Chapter 1
Day 1
The jungle doesn’t go silent until it’s already too late.
Carla hadn’t meant to wander—just a few steps off the trail, chasing a flash of red feathers high in the canopy. She turned once. Then again.
The guide’s voice thinned, swallowed by the trees. Her little brother’s laughter drifted away like smoke.
And then—nothing.
A silence so heavy, it pressed on her chest like a hand.
She stopped walking.
“Hello?” Her voice felt small—out of place in a jungle that suddenly seemed to hold its breath.
Nothing.
“Marco?” she called, half-joking, waiting for her little brother’s usual “Polo!” to echo back. It didn’t.
She turned in a slow circle. Just trees. Vines. A carpet of dead leaves crackling beneath her sneakers.
Her heartbeat picked up.
“Mom?” Louder this time. “Dad?” Her voice cracked. “Is this a joke?”
Still nothing.
She took a few shaky steps in the direction she thought the trail had been. But now every direction looked the same—green walls, twisting roots, no clear path. Just dense, watching wilderness.
“HELLO!” she shouted.
Birds scattered from the canopy above with a sharp burst of wings. A monkey screeched somewhere far off. But no human voice came back.
That’s when it hit her.
She was alone.
She started moving.
There wasn’t a path anymore, but one direction felt less tangled than the others, so she pushed toward it, brushing aside leaves slick with moisture. Her sneakers slipped on mossy roots. Vines caught her arms like fingers. Everything smelled damp and earthy, like wet bark and rotting fruit.
“It’s fine,” she muttered to herself. “It’s fine. I just need to loop around. I’m not that far.”
The trees grew closer together as she walked—tall, ancient things with trunks wider than bathtubs. Sunlight slashed through the canopy in patches, painting the ground in gold and shadow. But there was no trail. No voices. Only the hum of insects and the far-off rustle of something moving—always just beyond her sight.
She walked faster.
Then she started calling again. “Mom! Dad!” Her voice bounced back in fragments. “HELLO?”
Nothing.
She stopped and pulled her phone from her backpack, hands trembling. The screen lit up. 1% battery. No service. The little red bar stared back at her like a countdown.
“Oh my god,” she whispered. She held it up, spinning in a slow circle. Nothing. Just jungle. No towers. No hope.
She jabbed at the screen. “Come on, come on—please just work.” But it didn’t. The bars stayed empty, and her battery died mid-swipe. The screen went black.
“No,” she said, barely breathing now. “No, no, no—”
Panic surged up from her gut like bile. Her throat tightened. Her ears rang.
She turned around—tried retracing her steps—but the trees all looked the same now. Twisting. Smothering. The direction that felt right? It was gone. Swallowed. There was no right direction anymore.
The buzzing of insects grew louder, like a static cloud closing in. Sweat dripped from her forehead into her eyes. She blinked it away, chest heaving. Her shirt clung to her back. She didn’t even know how long she’d been walking.
“Someone!” she screamed, and this time it was a raw, cracking thing.
No one answered. Not even the birds.
She kept walking.
Branches scratched at her arms like claws. The air grew thicker—hotter—like she was breathing through a wet cloth. Her shirt clung to her, soaked through with sweat. Every step felt heavier, slower. Her legs were starting to shake, not from exhaustion, but from that dull, crawling dread that wouldn’t leave her chest.
The forest didn’t feel indifferent anymore.
It felt like it was watching.
Every now and then, something moved just outside her vision—quick rustles, flashes of color, the sudden, high screech of a bird taking off. She kept turning, expecting—hoping—to see a person, a path, even a warning sign.
Nothing.
And then—
She screamed.
Pain exploded up her right leg like fire. She stumbled backward, looked down—
Her foot was planted deep in a mound of earth that was swarming. Thousands of red ants surged up her ankle, over her sneaker, under the cuff of her jeans.
“NO—no no—!” She yanked her leg free, swatting wildly, but the ants clung to her skin like living needles. She ran, blind, tearing through underbrush, brushing her legs, her arms, feeling bites—sharp, burning pinpricks everywhere. Her breath came in ragged gasps. Branches whipped her face, thorns scraped her palms.
