Prince Lucien: The most beautiful sound

Lucien woke as the hairs on the back of his neck stood. His body ached from sleeping on the hard forest floor. The tent was pitch black, he could not see Jerimiah who shared the tent with him, and he felt grateful that he was not snoring. He tried to groan as he sat up from his sleeping bag, and his hand hit the bottom of the tent.

The floor beneath the tent shifted under his weight. Not solid earth. Not packed soil. It dipped slightly beneath his palm, soft and yielding, as if something thick had gathered there in the night. But the liquid was thicker than water. It clung to the tent. It pooled beneath his palm with a slow, syrupy reluctance, as if the ground itself did not want to drink it. He lifted his hand.

Lucien blinked, turning his head toward the sound he expected. There was none. The world was quiet. Not the quiet of early morning. A wrong quiet. A quiet that did not belong outdoors. No water. No wind. No horses shifting. No hounds whining. No voices. Nothing.

He opened his mouth, intending to call for Callum. The silence swallowed his breath before it could become sound, as if the air itself refused to carry it. His throat tightened. His tongue felt too big. The stillness pressed against his chest like a weight, making each inhale feel like pulling air through wet cloth.

Lucien pushed himself upright, heart slowing to a heavy beat that he could not hear. The absence of it unsettled him more than the darkness. He reached toward Jerimiah, needing to feel movement, needing proof that he wasn’t… he couldn’t finish the thought. His fingers found cloth and bone and warmth, and he shook him awake.

Jerimiah sat up abruptly, their foreheads colliding. Pain flared, sharp and grounding. Good. Pain meant he was still alive. Lucien could not see Jerimiah’s face in the dark, could not gauge his reaction, and the uncertainty scraped at him.

He considered using his last cast to create light. Light would let them see. Light would let them assess. Light would also announce their position to anything watching. If this silence was deliberate, if it was the effect of an enemy spell or creature, then revealing himself blindly would be the kind of mistake men died for. He had one cast left. One.

If he burned it now in confusion and something worse waited outside, he would have nothing when it mattered. He forced the instinct down. The campfire had been lit when they slept. There should still be embers. If there were not, that told him something too.

He grabbed his sword instead. He lowered himself toward the tent flap carefully, listening to a silence that gave him nothing back, and made his way outside so he could mime for a heal without wasting the only spell he had left.

As he stepped outside he slipped and face planted on a slick surface. The impact knocked the breath from him, though he could not hear it leave. The smell hit first. Iron. Thick and unmistakable. He pushed himself up slowly, palms sliding.

Blood. Not a smear. Not a stain. A small lake that had seeped underneath the tent, spreading outward in a dark, heavy bloom that swallowed the ground until it looked black in the dim light. It had pooled long enough to settle. Long enough to soak. His fingers came away slick, the viscosity wrong, heavier than rainwater, warmer than the night air should allow.

Even in the dull glow of what remained of the campfire, he could see the sheen as it caught the faint light. Not a fire. Ashes. The fire had died. That meant time.

Lucien’s mind worked through it even as his stomach tightened. If this much blood had pooled, whoever it belonged to had not died instantly. There had been minutes. Possibly more. And none of them had woken. None of them had heard.

All around the camp, the others were rising in panicked confusion. Not chaos yet. Confusion. Callum stood with shoulders squared, posture rigid with command. His mouth moved in what should have been orders. His jaw flexed sharply. His lips formed clipped, decisive shapes. No sound came.

Lucien watched the men nearest him react a heartbeat too late, reading lips instead of hearing tone. Command without sound was slower, but not impossible, not for his knights.

Matthias frantically checked his bow, fingers running along the string, then over each arrow as if expecting sabotage. A snapped string would mean deliberate interference. Broken arrows would mean infiltration. He was checking for signs of tampering, not just readiness. Good. Someone else was thinking.

Fenric began casting, hands forming the familiar gestures of healing magic. An unnecessary movement but one ingrained by teachings. The faint shimmer sparked between his fingers, pale and soft.

