The Forest of Whispers
I left before dawn.
Not because I couldn't sleep, I rarely did anymore. But because of what I want to do. I didn't want them to see me hesitate. The manor door creaked open into darkness, and I slipped out like a thief. My breath fogged in the air, and for a moment, the village looked… peaceful because of my efforts
Liars. Dreamers. Fools still clutching their empty bellies and fragile hope.
The forest waited at the edge of it all, black and brooding.
They called it the Forest of Whispers. Superstition dripped from the name like old blood. No one went in. Not the woodcutters, not the desperate. Not even the dying. They believed something watched from the shadows something that didn't take kindly to strangers.
Good.
Maybe it would take kindly to me.
I needed meat. Real meat. If I wanted these peasants fattened before winter, before mobilization, before they became the teeth of the blade I would one day wield… then I needed more than bark bread and boiled weeds.
And fear alone wasn't enough to keep them loyal. Hunger made people reckless.
The trees stood like sentries tall, close, and wrong. Not just in shape, but in… presence. Their trunks twisted in ways that defied memory, like they'd leaned in to listen to too many screams. I paused at the treeline.
It was quiet.
Not the gentle hush of morning silence, but the kind of quiet that pressed on your eardrums, that made you hyperaware of your own breath, your own heartbeat, your own thoughts.
I stepped in.
The earth was soft beneath my boots. Damp, but not muddy. Springy, like old carpet over buried bones. My eyes adjusted slowly. Light barely trickled through the branches overhead, their limbs interwoven like fingers clenched in prayer or warning.
My heart couldn't help but beat
The deeper I went, the more the path faded. There were no trails. No prints. No sign that anything had ever walked here and lived to tell of it.
Every now and then, a whisper brushed against my ear too deliberate to be wind.
I turned. No one.
Keep moving, I told myself.
Every instinct screamed at me to turn back. Not from fear at least, not just fear. From recognition. This place felt like the underside of the world. The belly of a beast that hadn't realized I'd stepped into its mouth yet.
I pulled my cloak tighter around my shoulders and pressed forward.
No traps. No maps. I didn't even have real hunting experience beyond what I'd skimmed from diagrams and articles during my hour online the night before. But I had read enough to understand snares, tension, pressure triggers. Enough to fake competence.
I found a clearing, half-sunken and strangely circular, like something had once landed there and never left. Animal trails converged around it—but none crossed it. That was good. That was... something.
I crouched and began gathering materials. Vines for rope. Thin branches for tension. I cut bark into crude toggles. My hands worked slowly, clumsily. I was no survivalist. But I could mimic one. And that's all they needed to see.
Every so often, I'd stop and listen.
The forest didn't breathe like other places. It watched.
Hours passed. I set three basic snares barely functional. One near a low hollow, one near a tree where berries stained the bark black, and one along what might have been a game trail, if I squinted hard enough.
The last trap slipped when I tied the knot, snapping back into the ground with a loud whack. My fingers stung.
"Shit," I hissed, cradling my palm. A fresh cut.
And then I heard it.
Not a whisper this time, but laughter.
Soft. Distant. But unmistakably human.
I froze. It didn't sound cruel or mocking. It sounded... amused. Like someone watching a child fumble with toys. It came from deeper in the woods, behind a wall of tangled brush.
No one was supposed to be out here.
No one sane.
I left the trap unfinished and backed away. Slowly. I didn't run.
By the time I returned to the edge of the forest, dusk was bleeding across the sky. My cloak stank of moss and fear. The village came into view smoke moving up from cookfires, silhouettes of tired peasants moving about like shadows playing house.
I paused before stepping out of the trees.
Let them see me emerge from the Forest of Whispers.
Let them wonder what I faced in there and how I came out alive.
When they spotted me, voices rose. Low murmurs at first, then whispers that rippled from hut to hut.
"The Baron went in…"
"He came back…"
I said nothing. Just walked past them, my face unreadable, my clothes filthy, and my hands crusted with dried blood and bark.
"Baron," a young man ventured. "Did you see… anything?"
I stared at him. Let the silence stretch. Let it grow teeth.
"Nothing worth speaking of," I said at last. "Yet."
That night, they left a bowl of bark stew outside my door, as if I needed feeding. I poured it out. My mouth still tasted of forest air—old, bitter, and crawling with things you couldn't see.
In the silence of my chamber, I lit a single candle and drew what I remembered: the clearing, the traps, the laughing trees. I made notes. Adjustments.
Tomorrow, I would go deeper.
And if the forest was watching… then I would make it blink first.