Whisperless Ethan Campbell Whisperless Ethan Campbell An Ovi eBooks Publication 2025 Ovi eBookPublications - All material is copyright of the Ovi eBooks Publications & the writer C Ovi ebooks are available in Ovi/Ovi eBookshelves pages and they are for free. If somebody tries to sell you an Ovi book please contact us immediately. For details, contact: ovimagazine@yahoo.com No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the writer or the above publisher of this book Whisperless Whisperless Ethan Campbell Ethan Campbell An Ovi eBooks Publication 2025 Ovi eBookPublications - All material is copyright of the Ovi eBooks Publications & the writer C Whisperless T he first sign that something was amiss in Un- terwald, a humble village nestled among the rolling hills of southern Germany, came in the early hours of the morning. The village, known for its peaceful quiet and ancient customs, had al- ways been rich with the music of nature. Birds filled the skies with their dawn chorus, and the rustling of the trees had a melody all its own, a harmony that the villagers took for granted. But this morning, the air was different. The silence was absolute. It was not the stillness of night, nor the calm before a storm. No, this was something far more unnatural an eerie absence of sound that settled over the village with an unsettling weight. The birds, which usually greeted the sun with joyous abandon, were mute. The Ethan Campbell wind, which so often whispered secrets through the forest, was still. The creaking of carts as they rolled down the cobbled streets, the familiar clang of the blacksmith’s hammer on anvil, and even the distant rumble of wagons gone. As if the world itself had held its breath and refused to exhale. At first, the villagers thought it was simply a strange anomaly—an oddity in the natural order that would soon pass. Perhaps a brief, unnerving shift in the seasons or a passing weather event. But the silence did not lift. Days passed, and the stillness grew thick- er, more suffocating. It was as though the air itself had been drawn tight, stretched to a point where it seemed ready to snap, yet remained, taut and un- yielding. A sense of unease began to creep into the village. The young, full of nervous energy, laughed off the growing discomfort. “Perhaps the birds have just taken a vacation,” they joked, clapping each other on the back as they tried to shake off the dread that seeped into their minds. But the older folk were not so easily deceived. “The silence... it is unnatural,” murmured Herr Müller, the village elder, his voice cracked with the weight of unspoken fears. He was a man of ancient Whisperless superstitions, one who had lived long enough to re- member the old stories. “It is a curse, a punishment for things long forgotten.” At first, the villagers scoffed at him. But as days turned into weeks, the discomfort grew. The villagers began to notice that the absence of sound was not just limited to the wildlife. The world itself seemed to be losing its voice. When the children played in the streets, their laughter was muffled, as though it were coming from a great distance. Their steps, once bright and eager, became hesitant, shuffling. Conver- sations, once lively and filled with the familiar hum of daily life, became strained, quiet, almost reluctant. “Is it just me, or are the echoes... gone?” said Mar- garetha, a young woman who worked at the mill. She had been startled one evening when, after dropping a handful of grain, the sound of it hitting the wooden floor failed to come. “It’s as if nothing exists to fill the air.” No one had an answer. But as the days passed, some- thing darker began to unfold. The silence gnawed at the edges of their sanity. The villagers grew restless, unable to sleep through the nights. The nervous ten- sion thickened like a fog that refused to lift. Each hour, each day that passed without the comfort of Ethan Campbell sound seemed to stretch further into madness. The elders, who had once held firm to their stoic ways, whispered now of ancient horrors, of forgotten gods that demanded silence as a tribute, of things lurking beyond the veil of reality, things that thrived in the absence of noise. Erik, a young man of boundless curiosity and courage, had grown increasingly uneasy. But unlike the others, he refused to succumb to fear or supersti- tion. There was always an explanation for things, he told himself. The silence had to have a logical cause, something scientific, perhaps. A shift in the weather, an oddity in the land’s natural rhythms. But the more he considered it, the less his thoughts aligned with reality. There was something wrong, something deep and unfathomable at the heart of the silence. One evening, as the village languished in its op- pressive quiet, Erik decided to seek answers. He could no longer endure the tension that had seeped into every corner of his life. Something, he felt, called him. A voice in the back of his mind, a whisper that urged him to look beyond the village, into the depths of the woods that bordered Unterwald. For it was there, along the stream that wound its way through the valley, that the answer lay. Whisperless The sun had dipped below the horizon by the time Erik made his way out of the village, the silence still hanging heavy around him. The usual sounds of the forest were gone—no rustling of leaves, no chirping of insects. Even the stream, which normally babbled merrily, was eerily silent. He pushed through the dense underbrush, his steps muffled in the thick, wet earth. His lantern flickered as if reluctant to cast light on what lay ahead, and yet he pressed on. After what felt like an eternity, Erik came upon the old path, long forgotten and overgrown. Vines and branches seemed to reach for him, as if trying to stop him, but he ignored them, pushing through until he reached a clearing. And there, half-hidden by na- ture’s grasp, lay the cave. A dark, gaping mouth in the earth, its entrance nearly concealed by thick grass and brambles. Something