Day 5.
We don't know how far behind the line we are anymore. Our map says we're somewhere between the ruins of Nueva Lucena and a collapsed highway. But the map may as well be a painting. The trees don't grow right anymore. Some of them pulse at night.
We were Echo Team six men and women tasked with field recon in Sector D7. Standard mission: confirm loss of contact with Forward Post 23, retrieve intel, extract.
But the outpost was gone. Just gone. The ground was black and peeled like burnt skin. There were drag marks in the dirt, and bones we couldn't identify. Not animal. Not human.
We've been moving west ever since. Waiting for extraction.
There is none.
Day 7.
Mendez cracked two nights ago. We found him whispering to something in the dark some warped thing hunched in the brush with too many legs and no eyes. We dragged him away, but he kept mumbling:
"It sees without looking. It smells memory."
He shot himself the next morning. The noise brought one of them.
We never saw it clearly. It moved through the treetops like a snake with joints. Simmons fired two magazines into it. It bled green.
But we all agreed not to go near the corpse.
By nightfall, it was gone.
Day 9.
Rations down to protein tabs and boiled moss. Corporal Diaz swears something's following us always ten steps behind. She calls it "the Stiltman." Says she saw it bent over backward like its spine was a bow, fingers dragging through the dirt.
She's stopped sleeping. We all have.
The jungle is… wrong. The leaves grow in spiral patterns. The birds are silent. The wind sometimes speaks but only when no one's listening directly.
There's something building nearby. We found remnants: bones carved like sigils, spiderwebs made from what looks like dried skin, and a pit lined with soft, twitching roots.We think it's a nest.
Day 10.
They took Simmons. One moment he was watching our rear. Next moment, gone. No scream. Just his rifle, resting on the ground, barrel melted like wax.
We didn't go back for him. We couldn't.
Diaz tried to radio command again. All she got was static and a single voice on repeat:
"This is not their world anymore. You do not belong here."
She smashed the radio after that.
Day 12.
We are three now.
I don't know what we're running from anymore.We haven't seen the sun in two days. Just endless twilight and thick, green mist.
Every trail loops. Every path leads to the same clearing where there are fresh footprints. Ours. Over and over. Like something is herding us.
Private Nguyen swears one of the trees turned to look at her.She's not wrong.
Day 13. Final Entry.
There's no getting out. This place isn't a jungle. It's a womb.It breeds them.
We finally saw one truly saw it. It stood on six legs. Two arms. A face split in four directions. Its chest opened like a flower when it saw us. Inside… were eyes. Human eyes.
We ran. It didn't chase. It didn't have to.
It knows we're not going anywhere.
I write this from a cave of bone and black moss. My skin itches where it touched the spores. I think I'm changing. I feel calm now. Hungry, but calm.
If anyone finds this, remember:
Hyperion doesn't hunt you out of rage. It waits. It absorbs. You become useful… eventually.