Short Stories

The Last Word

In a realm where tongues were shackled, and speech a sacred, dwindling commodity, there lived a poet—Arden, though few knew his name. The very city he walked was a mausoleum, not of dead men but of their silenced voices. Here, the weight of silence pressed upon the people like an invisible cloud, its shadows thick and suffocating, its heaviness a law unto itself. Each day, the citizens were allotted but a handful of words—uttered, written, or even thought—each syllable like gold coins clutched between trembling fingers. The rationed tongue, as they called it, was a beast of regulation, its bite as sharp as the fear it birthed. Speak too much, and the penalty was certain: the absolute, unyielding silence of the soul.

Arden, however, was not a man made for silence. He was a poet—an artist—born into a world that sought to bury words like treasure lost to the depths of the ocean. And yet, his heart beat in verses, his blood coursed in metaphors, his mind swirled with images that dared to break free, to shout, to be heard.

But the laws of the land were clear: no one could speak beyond their ration, no one could utter a thought unaccounted for. Words, precious as diamonds, were currency hoarded by the monarchs of silence. To speak freely was a transgression, a crime whose punishment was worse than death—the eternal confinement of the tongue.

Arden, bound as he was by these shackles, found his rebellion not in the clamor of revolution but in the whispered secrets of his pen. With ink as his sword, he waged war against the system. In shadowed rooms, in the deep of night, where the world could not see, he wrote. He wrote until his fingers bled, until his mind was worn thin. Each word was a blade; each line, a defiance.

His first poem—quiet and gentle, yet laden with the weight of truth—was simple in form but deep in meaning:

A thought that blooms, too bright to hide,
In silence drowned, yet none will bide.

It was a quiet rebellion, a declaration that thought could not be imprisoned by the harsh rules of the rationed tongue. But it was more than that. It was a reminder that silence, in its vastness, would only make the mind scream louder in its isolation.

And so he wrote. Every poem was a step farther into the darkness of defiance. He wrote of love, of longing, of freedom, and of despair—of all the emotions that could not be confined by a quota of syllables. His ink, flowing like water, spread into the corners of the world. His words became whispers in the wind, carried to the people who read them in secret, in the corners of their homes, hidden in locked boxes beneath their beds.

They spoke his name—though none dared to speak it aloud—Arden, the poet who defied silence. His fame spread not in the marketplaces or the courts but in the hidden hearts of the silenced. Like the breath of wind through a cracked window, his words could not be contained.

But the more Arden wrote, the less he could speak. Each poem he penned stole a breath from his body. Each verse sapped the power of his voice, until he could no longer speak a sentence without it breaking in his throat, like a string snapped too many times. His own breath became a currency too precious for words.

And yet he did not stop. Not once.

Then came the day when his words, stolen from the darkness, were thrust into the light. The rulers of silence, those who held the ledger of language, found him. They summoned him to their tribunal, where their judgment awaited. The walls of the chamber were thick with the weight of years spent controlling voices, and the air itself seemed to hold its breath.

"Why," they asked, their eyes cold and fixed upon him, "did you defy us, poet? Why did you shatter the peace of this world with your forbidden words?"

Arden stood there, his lips pale, his body weary from the weight of his rebellion. But his eyes—his eyes burned with the fire of a thousand unwritten verses. He took one last breath and spoke, though his voice was thin and trembling.

And in that moment, as the silence of the chamber stretched between him and the rulers, Arden spoke his final defiance:

"The last word is never the one spoken,
But the one that remains unbroken."

And with those words, his voice was stilled. His body, once free and full of rebellion, was cast into the dark, eternal silence of the dungeons, where the walls whispered with the echoes of those who had dared to dream. Yet, Arden's words, his final breath, were carried away by the wind, slipping through cracks in the stone, finding their way into the hands of those who would continue to speak.

For though Arden's voice was silenced, the last word—the unspoken one—was not bound by the rationed tongue. It could not be measured, contained, or erased. And in that last word, Arden's soul lived on, free, unbroken, and unyielding.

In time, the world changed. People spoke again—not with their mouths, but with their hearts. The poets rose, the writers, the dreamers, and they carried Arden's final defiance with them: "The last word is never the one spoken, But the one that remains unbroken."

And in that unbroken word, Arden lived, forever and always, beyond the chains of silence.

T H E  E N D

Moral/Reflection :

The moral of The Last Word lies in the profound truth that true rebellion is not always loud or seen, but often resides in the quiet, enduring strength of unbroken ideals. Arden's defiance is not merely in his words, but in his unyielding spirit—a spirit that refuses to be silenced by the oppressive forces of control. His final words remind us that the most powerful truths are those that persist beyond their immediate utterance, those that live in the hearts of those who carry them forward, silently and steadfastly.

The reflection is on the value of expression and freedom, and how, even when faced with suppression, the human will to speak, to create, and to dream remains uncontainable. Silence, in the end, cannot erase the essence of one's voice. The final word is never bound by its utterance but by the legacy it leaves behind—unbroken, undying, and eternally free. This story serves as a reminder that no system, no ruler, and no force can ever truly silence the human spirit as long as it holds onto its power to dream, to create, and to resist.

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Thoughts?

What role does silence play in the story, both as a literal and metaphorical concept? How does it shape the lives of the characters, especially Arden?

What is the significance of Arden's final words, "The last word is never the one spoken, but the one that remains unbroken"? How do these words relate to the theme of freedom of expression?