đ Eliot's POV đ
Eliot had barely been listening. He was half-awake, irritated, and tired of swatting away biting things.
A welt had formed on his wrist, swollen and red. He kept punching the ground every time one got away.
He didn't like the dark. Not this one.
This wasn't palace-night. This was silence so deep it sounded like ringing.
The grown-ups kept talking about hunting, magic, things he didn't really understand.
Silas looked tense, though. Way too tense.
Eliot scratched his ankle, yawnedâand looked at Silas again.
He hated mosquitoes. They kept landing on the same spotâhis wrist. He slapped hard, missed, and punched the dirt. The thud felt too loud.
He looked up. Silas was standing. Still. Like a broken puppet.
He was staring upwards.
Eyes wide, the mercenary guy's attached to the sword on his hips, but he was glued to the ground, unlike Andre who was clueless staring at his companion's sudden odd behavior.
Sila's mouth slightly opened, as if trying to figure out something he saw, no he was trying to see what's on top of their head.
Then, Eliot looked up too.
It was a mistake.
Above them was not sky.
It was something living
A string of clear slime dropped past his nose, splashing softly onto the ground.
What he saw didn't register as real at first. His brain tried to translate it as trees. Shapes. Maybe tents or shadows.
But it moved.
A slow shuddering movement, like something stretching after sleeping too long.
It was tall. Towering. The moonlight didn't reach its face, but he could feel its eyes.
His heart began to race faster, now he knew why Silas behaved in such a way. Eliot's stomach moved in an odd way because he was trying to control his breath.
Those aren't leaves, Those trunks five kilometres from Andre wasn't a trunk
Eyes of a beast have the ability which the Prince was born with, dwell in the dark, see farthest through the silence and blind spot in the dark where humans cannot see.
He saw a skull up in the sky, a face of a living thing, it was breathing, Eliot knees began to tremble.
His teeth clattering, "Un-uncl-uncle" He called for him.
Eliot squintedâand saw slime.
Dripping. Stretching. Down from above.
Onto Silas.
Was it drooling?
He didn't know, he had awakened his beast ability last year, probably today will be the day he realized, he isn't meant to be part of the wood.
Because he didn't know, the gigantic thing is sensitive to a thing like him, a snake child.
The way the head's moving, it was searching for something, a nice fragrance beneath him. The red eyes glitter, sniffing around slowly.
He opened his mouth to call out, but his voice stayed trapped in his chest. He felt like a mouse inside a giant clock, every tick louder than the last.
He suddenly felt watched.
Like if he said anything⊠it would bend down. And see him. For real.
And then what?
"Don't look up," Marcus's voice echoed in his mind.
But he already had.
He couldn't look away.
Thenâ
A hand yanked him hard to the ground.
Marcus.
"Don't move," the man hissed. "Don't breathe too loud."
"What isâ" Eliot's voice barely existed.
"You looked. That's enough."
He dragged Eliot low, flat against the dirt.