Mist clung low to the ground when morning came, thin and stubborn, pooling between roots and stones. It dulled sound, softened edges, made distance hard to judge. The fire from the night before had been reduced to a smear of ash and blackened earth. Whatever warmth it once offered had been swallowed quickly.

  The boy woke up with his ribs screaming.

  He rolled onto his back slowly, breath caught halfway through the motion, and stared up through the canopy. Pale light filtered down in broken strands, cutting the leaves into overlapping shapes. His chest felt tight again—not sharp pain this time, but a heavy weight. Familiar and unwelcome.

  Around him, the camp came awake. Gravel was already on his feet, checking the perimeter. Chop stretched and cracked his neck. Snow sat wrapped in her cloak, rubbing her hands together despite it being fairly warm outside. Eerie crouched near the edge of the clearing, eyes fixed on nothing in particular. Sheath inspected his sword in silence. Five adjusted the straps securing Shiela to his back. She watched the clearing from over his shoulder, quiet, thoughtful.

  No one mentioned the night and they packed quickly.

  Gravel didn’t say much as they moved out, but his route was deliberate. He led them back toward the last signs of the previous expedition, angling through thicker brush, circling instead of cutting straight lines. The boy noticed. He always noticed. The forest smelled different this morning. Not rot. Not damp earth. Something stale.

  They reached the campsite again before the sun climbed high. It looked smaller in daylight. Less mysterious.

  Gravel knelt near the scattered packs, turning one over with the toe of his boot. The fabric had been torn clean through, not ripped apart. Straps severed. Buckles cracked.

  “Still can’t see any blood,” Chop muttered.

  Snow scanned the tree line. “No drag marks either.”

  The boy crouched near the fire pit again, pressing his fingers lightly into the ash. It was packed down harder than before, compressed unevenly, like something had rested there longer than it should have.

  He said quietly. “They stopped here.”

  Gravel glanced at him. “Meaning?”

  “Meaning they are somewhere here” the boy replied. “Whatever happened, it happened fast. Or they didn’t think running would help.”

  Silence followed. Five shifted his footing, adjusting Shiela’s weight. “Or they were taken one at a time.”

  Snow stiffened.

  “That’s terrible,” Wrighty said.

  Gravel straightened. “We fan out. Short range. No heroics.”

  The group spread carefully, never losing sight of one another. The boy stayed close, though no one told him to. He traced the ground, the trees, the negative space between disturbed leaves and untouched soil. He found the first sign a few minutes later. A boot. Half-buried near a cluster of roots, pressed deep into the mud, angled as if the foot had been pulled straight down instead of forward. There was no second print. No stumbling. Just the one.

  Gravel crouched beside it, jaw tightening. “That’s not the tracks of someone who simply left.”

  Knell tilted her head. “I hear… gaps,” she said. “Like sound should be there, but it isn't.”

  The boy straightened slowly. The weight in his chest shifted, responding faintly, like something inside him had leaned closer. They found more as they went. A knife lodged point-first into a tree trunk at shoulder height. A scrap of fabric snagged beneath a rock instead of atop it. A trail that stopped too cleanly.

  Each discovery pressed the same conclusion deeper into the group. People have been here. People had disappeared. However they disappeared, it was definitely something they haven’t seen before.

  By midday, Gravel called them back together.

  “We’re close,” he said. “Close enough that whatever did this might still be nearby.”

  Wrighty rolled his shoulders, trying to shake the tension. “Great. Love that for us.”

  The boy stood near the edge of the group, gaze fixed on the ground ahead. The forest there dipped slightly, shadows pooling where roots twisted downward. He swallowed and tightened his grip on the club. Whatever had taken the others wasn’t just moving through this place. It was tearing it up, and was dangerous beyond what they knew.

  And the deeper they followed them, the harder it was becoming to tell whether they were tracking something—or walking towards their deaths.

  They moved again.

