When we entered the passage, the first thing I noticed was how the chain of ravines seed far larger on the inside than it ever did from the outside. Stone walls rose around us, tall and oppressive. Above, an unbroken fog hung in the air, too dense to allow any glimpse of what lay overhead; everything vanished into a dull, silent white.
Unfortunately, that only made everyone more on edge. We had no idea when or how sothing might appear, whether it would co from ahead, from behind us, from the narrow corridor we were moving through, or even down the slopes of the ravine walls.
The deeper we went, the less it felt like turning back was even possible. I don’t know if the others felt the sa way... personally, I doubt it. With one exception, of course: Victor.
From ti to ti, he cast long, heavy looks over his shoulder. And it was in those monts that I felt it. Sothing behind us was moving. Not footsteps, not wind, but the passage itself.
The stone walls seed to silently rearrange, tightening for a mont, as if the ravine were breathing, alive, aware of our presence.
It was a subtle sensation, almost impossible to prove... but enough to make understand that with every step forward, the way back was becoming less and less possible.
I wasn’t actually seeing what was happening, no matter how hard I strained my eyes. I was moving through a deeper section already swallowed by the fog, a thick curtain my vision simply couldn’t cut through. All I knew was that sothing, without a doubt, was underway.
All I could hear were strange sounds: stones being dragged from one place to another, sotis so faint they seed aningless, almost imagined, other tis so loud it felt as though the ravine itself were alive, like so ancient monster shifting its massive body in the bowels of the earth every few minutes.
As I drifted in my thoughts, staring upward at the ravine towering above us, Rupert broke the silence with a sigh and said in a visibly weary tone: “How long have we been walking?”
Arthur answered. He was studying the surroundings with restrained curiosity. I could’ve sworn there was sothing different about his monocles... of course, aside from the fact that they themselves were already anomalies: “I’m not sure” he said after a brief pause: “Maybe around thirty minutes? Sorry, I stopped counting after that noise we heard a few minutes ago” He tilted his head slightly.
Rupert shrugged, putting on an almost convincing air of indifference, as if it didn’t matter in the slightest. Before the silence could stretch again, another voice cut in, one of the reaction team mbers: “Actually, it’s been about thirty-seven minutes and twenty-seven seconds... twenty-eight now”
Everyone turned to look at him. Despite the helt, I recognized him by his voice. He had a distinctly nerdy look, the kind of person you imagine behind a lab desk: simple-frad glasses, a slightly hunched posture, and an air that felt more academic than combat-ready.
Honestly, he seed far more like a scientist than a mber of an anomaly response team, no offense, of course. On top of that, his build wasn’t exactly athletic. He didn’t look fragile, like a walking skeleton, but he definitely wouldn’t be a top contender if he ever decided to compete in the Olympics.
Noticing all the eyes on him, the man lifted his shoulders in a casual shrug: “What? I figured it might be useful at so point”
Setting aside our earlier conversation, we kept moving forward along the narrow path, not that we had much of a choice. The stone walls seed to be closing in around us, forcing us to proceed in single file, step by step.
And the deeper we went, the stronger that feeling beca: we were close... very close to my sister. But, ironically, the closer we seed, the farther away our destination felt.
The path ahead gave the impression of stretching on endlessly, as if it would never end, almost as though she were always just a few steps ahead, out of reach.
At tis, I had the strange sense that the trail, once so tight, was starting to widen, not in space, but in distance. Maybe that doesn’t make much sense. Still, that was exactly how it felt: close enough to almost touch her... and at the sa ti, far too distant to reach her.
I wasn’t sure exactly when it started, but I began to feel faint tremors beneath my feet. At first they were so subtle that no one but seed to notice them. Still, they didn’t stop, on the contrary, they gradually grew stronger, as if sothing... soone... sothing was slowly drawing closer to where we were.
When small stones began to break loose from the walls and roll across the ground, the others finally realized that sothing was wrong. We kept moving, but now their eyes were fixed on the ravine above, tracking every shadow and every crack of rock, curiosity and confusion written across their faces.
Then Victor stopped. I was the first to notice, followed by Rupert, then Arthur, and finally the mbers of the anomaly response team. One by one, everyone turned to him.
Victor stood motionless in the middle of the path, his shoulders slightly tense, his face angled downward as if he were staring at sothing invisible on the ground. There was unease in his expression, an uneasiness that was hard to put into words.
“Do you feel that?” he murmured, his voice low, almost swallowed by the silence around us.