Then Jerimiah grabbed Lucien’s arm and pointed to his ears, then crossed his forearms in a sharp X. The gesture was not panicked. It was confirmation. He’s deaf too, Lucien thought. They all are. This was not a trick of his own body.

Fenric pressed his fingers against his ears as if trying to force a whistle, as if testing whether sound would answer him back. Nothing.

Lucien scanned the clearing, forcing himself to look for what was missing, not just what was wrong. The dogs should have been barking. They should have been the first to sense danger. They were trained for it. They would not remain still if blood had been spilled.

He could not see a single one.

Kneeling beside a bedroll, Ingrid brushed trembling fingers across a knight’s throat. The man’s eyes were open. Empty. His armor was split at the neck in a deep, precise puncture. Not torn. Not hacked. A clean entry. Efficient. Lucien felt a cold spike of fear that hollowed out his stomach. This had not been chaos. It had been deliberate.

Something had killed him in the night. He had bled out inches from where they slept. None of them had heard.

The thought was worse than the corpse. It meant there had been a moment, a long moment, where the knight had tried to breathe. Tried to call out. Tried to warn them. His hand might have clawed at the ground. His mouth might have opened in a scream.

And the world had given him nothing in return.

Kipp stood near the edge of the clearing, frozen. His small frame seemed to shrink in on itself, shoulders folding inward as his eyes fixed on something deep between the trees. He was not moving. Not signaling. Just staring.

Lucien followed his gaze.

At the boundary of the camp’s thinning fog, a creature crouched low to the ground. It was close enough to be real and far enough to feel like a trick of the mist. Its shape wavered between familiar and wrong, like something assembled from pieces that did not belong together. Long hind limbs coiled with muscle beneath slick skin. Ears tall and thin but too rigid, too stiff, like bones grown outside the body instead of within it.

Its skin was gray-black and wet-looking, broken only by sparse patches of fur that clung in uneven clumps. Its face was narrow and stretched, lined with small serrated teeth that seemed too many for any mouth to contain. Two eyes glowed like polished obsidian, catching the faint light and holding it.

It did not blink. It did not shift. It did not breathe. It simply stared.

Lucien forced himself to assess instead of recoil. The posture was not curious. Not cautious. It was settled. Comfortable. It was not arriving. It had been there.

Behind it lay the corpse of a knight. Another creature crouched over him, tearing into flesh with precise, economical motions. The body moved as it fed, but no sound came from it. No wet tear. No crunch. No animal growl.

A torch arced through the air from somewhere in the camp, thrown blindly, the flame briefly flaring brighter as it cut through the fog. In that sweep of light, Lucien saw movement beyond the first two shapes.

Another creature. And another. And another.

Matthias loosed an arrow wrapped in flame, a reckless act in a forest, but desperation had stripped caution. The arrow streaked outward and struck the ground beyond the first line of trees, fire flaring upward in a brief orange bloom.

The light revealed the truth. Dozens.

They filled the fog like a spreading sickness. Not scattered. Not wandering. A formation. A wall of crouched bodies pressed low to the earth, all feeding. Dogs. Horses. His men. Their limbs rose and fell in silent rhythm as they tore and swallowed. Heads lifted in unison toward the firelight, obsidian eyes reflecting back.

There was no growl. No panting. No rustle of brush. Not even the sound of flesh being pulled apart.

Only silence.

And the certainty that the camp had been surrounded long before Lucien ever woke.

The silence deepened. It did not just remain. It pressed inward. Lucien felt it in his teeth, a faint pressure that made his jaw ache. The creature’s crept forward, their bodies low and fluid, moving with steps that should have cracked branches and crushed leaves beneath them.

Yet there was nothing. No rustle. No snap of twig. No brush of grass. No wet slap of feet on mud. The forest did not even acknowledge their movement. It was as if the world had chosen not to witness them.

Rowena shouted something at Callum. Lucien saw the strain in her neck, the shape of the word tearing out of her mouth. But her voice dissolved into emptiness. Callum’s response came as a sharp gesture, hand cutting through the air. Move.

Jerimiah did not hesitate. He seized Lucien by the arm and started to run.

