4308.263 · September 19, 1988 AD
A Century of Silence
A sweltering classroom. A teacher who abandons his lesson. A story that shouldn't feel familiar but does. When Mr Clarke speaks of Emily Sullivan—a woman who vanished near Silverton in 1892—Violet's blood runs cold. The letters Emily wrote before she disappeared could have been penned by Sally Harlow herself. Wonder turning to dread. Shadows that move wrong. Then nothing. Nearly a century separates them. But the pattern is identical. The land remembers.
"History is never just dates and names—it's the shadows those people left behind."
The ceiling fans groan. The heat presses down like a hand. Mr Clarke drones about federation and colonies—until suddenly, he doesn't. Something shifts. His chalk hovers mid-stroke, and when he turns, his eyes hold a different kind of light.
He speaks of Silverton. Of silver dreams and vanishing miners. Of a woman named Emily Sullivan who rejected the parlour for the dust, who journeyed west chasing wonders no one else could see. Her letters home glowed with colour and stars and breathless discovery.
Then the tone changed. Shadows that moved when they shouldn't. Sounds without source. Symbols carved into rock. A final letter, scrawled and desperate, before the silence swallowed her whole.
Violet's hand moves to her bag. The newspaper is still there. Sally Harlow's face burns in her mind—and now Emily Sullivan's ghost stands beside it. Two women. Two centuries. The same hunger for truth. The same land that claimed them both.
She raises her hand. Asks the question no one else will.
Mr Clarke's response is measured. Careful. Almost too careful.
But Violet has already made her decision. She's going to Silverton.
