Silence is the oldest lock.
Someone was under the lock and heard sounds they shouldn't have heard - the cry for help swallowed by the iron gate's bite, the whispers seeping from the cracks in the stone wall late at night, the unspoken transactions between the rustling of clothes on the stands.
Then he picked up a knife.
There are lines on the blade, and there is light in the lines. The light was weak, almost non-existent, but it recognized him. Every time he could hold on no longer, it would light up. After each flash of light, there would be a period of blank time, and he could not remember what happened during that period.
But something was retreating in the darkness. Eyes from above are gathering. Deeper, some names that had been buried for a long time began to crawl out of the sand.
The veins in his hand holding the knife bulged, and blood dripped down the handle. He didn't know who he was, where the knife came from, or what those midnight whispers were saying - he only knew one thing:
The silence is breaking. And he stood in the middle of the crack.
