Page 71 - DivineSparkRising II-TheMirrorofSilenceFinal

Nicholas Boothman
Zhara didn’t answer. Instead, she picked up a
battered microphone and spoke softly into it. The
nearest radios responded one by one, like birds
echoing a call. The sound that came out wasn’t
human language — it was a pattern, circular,
recursive, like the Spiral itself rendered in tone.
The air shimmered. The walls quivered as if
struck by invisible light.
Then Zhara turned off the mic. “The Mirror can’t
follow what it doesn’t understand. Here, we speak
in circles.”
4. The City of Voices
That night, Hafid took them to the rooftops. The
sky over Tangier was heavy with stars, the city
below alive with whispers. From certain alleys, you
could hear broadcasts in reverse — fragments of
news from places that didn’t exist, voices that had
never been recorded.
“It started two months ago,” Hafid said. “The
fields move across the coast. They say words walk
off people’s tongues and hide in the wind.”
Henry stared out over the lights. “If Sofia built
the Mirror, she thought silence was salvation. She
was wrong.”
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