about it seemed to pulse with a strange energy, as though it had been waiting for him. With trembling hands, Erik cleared away the foli- age, revealing the cave in all its ancient, foreboding majesty. The air around it felt colder, and the silence deepened, pressing in on him from all sides. He hes- itated for a moment, a shiver running up his spine, but his curiosity overruled his fear. He stepped for- ward, entering the cave’s mouth. Ethan Campbell Inside, the darkness was absolute. The only sound was the faint echo of his breathing, quick and shal- low, as he carefully made his way deeper into the cave. As his eyes adjusted, he saw the markings on the walls, symbols carved into the stone, long eroded by time. They were familiar in an unsettling way, as though they belonged to a language Erik should have known but could not recall. He reached the center of the cave, and there he saw it ...the altar. A stone slab, covered with dust and an- cient grime, but unmistakable. There, etched into the surface, was a symbol he did not recognize. It was an intricate spiral, with an eye at its center, as though the earth itself was watching him. The air around the altar seemed to hum with a quiet energy, vibrating in a way that made his teeth ache. And then, a whisper. “Erik...” His blood ran cold, and his heart skipped a beat. The voice was not human, yet it was familiar—like the voice of the wind, soft and distorted. It echoed in the very walls of his mind. “Leave this place... leave before it’s too late...” Whisperless Erik stumbled backward, his mind reeling. He spun around, his lantern casting strange shadows against the walls. The silence, once a void that consumed all, now seemed to pulse with something darker, some- thing waiting. With every step he took toward the exit, the voice followed, repeating its warnings, growing louder, un- til it seemed to echo from every corner of the cave. The air around him thickened, pressing against his chest. The weight of centuries seemed to press upon him, as though the very earth beneath his feet was waking, awakening to something terrible. And then, as Erik reached the mouth of the cave, he heard it, something so faint that at first he thought it was his imagination. A sound, a distant rumbling, growing closer, like the soft hum of a thousand voic- es. It was not the voice of men, nor of animals. No, it was something older, something that had been wait- ing, dormant, until now. With his breath coming in ragged gasps, Erik fled the cave. But as he turned to leave, he could have sworn he saw a figure in the darkness, a form too strange to describe, moving just beyond the edge of his lantern’s light. His heart pounded in his chest as he ran, but no matter how fast he moved, the sound Ethan Campbell of the rumbling grew louder, a deafening roar that seemed to come from the very bowels of the earth itself. By the time he returned to the village, the silence had deepened, and the oppressive weight of it seemed to press on him from all sides. The villagers were still, their faces pale and wide-eyed. They had heard noth- ing, no cries for help, no footsteps approaching, no sound of Erik’s return. They had heard only the si- lence. Erik knew the truth now the silence was not mere- ly an absence of sound. It was a presence, an ancient force that had been awoken, and it had come for them all. The village was cursed, and there was no escape. Whisperless I. Erik had never been one to indulge in superstition. The village of Unterwald, nestled in the shadow of Germany’s ancient forests, had long been steeped in strange tales, passed down from one generation to the next. The older folk would speak in hushed tones of forgotten gods, ancient rites, and unseen forces that lurked in the woods, forces that they believed had shaped the world long before the first stones of Unterwald were laid. But Erik had always dismissed them, as any rational young man would. These were merely stories for children, he thought, crafted from the gnarled imagination of those whose minds had become warped by age and isolation. But the silence was different. Ethan Campbell It was not merely the absence of sound, for that could be explained away as a quirk of nature. No, this silence was a force in itself a weight that pressed on the chest, that twisted the stomach, that gnawed at the very fabric of the mind. It was an oppressive, unnatural stillness that had descended on Unterwald and its people, rendering even the most mundane sounds, footsteps, the rustle of leaves, the chirping of birds, utterly absent. The village, once alive with the hum of daily life, had become a tomb. The air was thick with tension, and the people had begun to grow strange. No longer did children run through the streets, laughing and shouting as they had once done. The markets, which had once buzzed with chatter, were eerily quiet. Even the ever-busy blacksmith’s hammer no longer rang out from his workshop, replaced by the hollow si- lence that seemed to stretch on forever. The villagers’ eyes had grown vacant, their faces drawn and pale. Whispers filled the air, but they were not of the usual kind. Now, the words were heavy with dread, with fear, with something far older than the minds of the villagers could comprehend. No one spoke of it openly, but it was known: the silence was not natural. Whisperless On the third day of the silence, Erik could take it no longer. The tension had become unbearable, and his skepticism, once ironclad, began to erode. He had heard the older villagers speak of a cave, a place where the very earth had once been disturbed, a site long abandoned and buried by the forest. It was said to be a cursed place, one to be avoided at all costs, a place where silence had once taken root, long before the village had been founded. The story was always the same: those who ventured too close to the cave never returned. But Erik, driv- en by a mixture of curiosity and a growing sense of dread, knew that he had to find the truth. There was something in that