Silence

...

The resonance never shuts down. The Song is everywhere anytime, from planets teeming with life to the most isolated place in the universe. It is what holds together the very fabric of reality. Even beyond the boundary of the obelisks of the Song of Things there is still some noise. Deformed, twisted, and corroding, but a Song nonetheless. Hence, when Silence settles in, everything falls apart.

Nothingness

The cause of these world-altering events is a mystery. They seem to appear spontaneously somewhere lasting for several minutes to several days then vanish. In a spherical area, the Song ceases to resonate. The first signs are a sudden absence of sound. Everything goes black quickly after, and then nothing can move, like the world is frozen in time. Thrown objects stay in the air, hearts stop beating, followed by most vital functions. Electric signals are the last thing that freezes, meaning that the unfortunate victims can feel their bodies collapse for a split second before even their brain cannot process any information.

It is fortunate that the poor victims of such events are rendered incapable of feeling anything before the worst happens.

Then, the whole reality begins to collapse. Without the resonance to join the molecules together, the links between them break. Matter shatters and, unable to reunite, the molecules repel each other, crackling every object. Finally, after a minute or so, the atomic bonds themselves cannot hold anymore, and molecules dissolve into an atomic soup. Observations cannot tell if the elementary particles are torn apart or if they remain whole, individuals and unstable atoms in suspension in utter silence.

Escape

Only incredible reflexes and an insane amount of luck can save the victim of such events. If they are at the edge of the phenomenon, they have less than a second to jump out before their movement is impaired. And better jump in the right direction, which can be hard to tell with all senses deprived.

One cannot enter an already formed Silence after movement is frozen. The boundary acts as an impenetrable barrier, too strong for anything to pierce through. Which is a relief in itself, there would be nothing to save anyway.

"Yes, I am certain that we near Lokkry IV. The Song of Path never fails. Our destination is up ahead, but it feels like..."
The navigator muttered the last word in a blank voice.
"Silence."

The scale of these events is highly variable. If most recorded Silences had a diameter of several meters to a kilometer, it only accounts for the phenomena happening at the surface of planets. It is reasonable to think that they are much more frequent in deep space, where they would be undetectable, or below planetary mantles, though no observation has ever been able to confirm these hypotheses. It would nonetheless explain numerous lost ships, as any spacecraft caught in Silence even partially would be too damaged to report anything. Some have surmised the possibility of Silence engulfing whole planets or even a star and dissolving them, though few are able to tell the gravitational implications of such a catastrophe.