The city never slept.
Even at dawn, when streets were empty and windows dark, something lingered in the air — unfinished feelings pressed between concrete walls and forgotten corners. Most people mistook it for loneliness. Some called it exhaustion. No one ever named it for what it truly was.
Memory.
Ruby had learned this before she learned how to run.
She was seven the first time she heard it — not a voice, not exactly, but a weight pressing behind her ears, like the city itself was leaning in too close. She had been standing outside an old temple that no longer welcomed prayers, its doors locked and paint peeling away like dry skin. The air smelled of damp stone and dust, and she felt the quiet thrum of something unseen, waiting.
"Go home," her mother had said, tugging her wrist.
But Ruby hadn't moved.
Because something inside the temple was crying.
It was not a sound she could describe. Not words. Not even a whisper. More like the residue of emotions — sorrow, regret, loneliness — pressing into her chest and lungs, demanding attention. She didn't understand it. She couldn't name it. And yet, she felt the weight of it.
That night, when she lay in bed and the city's lights shimmered like distant stars through her window, she realized she had forgotten the sound of the temple bell that rang every evening near her house.
She never questioned why.
Over the years, she learned to recognize it — the echoes. Small, lingering remnants of moments lost or left behind. A person's first heartbreak, a family argument that ended without apology, a child's laughter that never reached anyone. These fragments clung to places, waiting for someone to notice, to feel them, to bear them.
Ruby bore them.
She grew up listening to the city's hidden voice, walking its empty streets at night, following the faintest threads of emotion to abandoned schools, shuttered shops, and silent homes. The red thread bracelet on her wrist, a gift from her grandmother, became her anchor — a reminder that she was still herself, even as the weight of the world pressed against her mind.
Sometimes the echoes were small. A fleeting memory of joy, a whisper of regret. Sometimes they were massive — grief that could drown a person, anger so sharp it cut through reality like a knife. Each one left a mark on her soul. Every time she tried to soothe them, she gave something of herself in return. Not strength, not power, not even talent. Memories. Small, precious fragments of her own life would slip away, lost forever, leaving her hollow in the quietest places.
By the time she was seventeen, Ruby understood one undeniable truth: silence was never empty. It was always full of what had been lost — waiting, wanting, needing to be heard. And she, Ruby, was the only one who could.
On rainy evenings, she would wander alone through streets slick with water and fallen leaves. The city whispered constantly: echoes from classrooms, playgrounds, temples, homes that had long been abandoned. Sometimes the whispers were faint, like a memory brushing against the edge of her consciousness. Other times, they were loud enough to make her shiver, as if the city itself were alive and speaking through its lost moments.
Ruby never ignored them. She had learned that ignoring them came at a cost — echoes didn't forgive neglect. They grew restless. They became shadows. They could break things. People. Places. Hearts.
And so she listened.
She followed the voices into abandoned schoolyards, dusty classrooms, and overgrown playgrounds. She knelt beside shadows of children she had never met, whispered comfort to voices trapped in anger or sadness, and felt the weight lift — only to notice a small fragment of her own life vanish in the process. Sometimes it was a memory of her mother's lullabies. Sometimes it was the sound of her father laughing in the kitchen. Sometimes it was a simple, cherished smell from her childhood that she could no longer name.
Each loss was small, but together, they began to add up. Each memory lost was a piece of herself that she could not reclaim. Yet she continued. She had no choice. Someone had to listen.
And so the city spoke, and Ruby listened.
She did not yet know the full cost of her gift. She did not yet know the danger that came with it. She did not yet know the truth about the echoes — that some were born not of sorrow, but of deliberate cruelty, waiting for someone like her to stumble into their path.
But Ruby would learn. She always did.
Because she was the girl who could hear too much.
And the city would never stop whispering.