Silent Beat Novels & Stories

“North.” Maeven exhaled sharply. “That’s the same direction.” She lifted the torch, squinting. “Then why does this feel wrong?” Because the echo had gone quiet. Sable realized it suddenly, sharply. Too quiet. Her second heartbeat thudded once, slow and satisfied. Thump. “Sable,” Caelan said, voice low, “tell me what you hear.” Sable swallowed. “Nothing.” Maeven cursed softly. “That’s not good.”

Teeth bared in snarls now rendered silent. Suspended. Not dead. Not slowed. Just... paused, as if someone pressed a cosmic pause button on reality itself. As if time itself bowed to her will. The silence is deafening after the chaos—so complete that I can hear my own heartbeat thundering in my ears, can hear the shallow, panicked breathing of everyone around me. Dust motes hang in the air, unmoving. Even the light seems somehow different, as if it too has been commanded to behave differently. And in that instant of perfect, impossible stillness, I know—

At the DeLuca Family banquet announcing its new advisor, Matteo said he was going to end nine years of secrecy and finally acknowledge our relationship in public. I stood in the back row of the banquet hall, so nervous I'd crumpled my prepared speech into a ball. Over nine years, I'd cleaned up the port books for him three times, negotiated two cross-border shipping routes, and taken a bullet for him. Everyone knew the DeLuca Family had a female advisor who never showed her face, but no one knew I was that woman. I thought that after tonight, I would finally stop being his shadow. Until the screen at the front of the banquet hall lit up. There was no photo of us. Instead, there was only a si

He was her connection to the unseen, her window into the hidden realms. The silence stretched, thick and heavy, broken only by the faint static of the phone line. Riana held her breath, her senses on high alert, waiting for Kai's response. The air around her seemed to crackle with unseen energy, a palpable tension that prickled her skin. She felt a cold shiver run down her spine, a premonition of the darkness that lay ahead.

Then, without warning, the screen blinked to black for a fraction of a second long enough to feel wrong. When the image returned, the figure was closer. The time stamp was gone now. The frame trembled slightly, as if the camera or the person watching was breathing. Another blink. Closer still. Close enough to see the faint rise and fall of something that might have been breath. The static returned in short bursts, each one revealing the figure nearer, until the screen showed only darkness where its face should be. The final burst came with sound soft, deliberate, just on the edge of a whisper but the words couldn’t be understood.

I questioned. “A video can say a thousand words if you pay attention to details. Especially the sounds in the background. Listen real close, and we could pinpoint where she could be.” I shrugged my shoulders and went along with what she was saying. Kaylee puts the volume up as loud as possible and brings it to my ear. As she said, I pay attention to the background sounds. I couldn’t recognize it as the voices were talking over it. “Come! We can fix it in the office.”

Images rushed at me, blurry, fast, sharp. He tried to scream. His mouth opened wide, throat straining as panic overtook him. Instantly, I whispered beneath my breath, low and firm: “Silencio.” And just like that, the sound cut out. His mouth still moved frantically, eyes wide with terror, but no sound came out. It was like watching someone trapped behind glass, screaming in a void. I walked behind him, and pressed my fingers at the side of his head. “Show me,” I whispered, letting the power pull me deeper.

“And I promise to break your fingers. You won’t just walk away with a bruised cheek. You’ll leave here crippled.” Celeste stood frozen, her chest rising and falling with shallow breaths. Her hand remained over her face, fingers trembling. But just then, something strange happened. I staggered. The sound around me the whispers, the gasps, the low hum of the background music, it all began to fade. At first, it was a dull muting, like someone had stuffed cotton in my ears. Then, all at once, everything went silent. Absolutely silent. I blinked rapidly, looking around.

on a Tuesday, the peace bled out in the silent, spectral light of a security monitor. Anton woke to the empty space beside him in bed. This wasn’t unusual; Sabatine was a light sleeper, often drawn to the nocturnal quiet of the living room or her study. But the quality of the silence was wrong. It was a focused, electric silence, the kind that precedes a strike.

The house was quiet in a way that felt intentional. Not peaceful. Not calm. Curated. Jordan Elaine stood at the kitchen sink, fingers wrapped around the porcelain edge, staring at her reflection in the darkened window. Outside, the city glowed faintly, and distant headlights, muted sirens, the hum of a world that never slept. Inside, there was only silence. The kind that pressed against her chest until breathing felt like effort. She had learned, over time, not to fill it.