The city of Hiroshima woke that August morning in 1945 like any other. The cicadas sang loudly from the trees, merchants opened their shops, and children hurried through narrow streets on their way to school. No one knew that within a heartbeat, their world would be erased.
At 8:15 a.m., the sky split.
A blinding flash, white and merciless, swallowed everything. For an instant, it was brighter than the sun. Then came the roar—the scream of the earth itself tearing apart. Houses crumbled as if made of paper, glass turned into dust, and people vanished in the blink of an eye, leaving only their shadows burned into walls and pavements.
The survivors who staggered through the ruins were unrecognizable—skin melted, eyes blinded, clothes scorched. They did not cry. Their voices were gone, stolen by the heat and the shock. Instead, the city itself cried for them. The air carried a sound—a long, low moan that seemed to rise from the very bones of the earth.
The Silent Wail.
It was the same sound Elias had written of six hundred years before. The same sound villagers of Santora had heard when they buried their families in plague pits. It moved through time, attaching itself to human suffering, feeding on despair.
Keiko, a young girl of thirteen, stumbled through the ruins searching for her mother. Her kimono was half-burned, her hair singed away, and every step left pieces of skin on the blackened stones. But she did not stop.
"Mother!" she croaked, though her throat was raw with ash.
She turned a corner where a school had once stood. Only the gate remained, twisted and half-melted. Around it lay dozens of children, their small hands reaching out as if still clutching for life. Keiko fell to her knees, but no tears came—her body was too dry, too broken.
That was when she heard it.
A whisper. Soft, almost gentle.
"Keiko…"
Her blood froze. It was her mother's voice.
She followed it through the smoke, past broken beams and charred bodies, until she reached the riverbank. The water itself boiled, carrying floating figures downstream. And there, standing by the edge, was her mother—or what remained of her. Skin hung in strips, her face unrecognizable, yet her eyes… her eyes were fixed on Keiko, wide and unblinking.
"Come with me," the figure rasped.
Keiko wanted to run, but her legs refused to move. The world around her blurred. She remembered Elias's words—the ones whispered across centuries. The plague boy who had written: "The dead are not gone. They wait. They call our names."
The Silent Wail had found her.
---
Across oceans, soldiers who later entered Hiroshima told strange stories. They spoke of hearing children's laughter at night in the ruins, though no children were left alive. They described shadows moving along cracked walls, as if the burned imprints had peeled themselves free. A few swore they saw figures walking in the river, faces white and eyes black, whispering in languages no one understood.
Historians dismissed it as trauma, hallucinations born of guilt. But the echoes were too familiar. From plague-ridden Europe to the ruins of Hiroshima, the same truth remained: History itself remembers. And its memory takes shape in sorrow.
---
Even decades later, survivors could not escape the wail. Keiko, who lived long enough to tell her story, often woke in the night screaming. Not from the pain of her burns, but from the whispers she still heard: her mother's voice, calling her back to the river.
She wrote once in her journal:
"They say I survived. But I know the truth—I was chosen. The wail did not want me yet. It follows me. And one day, when the world burns again, it will call me home."