CHAPTER 25: WHISPERS

The silence stretched, thick and unnatural.

No wind. No rustling leaves. No distant sounds of the forest. Just nothing.

Mira’s hand inched toward her weapon, but she didn’t draw it yet. Julien shifted beside me, eyes scanning the treeline. The others weren’t as quick to notice, but they felt it.

The wrongness.

I exhaled slowly. "Stay alert."

No one argued.

I took a cautious step toward the marked tree. Up close, the scratch looked ordinary. But I knew better. It wasn’t deep enough to be from an animal, and it was too irregular for a blade.

Something had passed through here.

Something not normal.

Julien muttered, "Tell me we’re not about to fight some ghost."

"If it bleeds, we can kill it," Garrick said, rolling his shoulders.

Mira didn’t look convinced. "Not everything that hunts needs to bleed."

That shut him up.

I turned to Wallace. "Check the area for anything unusual."

He nodded and crouched, running his fingers over the ground. The rest of us kept watch. The longer we stood there, the worse the feeling got. My instincts screamed at me—leave.

But I needed to know what we were dealing with.

Wallace frowned. "Footprints. But..."

I waited.

"They don’t make sense."

That wasn’t what I wanted to hear. "Explain."

He pointed at a patch of dirt. "Look at this."

I crouched beside him. The prints were shallow, barely noticeable. They weren’t shaped like a normal bootprint. More like... an impression. Like something light had stepped there.

I ran my fingers over the dirt. It crumbled easily. Whatever made these tracks hadn’t weighed much. Either that, or it barely touched the ground at all.

Wallace muttered, "It’s like something just glided over."

Not human. Not beast.

Julien exhaled sharply. "Okay. Now I’m officially creeped out."

"We need to move," Mira said. "Standing here makes us an easy target."

She was right. Staying in one place was stupid, especially when we didn’t know what we were up against.

I stood. "We head for higher ground. Keep close. Stay quiet."

No one complained. That was the best proof that they understood how bad this could be.

We left the clearing, moving carefully up the ridge. The trees thinned as we climbed, giving us a better view of the forest below. Nothing looked out of place.

But I still felt it.

That unseen presence.

Watching.

Waiting.

Mira walked beside me. "It’s following us."

I didn’t respond. I didn’t need to. We both knew it was true.

Julien, a few steps ahead, stopped suddenly. "Hold up."

We all froze.

His voice was low. "Tell me you heard that."

I hadn’t heard anything. But that didn’t mean he was wrong.

"What was it?" I asked.

"A whisper."

A cold weight settled in my gut.

Mira tightened her grip on her weapon. "Where?"

Julien’s face was pale. "Right behind me."

No one moved.

I turned slowly, eyes sweeping the area. Nothing. No movement. No shadows. Just the same empty forest.

But Julien wasn’t the type to imagine things.

I made a decision. "We don’t stop moving."

Felix’s voice was unsteady. "What if it—"

A twig snapped.

To our left.

We turned as one, weapons half-drawn, eyes searching. But there was nothing. Just trees. Just empty air.

The silence deepened.

Then—

A whisper.

Faint. Indistinct. Not words. Just a sound, curling through the air like a breath from something unseen.

Felix cursed under his breath.

Garrick pulled his blade. "Screw this."

"Don’t." I held up a hand. "If we fight something we can’t see, we lose."

No one liked that answer, but no one argued.

The wind picked up suddenly, rustling through the leaves. The tension snapped like a stretched wire. The moment passed. The air felt normal again.

Whatever had been there... it was gone.

For now.

I swallowed the unease creeping up my throat. "We keep moving."

The group fell in line, walking faster now, eager to put distance between us and whatever that was. But I knew the truth.

We weren’t leaving it behind.

It was coming with us.

The higher we climbed, the more the forest thinned out. The canopy broke apart, letting in slivers of moonlight, casting jagged shadows across the uneven ground. The air was cold—too cold for this time of year.

Nobody spoke.

Not even Julien.

That silence said more than words ever could.

I didn’t need to tell them to stay alert. They already were.

Mira moved like a shadow, keeping to the edges of the group, her steps soundless. Julien, usually the loudest, walked as if he didn’t want the earth to notice him. Felix stuck closer than usual, glancing over his shoulder every few steps.

Wallace, at the back, kept checking the ground. His fingers twitched like he wanted to take notes but knew better than to stop.

Garrick gripped his weapon tighter. The muscles in his arm flexed with restraint, his instincts screaming at him to fight something he couldn’t even see.

And me?

I felt the weight of unseen eyes pressing against my skin.

It’s still here.

I glanced at Julien. He was rubbing his arms, his usual bravado nowhere to be seen.

"You still hearing it?" I asked.

He hesitated. Then nodded. "Yeah. It’s faint. But it’s there."

Mira whispered, "What’s it saying?"

Julien didn’t answer right away. His throat bobbed. "...It’s not words. Just... noises. Like breathing. But wrong."

Felix made a strangled sound. "Okay. Cool. Great. Love that. Can we—"

He stopped.

We all did.

Something had shifted. Not in the trees. Not in the air. But deeper. Underneath.

A pressure.

Like the ground itself was waiting.

A sharp clink rang out.

We all flinched.

