There were no clocks in the Whisper Room.
No windows. No cameras. No sound.
Just the hum of the artificial light, and the quiet weight of breath caught between thoughts too heavy to say out loud.
Ishan Vale sat on the lone steel chair, back straight, hands folded neatly in his lap, facing a wall that bore no paint—only photos. Sixty-three of them. Black and white. Mounted with military precision.
Men. Women. Some old, some young. Some smiling in the images, others barely captured before what must have been their final moments.
At the bottom of each photo: a name, a date, and the official cause of death.
**Accident.**
**Suicide.**
**Natural causes.**
**Accident.**
**Accident.**
**Suicide.**
He studied them the way other boys might study chess boards. But Ishan had long since learned that none of these deaths had been coincidental. Every one of them was part of a thread—some tangled, some razor-straight—that led back to the house he lived in.
His house.
The Vale Estate.
Power lived here. But so did silence. And Ishan had learned early: silence was not the absence of noise. It was its own kind of weapon.
Behind him, the door hissed open. Only one person ever entered without knocking.
"Ishan," came the crisp voice of Ellis Vale—father, CEO, kingmaker.
Ishan turned but didn't stand.
Ellis strode in with the posture of someone who'd never been told "no." Sharp suit. Impeccable tie. And in his hand, a slim leather folder.
He dropped it on the desk beside Ishan.
"That's her file."
Ishan looked down at the folder. No emotion. No curiosity. But inside, his mind sharpened.
**Her.**
Amina Royce.
The woman he was to marry in exactly 17 days.
An arranged union to consolidate the power between two crumbling empires—one technological, one political. The Royces had been titans once, until scandal and an election collapse turned them into a cautionary tale. But a marriage into the Vale legacy? That could restore them. Rehabilitate their name.
"Your fiancée," Ellis said, "has agreed to all terms. She arrives in five days. You'll meet then."
Ishan nodded.
Ellis tilted his head. "Nothing to say?"
Still no answer. But he wasn't being rude.
He had just never said a word in his life.
Ishan Vale was a prodigy with no voice. A neurological condition, they'd called it at birth. Selective mutism, some said. Severe trauma response, others insisted. Ellis didn't care for labels. What mattered was that Ishan *understood*. Everything.
By age five, he'd memorized every network protocol Ellis used to run ValeTech. By seven, he'd decrypted the private logs of the company's surveillance division. At nine, he'd stopped a boardroom coup without saying a single word—just slides, graphs, and one unsettling smile.
Now, at twenty-one, he was the invisible heir to a kingdom that killed its own to stay clean.
Ellis turned to leave but paused at the door.
"There's something you should know," he said, his voice lowering. "Your mother will be attending the wedding."
Ishan blinked. Once.
That name hadn't been spoken aloud in thirteen years.
He barely remembered her face.
"She's not here to see you," Ellis added coldly. "She's here because the press loves redemption. That's all."
The door closed behind him with a hiss.
Ishan stared at the folder.
He did not open it.
Not yet.
That night, the rain came in hard.
The Vale Estate stood like a fortress on the edge of a private cliff, where storms hit first and hardest. Lightning carved jagged lines across the sky. Somewhere in the lower levels, the security system rebooted.
But Ishan was already awake.
He'd been dreaming of a red room again.
The same dream for six years.
A single chair. A voice he couldn't hear. A girl with no face, curled on the floor, whispering something over and over—
His eyes flicked open.
He went to the study.
Opened the file.
Amina Royce.
Age: 20
Education: Political Science, suspended final year
Notes: Reserved. High emotional intelligence. Psych eval classified.
Classified?
He paused. Every arranged match his father had set up for past employees or allies came with full psych breakdowns. But not hers. Not Amina.
He turned the page.
Photos. A few of her at functions. Nothing recent. And then—one image taken by a drone: her leaving what looked like a rehabilitation clinic.
**No timestamp.**
**No context.**
The file was redacted in parts.
Ishan's mind whirred.
What the hell was she hiding?
No—what was *his father* hiding?
He turned back to the wall.
Photo #43.
**Lemuel Royce.**
Amina's uncle.
Cause of death: "Accident."
Date: March 18th, 2008.
Ishan frowned.
**That was the night of the fire.**
The one no one talked about. The one his mother disappeared after.
His fingers trembled slightly.
And for the first time in years, Ishan felt it again.
Not fear.
Not sadness.
Not even curiosity.
**It was rage.**
The next morning, a knock came at his door.
Unusual. No one knocked on this floor.
He opened it, expecting security.
Instead, it was a woman. Tall. Hooded raincoat. A scar beneath one eye.
She handed him a small white envelope. Then turned to leave.
He didn't call out.
Didn't need to.
He opened it.
Inside was a single photo.
Amina Royce.
From the day before.
But she wasn't alone.
She was standing outside a grave.
Beneath it, the name read:
**"Lemuel Royce – A brother betrayed, a fire denied."**
There was no return address. No note.
Just one line, written in pen on the back:
**"Ask her what happened that night. If she dares to remember."**
Ishan folded the photo neatly.
He looked up at the thunderclouds gathering again.
Let it storm.