cave; something that held the key to the village’s plight. He rose before dawn, the heavy weight of his deci- sion settling over him like a dark shroud. As he left his modest cottage, the world around him seemed suffocatingly still, the silence pressing in from all sides. Even the trees, which normally swayed in the morning breeze, stood immobile, as if caught in a trance. The air felt colder than it should have been, as though the very atmosphere was stifling. The path to the cave was hidden by thick under- brush, a place that had long been forgotten by all but Ethan Campbell the oldest of the villagers. The trees were twisted and gnarled, their roots digging deep into the earth like ancient claws. The ground beneath Erik’s feet was uneven, and the foliage had grown thick around him, as if the forest itself were trying to keep him from his destination. He hacked through the brush with his knife, his breath coming in sharp gasps, the silence of the world around him only deepening with every step. When he finally emerged into a small clearing, he saw it, a mouth of darkness, hidden behind a wall of thick vines and brambles. The cave was real. His heart skipped a beat, and for a moment, he stood fro- zen, staring at the gaping entrance as though it were some kind of malevolent creature. The wind had not stirred here, and even the birds that usually perched on the trees nearby were absent. Only the silence re- mained, a silent echo of a place forgotten by time. With a swallow, Erik stepped forward, his pulse racing in his ears. As he neared the entrance, an unexplainable chill gripped him, sending a tremor through his limbs. It wasn’t the cold of winter or the chill of the night, it was something far worse, some- thing primal, as if the very air had grown thin, as if the cave itself exhaled a breath that carried death in its wake. Whisperless For a long moment, Erik stood at the entrance, staring into the depths. He was not sure why he had come. Fear clawed at the edges of his resolve, whis- pering to him that this was a place best left undis- turbed. Yet, something deeper, a sense of responsibil- ity, or perhaps an insatiable thirst for answers, drove him forward. He stepped into the cave. The air inside was thick and oppressive, a damp, musty scent clinging to the walls, the very atmo- sphere heavy with an unshakable sense of dread. It was as though the silence had taken on a physical form, wrapping around him, pressing on his chest, suffocating him. His footsteps were muffled on the cold stone floor, and his breath echoed unnervingly in the cavern’s stillness. He could feel his pulse quick- en, his mind racing, but he pressed on. The deeper he went, the more the silence seemed to close in around him, until even the beating of his heart was muffled, swallowed by the void. “Who’s there?” Erik called out, his voice trembling slightly, but there was no answer, no echo, only the thick, unyielding quiet. He couldn’t help the wave of unease that washed over him, but his curiosity, his determination, pushed him further. Ethan Campbell As he rounded a sharp bend in the cave, he saw it—a large stone altar, worn and weathered by the passage of time. Symbols, ancient and indecipherable, were carved into its surface, faded by centuries of neglect. The stone was dark, almost black, and at its center lay a thick layer of something, dried and brittle to the touch. Erik recoiled as he recognized it—blood. The blood of something ancient, something that had not been spilled by human hands. But it was not the altar that drew Erik’s gaze; it was what lay beyond it. At the back of the cave, bathed in the faint light of his lantern, was a jagged stone slab, darker than the rest. Carved into its surface was an intricate spiral, its center an empty eye, staring into the abyss. The symbol seemed to pulse, though Erik could not say whether it was his imagination or something more sinister. He stepped closer, compelled by some unseen force. His eyes locked onto the symbol, and for a moment, he felt as though the cave itself was watch- ing him. The air grew thick, and a strange pressure pressed down on his mind, as though the very space around him was becoming distorted. Then, a voice, a whisper, barely audible, but unmis- takable, seeped into his ears. Whisperless “Leave this place... leave before it’s too late...” The words were not spoken in any language he knew. The voice was ancient, a distortion that seemed to reverberate through the very fabric of the cave. Er- ik’s breath caught in his throat as his heart hammered wildly in his chest. The whisper came again, this time clearer, and with it, a sense of terrible urgency. “Leave... leave... before they awaken.” His eyes darted around the cave, searching for the source of the voice, but there was nothing, no figure, no movement. Only the darkness, thick and unyield- ing, surrounding him. The silence pressed closer, as though it were alive, feeding on his fear. Erik felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. He stumbled backward, his hand shaking as he held the lantern aloft, casting erratic shadows against the walls. His mind reeled with the implications of what he had seen, what he had heard. The air felt heavier now, thick with an unnatural force, as if something was awakening, something that had slumbered for eons in the depths of the earth. With a final, frantic glance at the altar and the symbol, Erik turned and fled, his breath ragged as he bolted from the cave. But even as he ran, the whisper followed, its chilling cadence echoing in his mind. Ethan Campbell “Too late... too late...” He did not stop until he had left the cave behind, its presence still lingering in the air, still pressing on his mind. The silence had returned in full force, but now it was different—more suffocating, more com- plete. And Erik knew, without a doubt, that the silence had not come by chance. It was something far dark- er, far older, and it had been waiting, biding its time. Now, it was awake. And Unterwald was doomed.