Silence hadn't really arrived.
It had been there from the very beginning. At first, it felt like absence. Something neutral. A simple lack of sound.
Now, it was becoming something else.
Denser.Heavier.Almost aware.
We had stopped walking without realizing it. No one gave the order. No glances were exchanged. Our bodies simply decided that moving forward no longer made sense.
Around us, the other participants did the same.
Some were sitting.Others stood still.A few lay on the ground, motionless, eyes wide open.
No one spoke.
Not because we didn't want to.But because speaking here felt… wrong. As if every word carried a risk. As if it consumed some invisible resource we couldn't afford to waste.
That's when I noticed something unsettling.
I could no longer hear my own breathing.
I was breathing, obviously. I felt the air moving in and out of my lungs. But the sound was gone, swallowed whole, as if silence itself had learned how to absorb what came from within.
"How long has it been?" Amad whispered.
His voice felt out of place, like an object dropped by mistake into a room that was too clean.
No one answered.
I searched for something familiar to ground myself. Fatigue. Hunger. Thirst. Anything.
Nothing.
Or rather… something stranger.
My body wasn't asking for anything yet. But it wasn't comfortable either. It felt suspended, tense, as if my basic needs had been paused without my consent.
Bintou stood with her arms crossed, staring straight ahead. Not at anyone. Not at anything specific. Just forward.
"I don't like this," she said. "When nothing happens."
Ayyi sat a short distance away, hands resting on his knees. He was watching the space itself, but not trying to understand it. That was new.
"This isn't nothing," he replied calmly. "It's a phase."
"A phase of what?" Amad asked, his nerves clearly fraying.
Ayyi didn't answer right away.
And that silence lasted longer than the others.
I felt my mind start to fill the void. To build theories. Scenarios. Explanations.
And I realized how dangerous that was.
Because the more I thought, the more my thoughts looped back on themselves. Always the same images. The same faces. The same fears.
As if the silence was drawing them out.
Then a sharp sound broke through.
Everyone flinched.
A boy had collapsed nearby. Not violently. He had simply slid down, as if his legs had stopped working.
He sat there, eyes wide.
"I can't take this anymore," he muttered. "Say something. Anything."
No one moved.
Not out of indifference.
Out of fear of doing the wrong thing.
He let out a nervous laugh, far too loud for a place like this.
"Seriously, what is this? A test? A shared dream? Some stupid social experiment?"
He jumped to his feet.
"Alright, listen to me!" he shouted. "We're going to count. Out loud. That way we'll know if time is still moving."
He took a deep breath.
"One."
The word barely echoed before it vanished.
"Two."
Nothing.
"Three."
His voice began to shake.
"Four. Five. Six—"
Something was wrong.
I couldn't say exactly what. Not the rhythm. Not the pace. It was the intention. As if the numbers were losing their meaning the moment they left his mouth.
He stopped abruptly.
"Wait…" he whispered. "What did I just say?"
A chill spread through the group.
He pressed a hand to his forehead.
"I… I forgot where I was."
"It's okay," Amad tried. "It's just stress."
The boy shook his head, panicked.
"No. That's not it. I've been counting my whole life. I know how to count."
He stared at his fingers, moving them as if checking they were still real.
"Why… why can't I continue?"
No one had an answer.
Slowly, he sat back down. Then curled in on himself.
And something changed.
Not around him.
Inside him.
I saw it in the way his shoulders collapsed. In the way his eyes stopped searching for answers. As if he had given up on the very idea of understanding.
Silence had won.
Amad moved closer to me.
"We should do something, right?"
I wasn't even sure what "doing something" meant anymore.
Bintou slammed her foot against the floor.
"We can't just stand around like this."
She took a step forward. Then another.
Nothing happened.
She frowned, unsettled.
"See?" she said. "Even when we act, it doesn't change anything."
That might have been the real problem.
Waiting without consequence.
I noticed then that some participants had begun to murmur. Not full sentences. Fragments. Isolated words, repeated without logic.
"Okay…""Just a little more…""Not now…"
As if they were answering questions no one else could hear.
The tension crept up my spine.
"Do you hear that?" I asked.
Ayyi looked up.
"Yes."
"What does it mean?"
He thought for a moment.
"That silence isn't empty."
The answer made my blood run cold.
I closed my eyes.
Bad idea.
The moment I shut out the white, my thoughts rushed in. Memories surfaced. Not clear scenes, but sensations. A pressure in my chest. A familiar fear. Something I didn't want to face.
I opened my eyes quickly.
The white was still there.
But it felt… closer.
As if the space had slowly shrunk while we waited.
"Ayyi," Amad murmured. "Do you think they're going to tell us what to do?"
Ayyi shook his head.
"No."
"Then what?"
"They're waiting."
"Who is 'they'?"
Ayyi didn't answer.
And for the first time since all this began, his silence wasn't a strategy.
It was a limit.
I felt something give way inside me.
Not panic.Not a breakdown.
Fatigue. A desire to sit down. To stop thinking. To let go.
And that was when I understood.
Silence wasn't here to calm us.
It was here to wear us down.
To see who could endure without stimulation.Who could survive without answers.Who would break first.
Around us, some participants had already stopped reacting. They weren't screaming anymore. They weren't searching. They barely existed.
I looked at my hands.
They were still there.
But I wondered how long I would keep needing to check.
Silence asked for nothing.
It simply waited.
And that waiting…was already a trial.