They moved as one now—Caleb's group and the newcomers—though the silence between them was still thick. Names had been exchanged, quick and guarded. Tora, Biran, Petra, and Milo. They looked worse for wear than Caleb's own group had days ago. Skin clung too tightly to bones, showing signs of malnutrition. Milo, the smallest and youngest, never spoke.
The woods thinned slightly, revealing a slope ahead. Gnarled roots twisted like veins in the earth, pulsing with some faint, unnatural rhythm. Overhead, the sky shifted again, blue bleeding into violet, then dimming to an amber haze. Time meant nothing here. they stopped trying to track it.
"We'd better start looking for shelter before nightfall," Carla said, breaking the tension. "There's no surviving in the open. Not again."
"There's something," Petra murmured. She pointed down the slope.
They stumbled onto a camp.
What was left of it, anyway.
makeshift tents, long rotted, clung to their frames like cobwebs on broken bones. Fire pits were caked with ash. A rusted pan lay overturned near a tree, its handle gnawed by something with far too many teeth. The air was heavy with mildew and the copper scent of old blood. Caleb motioned for the others to stay behind as he crept forward, Dev close at his side.
"Someone lived here," Carla murmured, eyes scanning the decay. "Or tried to."
"No footprints," Alya noted, her voice a hushed whisper. "It's been abandoned for a very long time."
Hana crouched by a collapsed tent, brushing aside blackened moss. Beneath it, something glinted—a metal clasp. She pulled free a satchel, its leather warped but intact. Inside, she found a battered notebook, the cover darkened by humidity and time, but the spine unbroken.
"There's writing," she whispered, "It's in English!".
Everyone gathered around as Caleb held the book carefully, flipping to the first legible page. The ink had bled in places, but the words remained.
Day 3
I don't know how long we've been here. No stars. No sun. Only that pale, rotting sky. Something watches us. We lost Marko yesterday. It took him without sound. Just gone. Left his boots behind.
We tried to burn one of them. It screamed. Dear God, it screamed with his voice.
Caleb's hands trembled. He turned the page.
Day 5
They follow the heat. Fire, breath, even sweat. We think they see movement, but it's the warmth they're drawn to. Juno said she'd test it. She didn't come back.
We have to stay cold.
"They track body heat," Alya breathed. "That explains it. The way they pause near us, as if sniffing."
The child clutched her tightly, burying her face in Alya's side.
Petra, quiet until now, stepped forward. "This diary… this person, whoever they were, they knew things. Things we can use."
"More than that," Caleb said. "It's a map."
He turned to the back pages, where the survivor had drawn crude sketches—landmarks, strange symbols, notes on terrain. There was a mention of a cliff shaped like a hooked finger, a stream that flowed uphill, and a grove of trees that never moved with the wind.
One note was underlined twice:
Don't touch the black roots. Even whenthey look dead.
Another:
There's a clearing where they don't go. South-east of the ridge. Safe. For now.
Carla traced the crude map with her finger. "We can follow this. We don't have to wander blindly anymore."
Dev looked over Caleb's shoulder. "But how old is this? What if it's all changed?"
"Then we adapt," Caleb said. "But it's better than nothing."
That night, they made camp within the ruined one, surrounding themselves with the burnt remains of the past. The child—who still hadn't spoken—sat beside Petra as she lit a small, shielded flame using the diary's warning. Only long enough to warm a drink.
"We'll move at dawn," Caleb said. "The clearing. It's our best shot."
Later, as they slept, the book lay beside Caleb's head, his hand resting protectively over it.
He dreamt of the survivor.
Not their face—never their face—but of flickering torchlight, screams buried in leaves, and the feeling of being watched by something with eyes too deep to see. When he woke, sweating despite the cold, the diary had fallen open to a final entry:
Day 12
I hear them at night. Not the beasts—the others. Survivors. But I can't trust them. Not anymore. One of them turned. Their face slid off like melting wax. I don't know if I'm next.
If anyone finds this: stay cold. Stay quiet. And never speak the names you hear in the trees.
The survivors huddled inside the shattered camp, the air thick with the scent of rotting fabric, old fire ash, and the mildew of long-forgotten days. Carla turned the pages of the journal with a practiced hand, her brow furrowed. Dev crouched nearby, one hand gripping the machete Caleb had sharpened earlier. The child sat on Alya's lap, unusually quiet, her gaze fixed on the flickering flame of a makeshift torch planted in the ground.