It ca out barely above a whisper, yet still loud enough for those of us nearby to hear. At once, everyone fell silent, frozen in place, as if the very air had stiffened around us. Each of us strained to catch whatever it was Victor might have noticed.
I did the sa, though technically I already knew what was happening. Just as I’d expected, the small stones scattered across the ground began to tremble and hop, clicking dryly as they bumped into one another, as if sothing large and heavy were slowly approaching our position.
The vibration was subtle but constant, traveling through the ground and up through my feet. I wasn’t the only one who felt it. Low murmurs, full of unease and dawning understanding, began to ripple through the group. Whatever was causing it, it was coming straight for us.
***
(POV – Victor Hale)
At first, it was only sothing faint, a pressure at the back of Victor’s mind, warning him that sothing was wrong, though he couldn’t tell what. All he knew was that the uncomfortable feeling had begun to close in on him minutes after they slipped between the canyons.
The air felt heavier, and a chill ran down his spine like a silent warning. Every instinct scread that anywhere would be better than this place, that if they went on, they might never co back.
And now? Victor, as always, had the nagging certainty that he should have listened to his instincts. Instincts that weren’t rely intuition, but an anomalous ability, one that had saved him from near-certain death more than once.
Because of that ability, Victor had avoided situations that were clearly bad, problems far beyond his own strength. And yet, here he was again, cornered by his own choices.
Victor hated to admit it, but over the past few months his missions had been growing more dangerous, more unpredictable. And now, with his heart racing and the uneasy sense that sothing had gone wrong, he knew it: his instincts had tried to warn him.
The sounds were getting louder, closer. The tremors, once sporadic, now ca in short, steady waves, making the ground vibrate beneath his feet.
Victor lifted his gaze, following his instincts, and turned toward the anomaly that was with them. It stood motionless, rigid as a statue, staring at sothing behind him, toward the upper canyons, where the rock seed to shudder, as if sothing were moving inside the mist.
Without thinking, Victor turned to the exact spot it was watching. There was nothing there, at least nothing his eyes could make out.
Still, he was absolutely certain he had seen sothing: a slight distortion in the fog, as if the air itself had bent for a mont, a movent almost imperceptible above them.
He couldn’t say what it was. And, to be honest with himself, he didn’t want to know. He felt no curiosity about discovering it. All Victor understood was simple and instinctive: it was dangerous.
The instant he beca aware of the anomaly, his senses reacted before his mind could form any thought. Sothing inside him shouted a single word, short, clear, unavoidable. The sa word he was already thinking.
Without a second thought, Victor sucked in as much air as he could and shouted at the top of his lungs: “Run!”
As if answering Victor’s thunderous cry, sothing above, sothing he couldn’t see, roared. It wasn’t just a sound: it was a brutal, overwhelming roar, with a frequency so intense it made his chest vibrate from the inside, as if the air were being compressed against his very bones.
There was sothing in it that was strangely hard to describe: it resembled the deep song of a whale, yet at the sa ti the tallic groan of a massive vessel tearing through open sea and plunging into the silence of the ocean. The sound seed to spread through the space around them, warping the air itself.
But in the end, no matter how hard he tried to compare it to anything he knew, Victor found a far more honest description. It wasn’t just bizarre. It was terrifying, a noise utterly incompatible with anything he had ever heard on Earth, as if it belonged to sothing that simply should not exist in that world.
The rocks around them began to shake as the thing, whatever it was, drew closer. Fragnts of stone broke loose from the cliffs, and larger chunks plunged into the abyss as that presence clung to the canyon walls, advancing slowly and relentlessly toward Victor and his companions.
None of them needed a second order or a single word. At once, hurried footsteps and the tallic chorus of armor rang across the ground as they all bolted forward, trying to put as much distance as possible between themselves and the thing that pursued them without rcy, whatever it truly was, dragging itself through the mist just behind them.
“What the hell is that thing?!” Rupert shouted at the top of his lungs, not even daring to look back as he ran.
“Does it matter?!” Victor yelled back, forcing his legs beyond their limit. The uneven ground sent sharp bursts of pain through his legs, and behind them the sounds were getting closer and closer, sothing heavy, dragging... and hungry: “It’s definitely not friendly. And it wants to eat us alive!”
Victor had no idea what it was. He didn’t care to find out, either. All he knew was that the thing was hunting them, driven by a cruel instinct, ready to tear them apart, or do sothing just as horrific.
And more than anything else, one truth hamred in his mind: he wasn’t going to stand there and wait to see what would happen if it caught him.
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