  Gravel didn’t raise his voice or give a clear command. He shifted his weight, angled his body, and the group adjusted around him without discussionThe forest swallowed the last campsite quickly, branches knitting together behind them as if it had never been there.

  The boy kept his eyes low.

  Not fixed on the dirt itself, but on the subtle details between things — where leaves bent, where roots surfaced too cleanly, where the ground held markings that didn’t quite qualify as tracks. His ribs protested every crouch, every rise, a dull ache blooming outward with each movement, but he ignored it. The pain was loud. The ground was quieter.

  He noticed a stone because it didn’t fit its location. It lay half-buried near the base of a broad-trunked tree, its surface smoother than the surrounding rock, edges worn flat. When he nudged it aside, something pale caught the light beneath.

  “Here,” he said.

  Gravel was beside him immediately.

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  The boy lifted the stone carefully and revealed a thin slab of bark pressed flat against the soil, its corners pinned down with smaller rocks. The surface was covered in shallow carvings — lines scratched by hand, uneven and overlapping, some faint, others cut deeper with repetition.

  “Markings, this must’ve been them attempting to map the area,” the boy said as he held the piece of bark gently through his hands.

  The rest of the group went and watched him as he studied the object.

  “ So they were in the places that we saw, but where did they finally stop?” The boy sat down and tried to think.

  Shiela, who was in her wheelchair, rolled over to the boy and gave him a smile.

  “Maybe this is the last place they were after all, why would they leave their map here if they left somewhere else?” Shiela said as she patted the boy’s back.

  Five nodded as he looked around, “oh how about there?” He was pointing to some sort of tunnel that was hidden under a lot of roots and fallen leaves.

  Gravel nodded approvingly, “good eye partner.”

  The group traveled into the small tunnel. It was spacious and large and seemed more like a cave. The boy knew this wasn’t a cave though, as the tunnel slowly sloped downwards and went deeper and deeper. In the tunnel they found several skulls of animals they didn’t recognize each with weird deformities or unexplainable characteristics. Wright was near the back of the group shouting so he could hear his own echo.

  Wrighty’s voice echoed once, then came back thinner, warped by the curve of the passage. Wrighty let out a playful giggle and walked up to the boy.

  “This place is massive, don’t you think?”

  The sound folded in on itself and vanished. The boy sighed and nodded. This place is massive, and it’s a tunnel too. Whatever made this must be freakishly large.

  Gravel lifted a hand. “Keep it down.”

  The tunnel swallowed light quickly. Roots clawed through the ceiling in thick, tangled veins, some still damp, others dry and splintered as if they had been pushed aside repeatedly. The walls weren’t stone—not fully. They were packed earth, smoothed in places by pressure rather than erosion. The floor sloped downward at a steady angle, shallow enough to walk without slipping, deep enough that the jungle above felt farther away with every step. The air smelled wrong.Stale. Bitter. Laced with something sour that clung to the throat. The mixture of the smell and the pain in his ribs nearly made the boy throw up last night's dinner. He held his stomach trying to keep it all in. Wrighty looked at him and frowned and put his arm over the boy's shoulder.

  Snow drew closer to the center of the group, her bow held low but ready. Knell walked with her head tilted, jaw tight, fingers pressed against the side of her neck.

  “I hear… layers,” she murmured. “They overlap. I also hear the small echoes of ants and water. It's peaceful.”

  Chop muttered, “How is that peaceful.”

  When the boy finally adjusted to the smell and no longer was close to vomiting he sped up his pace and walked near the front, club held loosely, eyes moving constantly. His ribs throbbed with each step, but the weight in his chest had gone quiet for a moment.

  They passed deeper into the tunnel, the ceiling rising gradually until it opened into a broad chamber. Roots hung down like curtains, some snapped clean through, others bent and polished smooth. Scattered across the ground were bones—animals, mostly. Skulls with asymmetrical jaws. Rib cages warped inward. Spines twisted at unnatural angles.

