Chapter 428

The once-vibrant city of Ellison had fallen into a quiet chaos. People walked around in a daze, their eyes distant and filled with an unease that no one could quite explain. The buildings, once a maze of color and sound, stood in silence, almost as if the very bricks and mortar were losing their will to exist.

At the heart of it all was Matthew, who had lived here all his life and now found himself questioning the most basic things: names, places, faces. All of it seemed wrong.

He'd first noticed it when the letters started to vanish. It wasn't anything immediate, nothing obvious at first. A few words here and there, lost somewhere in a conversation, forgotten like the last remnants of a dream.

Then came the headlines in the papers, eerie messages telling of missing letters all around the world. Entire words were incomplete, sentences broken, and people started to forget what the letters even were. They didn't question it. It wasn't even a strange thing anymore. It was just... part of life.

Matthew had tried to talk to people about it, but their responses were always off. "What do you mean? There's no letter missing."

He stood in front of his friend, Rachel, one day, her brow furrowed as she tried to recall the name of their old café.

"You know, the place with the coffee and—what's the name again?"

"Riverside?" Matthew said, growing more desperate.

"No, not Riverside. Wait... yeah, that's it. Riverside Café." Her voice trailed off as if she were unsure.

Matthew's heart sank. He could feel the cracks forming around him. It wasn't just the words that were vanishing. It was people. It was memories. It was... everything.

"Matthew, what's wrong with you?" Rachel asked, studying him closely.

His words caught in his throat. He couldn't explain it. No one seemed to understand, and he wasn't even sure how to voice it anymore. What was there to say? How could he explain that the world was breaking, one letter at a time, and he was watching it happen?

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The next few days were no better. He began to notice that even in his own thoughts, words slipped away. He reached for something—anything—and his mind could barely form sentences. There was always a gap. An empty space where words should have been. He wasn't sure what to call it, but there was an absence. A hollow feeling that grew as he struggled to remember the simplest things.

Rachel and the others carried on as if everything was normal. They still met up at the same café, now with fewer and fewer people, but they went on like nothing had changed. It was maddening.

One evening, Matthew ran into Jonathan, a man he'd known for years, sitting alone on a park bench.

"Jonathan," he said, rushing up to him, "are you seeing this too? The letters. They're disappearing. People—people are forgetting them."

Jonathan stared at him for a long moment. His face was blank, and for a second, Matthew felt a strange sense of dread building in his chest. Jonathan slowly stood up, his eyes shifting to the ground.

"Matthew," Jonathan said, his voice slow and almost mechanical, "what are you talking about? There's nothing wrong. The world's fine. We're fine."

Matthew's heart pounded. He reached for his phone, desperate to show Jonathan the strange articles he'd seen, the pictures of broken words scattered across the internet. But when he unlocked the device and opened the browser, the screen was empty. No links, no content. Just a blank page.

"I don't... I don't get it," Matthew muttered, his voice breaking.

Jonathan stepped back, his face unreadable. "There's no need to worry, Matthew. Everything is just fine."

Matthew turned away, his mind racing. Something was horribly wrong, but he didn't know how to fix it. He felt like he was slipping, like he was becoming less and less of himself with every passing minute. And yet, no one seemed to care. No one but him seemed to notice the world crumbling around them.

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Days turned into weeks, and the void grew wider. The missing letters had become so much more than just a strange phenomenon; they were a sign of something worse. People couldn't remember how to spell their own names, couldn't form full sentences.

Entire conversations fell apart, mid-sentence, with people staring blankly at one another, unsure of what they had just said or what they were even trying to say.

There was no announcement. No news to explain the madness. It simply continued, unchecked.

Matthew's once comforting world of words, names, and familiar places began to feel alien. He tried to hold onto what little he had left. But every time he opened a book, every time he tried to speak, his mind would break apart, the pieces of words slipping through his fingers like water.

He had tried to reach out to his mother, but when he dialed her number, there was only static on the other end. She didn't pick up. He tried again and again, but the calls didn't go through.

He went to the hospital to see if anyone there had answers. He found a nurse pacing the hallways, staring at a clipboard in confusion.

"Do you know why no one's able to remember anything?" he asked her, frantic.

She looked at him, then back down at her clipboard, shaking her head. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"What do you mean? The letters—people can't remember letters. Words don't make sense anymore!"

She paused, her eyes narrowing as she tried to focus on him. "Everything's fine. You should go home. It's all in your head."

Matthew's frustration grew to a boiling point. "It's not in my head! It's happening to everyone! The world is—"

"I said it's in your head!" the nurse snapped, cutting him off. She turned and walked away, leaving him standing there, shaking.

He could feel it closing in on him. The world was slipping further away, and no one seemed to care. It was as though everyone had given up without even realizing it.

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One night, Matthew went to the one place that still held a shred of familiarity for him: his old high school. The large building stood like a silent sentinel in the darkness, its windows darkened, and its door locked tight. But Matthew didn't care. He climbed over the fence and made his way inside.

The halls were empty, as they always were now. No students, no teachers. Just the faint smell of dust and something else—something far colder than dust. The walls seemed to press in on him as he walked through them, the silence deafening.

He could hear his breath, but nothing else. No sounds of life. Just the rustling of his feet on the linoleum floor.

He wandered aimlessly through the school, hoping to find something, anything that could make sense of what was happening. As he passed the library, he stopped. It was open, but there was no one inside. Only empty rows of shelves.

He went in. He grabbed a book at random from the shelf and opened it. But the pages were blank. The entire book. Blank. He flipped through it, frantically, but every single page was empty.

Matthew slammed the book shut and looked around. The library was empty, the shelves filled with more blank books. No words. No letters. Nothing.

"No," he muttered to himself. "No, this can't be real."

He dropped the book and ran through the halls, his pulse racing. He needed to find someone. He needed to know what was happening. The panic was rising in his chest, suffocating him. As he sprinted down the hallway, he spotted something—or rather, someone—at the end of the corridor.

A figure stood there, half-hidden in the dark. Matthew couldn't see their face, but something about them made his skin crawl.

"Who's there?" he called out, his voice trembling.

The figure didn't answer. It simply stood there, motionless. And then, it started to walk toward him. Slow, deliberate steps.

Matthew froze. His mind screamed at him to move, but his legs wouldn't obey. He was rooted to the spot, watching as the figure came closer, its face still obscured.

Finally, the figure stopped in front of him. Matthew swallowed hard, heart pounding.

It lifted its hand and placed it on his chest. And then, in a voice that sounded like it came from far, far away, it spoke.

"It's too late," the figure whispered. "You should have stopped it when you could."

The world seemed to collapse around him. The figure's face finally came into view—horrible and contorted, as if it were both human and something else, something worse.

Matthew screamed, but the sound was swallowed by the silence. The figure didn't move. It just stared, its eyes hollow, as if it had already seen everything that would come to pass.

And Matthew knew, in that instant, that there was no escape. There never had been. The world was already lost.

And soon, so would he.