word echoing with the truth they had reclaimed.In that moment, they knew they had broken the cycle, that they had won back what had been taken. And though silence would always be part of them, it would never again hold the power to hollow them out.