  Sheath crouched near one, frowning. “I’ve never seen anything bite like this.”

  The boy knelt nearby, studying the marks. They weren’t clean cuts. They weren’t crushed either. The bone looked… worn. Dissolved in places.

  “Digestion,” he said quietly.

  Shiela stiffened in her wheelchair. “What?”

  “This isn’t just some tunnel,” the boy continued. “It’s a burrow and it probably extends much deeper than even just this part .I believe this chamber is some sort of waste area.”

  Silence settled over the chamber. They moved carefully past the remains, following the downward slope as it narrowed again. The walls grew smoother, darker. The smell intensified.

  Then Wrighty stopped short.

  “Uh,” he said, voice low now. “Guys?”

  Ahead, the tunnel widened once more—but this time the floor was different. It was extremely dark and uneven.

  The boy stepped closer and felt his stomach tighten. It wasn’t soil. It was a bunch of feces. Compressed layers of it, hardened and cracked, scattered with fragments that caught the light at odd angles. Pale shapes half-embedded in the mass. Gravel knelt slowly, jaw clenched.

  Snow turned away first.

  “Oh no,” she whispered.

  The boy crouched, hands steady despite the tremor in his chest. He brushed away a thin layer of hardened residue and exposed a familiar curve.

  A human rib. Nearby, something round and smooth protruded from the surface. He uncovered it carefully. A skull. The eye sockets were intact. The jaw was broken clean through.

  “This is…” Wrighty swallowed. “This is them.”

  Gravel didn’t move for a long moment.

  Then he said, quietly, “ Boy, identify them please, I gave you their descriptions and their names on the walk here and I can tell you know which bones are them.”

  The boy looked up.

  Gravel’s voice was steady, but tight. “Say them.”

  The boy hesitated, then nodded.

  “This is Tall,” he said, gently, lifting a long femur from the hardened mass. “Big frame. Broad shoulders.”

  He uncovered another cluster of bones—smaller, compact.

  “Bangi.”

  A third set lay deeper, partially fused into the waste, fingers curled inward.

  “Polo.”

  His hand brushed against the last skull. The brow ridge was thick. The jaw was wide.

  “Brows.”

  The room went silent as dread filled their surroundings. They had found the old expedition and their hopes they were still alive had been completely shattered.

  Five stood at the edge of the chamber. He had put Shiela on the seat strapped to his back after he saw the bones. She had gone very still, her hands gripping his shoulders.

  “They were eaten,” she said softly.

  “Yes,” the boy replied.

  Gravel exhaled through his nose a sorrowful expression filled his eyes. “Bag what you can. Carefully.”

  They worked in silence.

  They didn’t take everything. Just what they could—bones wrapped in cloth, fragments gathered with care. Snow tied the bundles herself, fingers shaking but precise. Chop lifted one without complaint. Sheath helped where needed, his usual bravado gone.

  Wrighty hesitated before lifting the smallest bundle. He did the sign of the cross, but wasn’t sure why.

  “I’m sorry,” he muttered. “I didn’t know you, but… yeah.”

  The climb back up the tunnel felt longer and heavier.

  The smell followed them, clinging to cloth and skin. The boy felt the weight in his chest return, pressing lower now, more insistent. His ribs screamed as he climbed, but he didn’t slow. They emerged into the jungle as the light began to fade, the sky filtered through leaves in dull amber tones. No one spoke as they started the long walk back. The forest felt different now. The bundles shifted slightly as they walked, bones clicking softly beneath cloth. Then one of them rattled.

  Wrighty froze.

  “Did—did that just—”

  The bundle in Chop’s arms trembled.

  Once. Then again.

  Snow turned, eyes wide. The cloth tightened around the shape inside as something beneath it pulled inward, bones grinding against one another.

  Gravel reached for his weapon. The boy felt the weight in his chest surge sharply, cold and heavy, like something waking up. The bones jerked and cracked. Then began to move.