The beast reacted instantly. Their legs coiled and released in impossible leaps, bodies launching forward with predatory precision. They did not bound like beasts. They struck like weapons. Claws dug into soil without sound as they landed. Lucien felt the impact instead of hearing it, a tremor that climbed up through his boots and into his bones.

Vessir met the first one head-on. Both blades flashed. The edges cut clean through one of its limbs, spraying a fan of black blood that arced through the air in a silent ribbon. The creature collapsed without a cry, its body jerking once as if surprised to be dying.

Another landed behind Vessir and tore forward with claws that should have whistled. They did not. Vessir twisted away with unnatural agility, but even his movement looked wrong in the silence. A sword swung without a hiss. A boot pivoted without a scrape.

Then the pack surged. The knights turned as one. Ingrid threw herself between Kipp and a lunging Rabbit, blade up, stance wide. Doran swung his swords in wide arcs, mouth open in a roar Lucien could not hear. Matthias fired arrow after arrow into the shifting mass of limbs and glowing eyes, each shot vanishing into the fog without so much as a whisper of string or flight.

Lucien tried to breathe. The air felt thick, resistant. He could not hear himself inhale. His chest strained, ribs expanding against a silence that refused to respond. His lungs burned for proof of life that would not come. Fear clawed at the inside of his skull, sharp and primal.

Callum raised his arm, face rigid, and pointed toward the ridge. Retreat. No one argued. There was no time to argue.

They ran.

The horses were already down, their bodies torn open in the fog. There would be no mounted escape, no clean break in speed. Boots pounded earth that gave no answer back. Armor shifted without a single clink.

The knights began casting as they moved, quick buff-spells layered over themselves in practiced rhythm. Lucien could not hear the invocations, but he saw the effects ripple across them. A stumble corrected mid-stride. A man’s shoulders tightened as strength surged into muscle. Another’s pace lengthened unnaturally, each step covering more ground than it should. Magic flashed in faint glimmers along skin and steel, silent but undeniable.

Lucien’s hand went to his chest by reflex. One spell left. He could feel it there, like a coin lodged in his throat. Ready. Waiting.

But if he spent it now and something worse waited beyond the ridge, he would be empty.

He forced his fingers away and ran on the strength he had left, uncertainty gnawing at him harder than the pain in his leg.

Jerimiah noticed the limp. Even in the chaos, even in the silence, he noticed. He cut across Lucien’s path without breaking stride, dropped into a crouch, and seized him around the thighs. The motion was efficient, almost practiced. In a single fluid lift, Lucien was hauled onto Jerimiah’s back, legs locking instinctively around his waist.

Piggyback.

Humiliation flashed hot and brief through Lucien’s chest. A prince carried like cargo. Kipp shot them a weird look as he sped past, breath ragged, eyes wide. To any outsider, it would look backwards. A master carrying an attendant.

Jerimiah did not wait for permission. He cast on himself, hands flashing through silent gestures, and Lucien felt the surge through him as Jerimiah’s body tightened beneath him.

Jerimiah accelerated.

The ground rose and fell in uneven swells. Roots clawed at boots. Branches whipped against armor and scraped across Lucien’s shoulders. None of it made a sound. The forest might as well have been painted scenery sliding past them, motion without noise, impact without consequence.

Lucien forced himself to think even as he clung to Jerimiah’s shoulders. Being carried freed him from balancing. That meant he could watch. He scanned the flanks, the rear, the canopy. If the monsters were gaining, he needed to see it first. Jerimiah’s spell would not last forever. No buff did. They were burning resources with every stride.

The first hour blurred into a stretch of controlled panic. The aura of silence thinned gradually, like a fog lifting by degrees. Lucien felt it before he heard it, the pressure easing from his skull. Then the smallest sounds returned. Leaves rustled faintly when kicked aside. The faintest clatter crept back into armor. The world began to answer again.

A remaining hound barked once, weak and pitiful somewhere behind them, as if announcing that he alone remained.

It was the most beautiful sound Lucien had ever heard.