Within a year, they found us. Silence was our crime. They hunted us like vermin, dragging us from shadows one by one. If your ears were damaged, you were sent to the surgeon. No one escaped that place untouched. They didn’t just repair you. They rewrote you. It’s said the muse is louder after, not in volume, but in presence. It seeps into your marrow, leaves no thought your own. You return hollow, humming their tune with a smile that isn’t yours. A face never to be forgotten.