The Ashfall Choir

In a world blanketed by perpetual twilight, where the sun is a forgotten glimmer and silence reigns supreme, nineteen-year-old Elian Kane navigates the skeletal remains of Portland.  The Silence, a swift, insidious pandemic, has not only stolen voices but erased the very memory of sound.  Communication is a fragile dance of gestures, the flicker of scavenged tech, and the shared weight of unspeakable loss.  Elian’s world revolves around his younger sister, Elara, their bond a silent symphony woven from intertwined fingers and shared glances that speak volumes.
But Elara is fading, her weakened lungs a terrifying counterpoint to the pervasive quiet. Desperate, Elian seeks help at a clandestine medical outpost, only to discover a chilling truth: the outpost is a front for Cadence Corporation, a shadowy organization conducting genetic experiments on the silenced.  Before he can react, Elara is gone, swallowed by Cadence’s sterile walls.
Grief threatens to consume Elian, but a spark of hope ignites amidst the despair — the Ashfall Choir. A whispered legend, a myth flickering in the dying embers of hope, the Choir is a collective of vocalists risking their lives to sing in a world that’s forgotten how. Their music isn’t heard, but *felt*, translated into vibrations that bypass ravaged vocal cords and bloom beneath the skin. This isn't just music; it’s rebellion.
Driven by the need to reclaim his sister, Elian infiltrates the Choir, drawn to their hidden sanctuary beneath the ruins of a concert hall.  He encounters Seraphina Moreau, the Choir’s leader, whose voice now carries the weight of a thousand silences, and a cast of others, each a fragile note clinging to existence in a world determined to erase them. He learns their silent symphony of resistance, mastering the art of tactile music and turning his body into an instrument.  But Cadence's grip tightens, their omnipresent sensors detecting the slightest tremor of rebellion. Elian discovers the Silence wasn't a natural pandemic, but a meticulously engineered catastrophe orchestrated by Cadence themselves.  The herbs cultivated by Sherry, a botanist haunted by the symphony of birdsong, hold the key to restoring voices, a truth Cadence will kill to protect.