When the World Went Silent

Sandor woke up to silence.

Not the silence of the morning that is presented to you when the world has not even started to wake up yet. This was deep. He didn't hear birds. No cars in the distance. No electricity hum. Just. nothing.

But this silence had been the only friend of Sandor for week's.

He walked barefoot. The street was empty. The sun rose the way it is supposed to rise, but something was off. No watering-the-lawn neighbors. No school-children standing on the corners waiting for the bus. He rang the doors in succession. No answer.

He'd traveled nearly two miles at noon and seen no one.

No one.

He believed initially that he had lost his hearing. But the whooshing of the wind through the Ruin's informed him otherwise. And then he believed maybe that he was dreaming. Or mad.

But he still became hungry. Still sported the sunburn on the back of his neck. Still wept at night, perched on the curb, mumbling softly to himself, "Is it just me?"

He sped to the neighborhood library for shelter. It was quiet there, nearly fitting. He lit candles. Read by flashlight from books. Tried to keep a journal as a way of holding on to sanity.

This is when he came face to face with someone.

An old, quiet man, standing between two rows of shelves.

The man never said a word. He simply stared at Sandor with eyes that had seen the world turn.

Sandor dropped the book. "You real?"

The man didn't blink. Then just slowly melted away into the shadows.

He came back the next night.

Sandor tried to ignore him as a stress hallucination. But the old man finally spoke.

"I've been here since the world was young."

Sandor stared. "You're a ghost?"

The man smiled sadly. "Maybe so. Maybe so are you."

Days passed. The ghost kept on appearing. Not threatening, just. watching. Advising, when Sandor required it. Speaking in slow, poetic sentences, of rivers carving valleys, of trees that had reached the stars.

"Have you been alone all time?" Sandor asked him one day.

"Never ever" said the ghost.

Then something changed.

Sandor was breaking into a diner to eat when a real, hanging, wall phone rang. The one that buzzes like it's 1989.

He jumped.

His heart started pounding as he took it in his hand.

"Hello?" a woman's voice barked into the phone.

Sandor froze.

"Who is this?" she barked.

"I'm Sandor. Where are you?"

"I'm in Nevada. You called me."

"No," he struggled. "You called me."

The call was cut off.

The next day, the call came again. Another voice. Some hung up on him. Some talked like nothing had occurred. No one believed he was the last man on earth when he said that.

The ghost listened silently to all the calls.

"Are these voices, Voices from the past?" asked Sandor.

"Not quite," said the ghost. "They are echoes. Shades of what has been — or might still be there."

One afternoon, the ghost brought Sandor somewhere outside town — a crater, quietly emitting moss and rock carvings.

"This is the heart," the ghost breathed. "The Earth is not dead. It's waiting."

"For what?" he asked.

"For you."

Sandor walked to the crater. Symbols flared up in his touch, as if the world recognized him. As if something eternal had waited for his hand.

That night, he felt it. The wind was warmer. The air. alive.

And the next day — Aria came.

She zoomed down the street on an electric scooter backpacked and covered in dust with a golden retriever trailing behind her.

She skidded to a stop, gasping. "You're real," she wheezed.

Sandor stared. "You… were one of the calls."

"I followed your number with unpatterned radio pulses," she said. "Thought I was running a behind a myth."

The dog licked Sandor's hand with its tongue. He laughed at last after so much time as he forgot to track.

They walked together, rebuilding. Planting seeds. Creating music. They painted scarred buildings in brilliant colors. The world started to react — more birds returned. The air thickened.

The ghost perched upon a hill.

You are not the end," he told her. "You are the beginning."

The last call was made weeks later.

The phone rang again.

Sandor picked it up.

His own voice came back:

"If you're hearing this… you made it. Don't stop now.

Make it beautiful again."

The ghost vanished that day.

The Earth, it appeared, had chosen to begin again — with the listeners. With the ones left behind.

The world did not end. It simply waited. for someone brave enough to begin again.