Wallace cursed, holding up his foot. "Rock. Stepped on a rock."

No one laughed.

Because we all knew that sound? The clink?

It hadn’t echoed.

Sound carried in the forest. A noise like that should’ve bounced off the trees, should’ve lingered for at least a second. But it had just—stopped.

Like something swallowed it.

Felix whispered, "Lucian. What the hell is going on?"

I exhaled slowly. "I don’t know."

That was the truth.

But I had a feeling we were about to find out.

Because ahead, just past the next ridge, the trees gave way to a clearing.

And in the center of that clearing—

Something waited.

The clearing was wrong.

Not in the way a battlefield after a massacre was wrong. Not in the way a cursed site was wrong.

It was the kind of wrong that made your instincts rebel before your mind could catch up.

The trees around it weren’t just thinner—they were pulled back, their branches twisting away like they were trying to escape. The grass stopped abruptly at the edges, leaving only exposed, uneven dirt.

And in the center...

There was something.

It wasn’t a creature. Not exactly.

It wasn’t a person, either.

It sat there, motionless, a mound of dark, pulsing flesh. Veins of something black ran through it, shifting like liquid beneath its surface. There was no wind, but the thing shuddered, like it was breathing.

Julien sucked in a breath beside me. "That’s... not normal."

Understatement of the year.

Mira crouched low, whispering, "Is it alive?"

Wallace took a careful step forward. "Looks like some kind of organic—"

The thing twitched.

We froze.

The moment stretched.

Then, slowly, too slowly, it unfurled.

A dozen slits opened along its surface, like cracks splitting through stone. Something inside those cracks shifted, writhing. Then—

It turned.

Not physically. It didn’t have a head or limbs. But the moment those slits opened, I felt its focus latch onto us.

It saw us.

And then, deep inside those shifting gaps, something spoke.

Not in words.

Not in whispers.

It spoke directly into our bones.

"Why... do you... break the stillness?"

Felix whimpered. "Nope. No. Absolutely not. We’re leaving."

No one moved.

Because whatever this was—it had moved first.

A tendril, thin and sharp like an insect’s limb, curled from its mass. The dirt beneath it cracked as it pressed into the ground. More tendrils followed, unfolding like a grotesque flower.

Mira exhaled. "Lucian. Orders."

I clenched my jaw. My first instinct? Run.

But something about the way it moved—hesitant, testing—made me pause. It wasn’t attacking outright.

Not yet.

"Don’t move," I said. "Let’s see what it does."

Felix hissed, "I hate that plan."

Too bad. Because the moment we moved, this thing would decide whether we were prey.

And I had a feeling it wasn’t the kind of thing that left survivors.

The tendrils flexed.

Not like a predator tensing before a lunge—more like fingers testing the air. Feeling. Searching.

We didn’t move.

The clearing was silent except for the subtle, wet sound of the thing shifting in place. The slits in its flesh pulsed, expanding and contracting like breathing gills.

Then, in that same bone-deep voice, it spoke again.

"Stillness... broken..."

Its tendrils twitched.

"Must be... restored."

My gut screamed at me to act.

Julien must’ve felt it too, because he tensed at my side, fingers twitching toward his weapon. Mira, on the other hand, was still as a statue. Eyes sharp, calculating.

Wallace whispered, "I don’t think it wants to attack."

I wasn’t sure about that.

But I was sure about something else—if we ran, it would give chase.

Slowly, I raised my hands. A non-threatening gesture. "We didn’t come to break the stillness," I said, keeping my voice calm. "We were just passing through."

The thing twitched. Those slits widened, the writhing beneath them shifting.

"Passing... through..."

For a second, I thought it was considering my words.

Then its tendrils snapped forward.

Julien cursed and rolled aside. Felix yelped as a tendril barely missed his leg. Wallace scrambled back.

Mira moved differently.

Instead of dodging outright, she twisted to the side, letting the attack graze past. Her fingers flicked outward—dark energy crackled at her fingertips, a curse ready to fly—

"Wait!" I barked.

She stopped. Just barely.

The tendrils that struck the ground froze—then retracted, curling back toward the mass. Almost... hesitantly.

It didn’t want a fight.

It was testing us.

Felix, still half-crouched behind me, hissed, "Okay, maybe we don’t wait for round two?!"

I agreed. But if we left now, we needed to do it right.

"Mira, dispel any magic you started," I murmured. "Everyone—move back slowly."

Julien shot me a look but obeyed. One step. Then another.

The thing remained still.

Wallace swallowed hard and followed. Felix practically tiptoed.

Mira was last. She let out a slow breath, then pulled her power back and stepped away.

The thing’s slits narrowed.

But it didn’t follow.

Step by step, we inched toward the treeline. The tension was suffocating.

Then—

The moment we crossed the clearing’s edge, the thing folded in on itself.

The tendrils withdrew. The slits in its flesh closed. The pulsing slowed.

It returned to stillness.

Like we had never been there at all.

We didn’t stop moving until we were far, far away.

Only then did Julien let out a shaky laugh. "So, uh. What the hell was that?"

I had no idea.

But I did know one thing.

It wasn’t just some mindless monster.

It had recognized something about us.

And I had a feeling this wouldn’t be the last time we encountered it.