The wind carried silence. Not the ordinary silence of night, but a silence so heavy it pressed upon the chest like stone. The village of Santora lay under a veil of fear, its streets abandoned, its windows shuttered. Children had stopped laughing weeks ago, and even the dogs refused to bark. Something darker than death itself had crept in, and its wail echoed through history.
Elias, a boy of just fifteen, stood at the edge of the empty marketplace. The stalls that once overflowed with grain, cloth, and laughter were nothing more than skeletons now, their wooden frames half-rotted, their baskets overturned and crawling with rats. His stomach growled with hunger, but he no longer searched for food. Hunger was not the enemy here—fear was.
The year was 1348, and across Europe, whispers of a great plague spread faster than fire. People spoke of black sores that oozed blood, of fevers that burned the body from within, of whole families dying overnight. But here, in Santora, the villagers whispered of something worse. They spoke of voices in the dark, of shadows that moved when no one stood there, of loved ones rising from their beds not as themselves but as hollow shells.
Elias had seen it with his own eyes.
His mother, once a gentle woman with warm hands and songs sweeter than spring, had fallen ill within days. At first, she only coughed, but soon her eyes grew black around the edges, her skin pale as wax. She would whisper things that made no sense—things she could not have known.
"The walls are listening, Elias… They remember the screams."
On the fourth night, she stood at the foot of his bed, her mouth moving though no sound came out. Her eyes were open wide, unblinking, staring straight into his soul. He had screamed until the neighbors came, but by morning, she was dead.
At least, that's what they thought.
When they carried her body to the pit where so many others had been thrown, Elias swore he heard her calling his name. Not with her voice—but with a rasping echo that chilled his bones. That night, he dreamed of her standing in the fields, her shadow stretching farther than the horizon.
The Silent Wail had begun.
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Across the continent, history carved itself in screams. Entire cities burned their dead in pyres so tall the sky itself turned black. Children woke up to find their parents lifeless beside them. Priests abandoned their flocks, and kings locked themselves in stone fortresses, hoping stone could keep out death.
But no wall, no crown, no prayer was strong enough.
And yet… not all of it was disease. Survivors told stories of something else. In the plague camps where bodies piled like mountains, people claimed to hear weeping in the air. The cries of the dying did not fade—they lingered, twisting into the wind. Travelers swore they saw women with hollow faces standing at crossroads, beckoning them closer. Some said if you followed, you never returned.
Elias began to keep a journal. His ink was fading, and half the pages were smudged with tears, but still he wrote:
"I thought death was only an end. But here, it is a door. And something waits behind it. Something hungry. I can hear it at night, calling the names of the ones it has taken. Soon, it will call mine too."