Searching For- Luna By Abby And Ricky In- <TRUSTED — Handbook>

But for Abby and Ricky, something new had just begun: learning how to live with a sister who had finally gone quiet inside.

Luna placed a hand over her heart. "It's not a place. It's a decision. I stopped searching for something outside myself. And for the first time, I heard everything."

Ricky, her brother, adjusted the frequency on a handheld scanner. The City of Echoes was a strange place built inside a collapsed volcanic caldera, where sound bounced off the obsidian cliffs for minutes, sometimes hours, repeating itself into ghostly fragments. "The police said the echoes here drove her mad," Ricky said. "But Luna wasn't fragile. She was looking for something."

And that was the problem. Luna had always been a seeker. As children, she'd search for coins in couch cushions, lost constellations in the sky, or the "perfect wave" that she swore existed just beyond the breaker line. But this time, the object of her search was invisible: a low-frequency hum only she could hear, a thrumming she claimed came from the core of the city itself. Searching for- Luna By Abby And Ricky in-

That was when Abby understood. Luna wasn't lost. She had gone looking for the source of the hum, but the hum was just a trailhead. What Luna truly searched for was a place where her own thoughts would stop ricocheting and finally rest.

"Luna!" Abby cried.

"What is it?" Ricky asked, stepping closer. But for Abby and Ricky, something new had

Their search began at the Whispering Market, where vendors sold bottled echoes. An old woman with sea-glass eyes pointed toward the Spire, the city's broken clock tower. "She asked about the Drowning Hour," the woman rasped. "The moment when the tide is so high the city's foundations sing."

"The song isn't outside. It's inside the silence between echoes."

The last anyone saw of Luna, she was standing on the balcony of the 17th floor, watching the bioluminescent tide roll in. That was three weeks ago. It's a decision

Abby and Ricky climbed the Spire's rusted stairs. Halfway up, Ricky’s scanner spiked. A faint, repeating sound: tap-tap-shuffle . It was Luna’s walk. The echo of her footsteps from three weeks ago, still bouncing around the stone chamber.

Abby held the tattered sketch she’d made of her younger sister—charcoal smudged where Luna’s smile used to be. "She wouldn't just leave," Abby whispered, her voice swallowed by the damp, salty wind of the City of Echoes.