"This guide—" Carla began.
"Not a guide," Caleb cut in. "A survivor. Like us. Someone who lived through this hell—at least for a while."
Carla looked up. "He kept records. Maps. Warnings. That makes him more of a guide than any of us."
Dev scratched his jaw, glancing around at the decaying supplies strewn about. "What I wanna know is, why didn't he make it?"
Silence answered him.
Caleb reached over and tapped a page with a faded sketch—thorny trees arranged like a cage, a clearing in the center, symbols scrawled along the edges. "He called this place the 'Mire of Teeth.' Said it's a bottleneck. A trap the creatures use. But it's also where he saw one of them fall."
"You're thinking of going there," Dev said.
"Not just thinking. This might be our best chance to take one of them down again. He lured it into a natural snare made by the roots. It worked once. It can work again."
Rahul let out a short laugh. "Or we get eaten. Again."
Tora shot him a glare. "You don't have to come."
"Like hell I'm staying behind. I just don't like marching into something that someone else already died trying."
Petra, quiet until now, stood up. "That journal—he kept it for someone. Maybe for others who'd come after. It'd be a waste not to use it."
Caleb nodded. "Then we go at first light."
The next morning brought with it a sickly green haze that filtered through the trees like moldy sunlight. The group moved in pairs, stepping carefully over warped roots and avoiding the soft mounds of fungal growth that oozed when touched. Caleb led, holding the journal in one hand and his spear in the other. Behind him, Carla and Dev whispered about the formations around them, debating whether the roots were shifting.
"I swear they weren't like this yesterday," Carla muttered.
Dev scowled. "The forest is changing. Watching."
"Don't start."
"I'm not imagining things. Look—these grooves," he pointed, "like claw marks, fresh."
At the rear, Rahul stumbled and nearly fell. Alya caught his arm. "Pay attention."
"Easy for you to say," he muttered. "You're not running on two hours of sleep and a constant fear boner."
She didn't laugh.
"I was joking—sort of."
"No one's in the mood."
Up ahead, the forest opened into a strange clearing, just like in the journal. Dead trees arched inward, forming a rough dome. The ground was hollowed, a natural pit about ten feet deep with tangled roots crisscrossing its surface. Bone fragments, old and weathered, littered the bottom.
"This is it," Caleb whispered.
"It smells like death," Tora muttered, pulling her scarf tighter.
"Perfect bait," Dev said. "How do we lure one in?"
They gathered in a tight circle. Carla flipped through the pages again. "The old survivor coated a carcass in his own blood to draw it in. Then waited."
"That's comforting," Petra said, crossing her arms. "Anyone wanna volunteer as tribute?"
"No need for that," Caleb said. "We have one of the old bones from the last kill. Still has the creature's blood. That might work."
They rigged a trap with spears, old sharpened poles, and salvaged steel from the ruined camp. The pit became a killing zone. All they needed now was a beast to take the bait.
The wait stretched into hours. The group took turns on watch, rotating out in tense silence. The little girl dozed beside Alya, her face peaceful despite the terror outside. At one point, she stirred and mumbled something.
"What is it?" Alya whispered.
"The thing with no face," the girl murmured.
"What?"
But she was already asleep again.
Just after dusk, a sound snapped through the woods—crackling, crunching. Not one, but many. Caleb signaled everyone into position. They hid behind fallen logs, behind jagged bark, behind silence.
A low chittering rose from the undergrowth. Then came the silhouette—long limbs, joints bending wrong, a mouth like a shattered lantern, blinking with rows of inner fangs. It crept forward, sniffing, twitching.
The creature leapt—and plunged directly into the trap.
Impaled.
It screeched, writhing, the sound so high it made the survivors' ears bleed. Carla clutched her head. Dev rushed forward, spear in hand, driving it through the creature's skull.
It twitched.
Then stopped.
Panting. Silence. Then a cheer.
They had killed another.
Later, around the fire, tension finally broke.
"We need a name for them," Petra said, staring into the flames.
"The creatures?" Caleb asked.
"Yeah."
"I've been calling them Rav'nar in my head," Dev said.
The others looked at him.
"It's stupid. Just... sounded right."
Caleb smiled faintly. "It fits."
"Rav'nar," Petra repeated. "Sounds like something from an old nightmare."
Carla tossed another log onto the fire. "Let's hope they stay in our nightmares."
But no one believed that.