“The Whispering Palace”

“The Whispering Palace”

Long ago, high on the cliffs overlooking a sea that has since forgotten its name, there stood a palace of impossible grandeur. Its towers were crowned with spires like black thorns, and its windows glowed faintly, even in the deepest hours of the night. The locals called it The Palace of Silvertongue, but that was not its true name. The true name had been lost—spoken only once, centuries ago, and never uttered again. It was said that to speak it was to invite madness.

For generations, no soul dared venture close. Ivy choked the outer walls, and the winds around it wailed like grieving ghosts. Ships that strayed too close to the cliffside disappeared in mists. Animals refused to approach it, and even birds flew around the palace as though an invisible cage kept them out.

The stories were always the same: people entered, but never left.

The last person to live in the palace was King Alaric III, a man whose smile never touched his eyes. They said he was born during an eclipse, and on the night of his birth, every mirror in the kingdom cracked. He ruled for twenty-three years—twenty-three years of silence. He rarely spoke. No decrees were issued. No wars were fought. Yet people vanished. Ministers. Guards. Servants. Entire families.

When the villagers gathered their courage to storm the palace, they found it deserted. No king. No bodies. Just an eerie, deathly quiet and the echo of footsteps that didn’t belong to them.

From then on, the palace was cursed.

Centuries passed. The land around it withered. Trees grew stunted and twisted. Crops near the cliff edge failed. And still, the palace stood, untouched by weather or time.

And then came Elias Greaves, a historian obsessed with forgotten architecture and cursed bloodlines. He didn’t believe in ghosts. Didn’t believe in curses. And he certainly didn’t believe in whispered warnings from toothless fishermen and wide-eyed children.

He came alone, carrying only a lantern, a leather satchel, and a worn journal. At first, it was quiet—dead quiet. The kind of silence that buzzes in your ears and makes your own breathing sound like thunder.

The grand doors were open when he arrived.

Inside, the palace was immense. Gilded halls, cracked mirrors, and paintings whose eyes had been clawed out. Candles, long melted, still clung to rusted sconces. The air smelled of rot and old perfume.

Elias wrote everything down.

“Found the Great Hall. Ceiling fresco seems to shift when not observed directly. Could be a trick of the light.”

“Heard something whisper in the library. Thought it said my name.”

“There is a mirror in the east wing that doesn’t reflect me. Only the room behind. Must be broken.”

His entries grew stranger.

“Saw King Alaric in a portrait. Then saw him walk down the hall an hour later. Don’t know how I know it was him. I just know.”

“The furniture moves. It’s not subtle anymore.”

“Woke up and the entire room had changed. I was in the west wing last night. Now I’m in the north tower.”

“He is speaking to me now. In my dreams. No—when I’m awake, too. He wants me to stay. I think I want to stay.”

The journal was discovered years later by a group of hikers who found it stuffed between two stones at the base of the cliff. No sign of Elias. No sign of struggle. Just the journal, with a final, hastily written line:

“There is no exit. There never was. We are all just echoes now.”

The palace still stands.

Some say that if you walk along the cliffs at dusk, you can see candlelight in the windows, and hear the faint strains of a long-forgotten waltz echoing on the wind.

Others say they see Elias, standing at the gates, beckoning.

But no one ever follows.

Not anymore.