The phone rang once.
Silence answered without looking.
"Andy?" he said, already uneasy. Andy never called without warning.
There was a pause on the line—too long, too empty.
Then Andy spoke.
"He's dead."
The world didn't slow. It snapped.
"What?" Silence said, the word tearing out of him. "Who did this? Where are you—who touched Him?"
His voice was already rising, already sharpening into something dangerous.
"It's not time," Andy replied calmly, impossibly calmly. "Not now. You'll understand later."
"Andy—"
"I'm sending a helicopter," Andy continued. "Funeral's starting soon. Don't be late."
The call cut.
No goodbye. No explanation. No room for refusal.
Silence stood frozen for exactly three seconds.
Then the house moved.
The lighthouse house was quiet when he arrived—too quiet, like it was holding its breath.
Silence didn't use the door.
He stepped behind the structure, pressed a concealed panel, and slipped into a narrow vent hidden beneath the stone foundation. Dust clung to his clothes as he crawled through the dark, muscle memory guiding him without thought.
At the end of the passage lay two metal briefcases.
Old. Unmarked. Heavy with intent.
He took them both.
When he emerged, the helicopter was already descending, rotors tearing the air apart. Silence didn't look back at the lighthouse as he boarded.
He didn't need to.
The funeral grounds were crowded.
Too crowded.
People whispered when they saw him land—murmurs spreading like ripples across water.
Silence didn't hear them.
The moment his boots touched the ground, he saw the coffin.
And something inside him broke.
He ran.
No restraint. No dignity. No control.
He crashed into the crowd, fell to his knees beside the coffin, and wrapped his arms around it like it could still hear him.
"No," he choked. "No—no—no—"
The sound that left his throat wasn't a word. It was grief, raw and uncontained.
His shoulders shook violently as he pressed his forehead against the wood, sobbing openly, uncaring of who saw or what it meant.
For the first time in a very long time—
Silence was not a system. Not a strategist. Not a guardian of balance.
He was just a man, kneeling in front of someone who should not have been dead.
And somewhere, far beyond the funeral, answers were waiting.
But not yet.
He comes to know a terrific truth which made him totally broken as if his heart had stopped beating he runs towards the helicopter and opens a briefcase and pulls out a Gun
not normal but something far beyond technology
The funeral ended without ceremony.
People left in small groups, voices low, eyes avoiding Silence as if grief were contagious. Flowers wilted in the heat. Earth settled where it had been disturbed.
Silence didn't move.
Only when the last footsteps faded did he finally stand.
"Take me there," he said.
Andy was already beside him. Not ahead. Not behind. As if distance itself had agreed not to exist between them.
"This wasn't natural," Silence continued, his voice steady now—but hollow. "I could smell it."
Andy didn't ask what he meant.
"A forced death," Silence said. "Something above him. Not human. Not chance."
Andy nodded once.
Then they moved.
The place was abandoned.
Concrete, old walls, a structure that remembered better days and forgot them deliberately. The air inside was cold in a way that had nothing to do with temperature.
They found the note where it was meant to be found.
Not hidden. Not protected. Waiting.
Silence picked it up carefully.
Blood had dried along the lower edge—dark, uneven drops, not smeared. Someone had been shaking when they wrote this.
The paper was creased, folded once, then unfolded again. As if the writer had reconsidered leaving it at all.
Silence read.
The Letter
Sylence,
If you are reading this, then I was right about the timing.
I don't have much left. Whatever is coming for me isn't patient, but it is precise. This isn't an accident, and it isn't punishment. It's correction.
If something breaks, if something starts slipping—call out my name.
Call Andy.
Even dead, I'll answer if I can.
I knew this would happen. I just didn't expect it to feel this quiet.
The truth you're looking for is where you and I first met.
Not the place you remember. The place before that.
His name was Clau
—
I ran out of time.
The name stopped halfway.
Clau
No d.
No e.
Just absence.
Blood dotted the page beneath it, as if the pen had fallen mid-word.
Silence lowered the letter slowly.
The room felt heavier now, like it had acknowledged being understood.
"Claude," Silence whispered.
The missing letters weren't a mistake.
They were removed.
Erased deliberately.
Andy finally spoke. "That's where it begins."
Silence folded the letter once and placed it inside his coat.
"I know," he said.
For the first time since the funeral, his grief hardened—not into rage, but into direction.
"They didn't just kill him," Silence said quietly. "They interrupted him."
Outside, the world continued as if nothing had changed.
Inside, something old had just been reopened.
And this time—
Silence was going back to the beginning.