Every bird in the tree went quiet.
Not gradually. All of them at once. Fifty fire birds cutting their screaming mid-screech and the sudden silence was so wrong that Eren's Predatory Reflex sent a cold spike through his shoulders before his brain even processed what happened.
He'd just spoken to them. In Beastin. And they all shut up at the exact same second.
Not one by one. Not a ripple spreading outward from the closest bird. Every single bird in the canopy stopped screaming at the same instant and turned to face him.
That's not how individual animals react.
The bird on the lowest branch tilted its head and its beak opened and closed twice before producing a sound that was lower than the usual screeching and more deliberate.
[You speak the voice. The dead one never spoke the voice.]
"I learned it from wolves." His Beastin came out rough and slow but the skill smoothed most of the pronunciation. "The language works on everything that can think."