She finally collapsed against the base of a tree, slapping at her jeans, ripping them up past her knee. Welts were already rising across her calf, angry red and throbbing.
Tears sprang to her eyes—more from shock than pain.
She curled into herself, breathing hard, her whole body trembling. For a moment, there was only the sound of her ragged breathing and the distant thrum of the jungle. She wiped her face with the back of her hand and left a streak of dirt and sweat across her cheek.
“I’m not gonna die out here,” she whispered. “I’m not—I’m not—”
But even she didn’t sound convinced anymore.
She limped through the trees, gritting her teeth. Her calf throbbed where the ants had bitten her—dozens of swollen welts pulsing like tiny blisters, raw and burning. Her jeans were rolled up above the knee now, clumsily cuffed, streaked with mud and blood.
When she saw the tree stump, she moved toward it like a lifeline.
It was wide and low, the remains of a once-massive trunk, dark with moss and ringed by clusters of mushrooms. She sank onto it with a soft groan, wincing as she stretched out her leg. Her breathing came in short, shallow bursts. She peeled back the fabric of her sock and winced—the skin underneath was red, angry, dotted with tiny punctures.
She closed her eyes for a second. Just a second. Her fingers trembled as she pressed them against her forehead. She needed to think. She needed to calm down.
But then—
She felt it.
A subtle shift beneath her thighs. A faint, wet squirming.
Her eyes snapped open. She froze. The stump—something about it felt… softer than it should.
Another twitch. This time against her left leg, just under her.
She shot to her feet.
The top of the stump sagged inward slightly, like a sponge. Then, as if exhaling, the wood cracked open with a soft squelch.
Inside—maggots. Hundreds of them, pale and bloated, writhing in a pulpy nest of rot. The wood was hollowed out and alive with movement—larvae wriggled and pulsed in the decayed heart of the tree, like something breathing.
She stumbled backward, a strangled sound escaping her throat.
One larva clung to the back of her thigh. She slapped it off, gagging, bile rising into her mouth. The stench of decay hit her—sickly-sweet and warm.
She doubled over and vomited into the underbrush.
She stayed bent there for a moment, arms braced on her knees, trying to catch her breath.
The forest didn’t care.
She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, the taste of vomit and panic still in her throat. Her breath was shallow, each inhale shaky and too fast. The stump still writhed in the corner of her vision, the maggots twitching in their damp, rotting nest.
She turned away.
That’s when she heard it.
Crunch.
A footstep.
She froze. Her head jerked up.
Another soft crack of foliage, just ahead. Not an animal. Too deliberate. Too human.
“Hello?” she called out, voice cracking. “Is someone there?”
No answer. But she could hear it. Movement—closer this time. The shifting of weight, a body brushing through the underbrush.
She started walking—then walking faster.
Through a tangle of vines, she saw it: the faint silhouette of a figure. A person. Broad shoulders, short-cropped hair, shirt damp with sweat—just the back of them, about twenty feet ahead, turned away from her.
“Hey! HEY!” she screamed, stumbling forward. “Wait! Please—STOP!”
The figure didn’t turn. Didn’t answer.
She broke into a run, arms pushing branches aside, feet thudding against the ground.
“PLEASE, WAIT—”
Then the ground vanished beneath her.
The slope was sudden and steep—slick with wet leaves and moss-covered roots. Her foot hit nothing but air, and gravity yanked her forward. She tumbled, hit her side, rolled hard. Branches whipped her face. Something sharp tore at her shoulder. She couldn’t stop. Couldn’t breathe.
Down.
Down.
The world blurred into green and motion and pain until—
SPLASH.
She landed on her side in water. Shallow, but enough to knock the breath from her lungs.
Everything went quiet again.
She lay half-submerged in the muddy pool, her chest heaving, cheek pressed into the wet earth. The smell of stagnant water filled her nose. Her arm burned. Her ribs ached. Her jeans were soaked. Her backpack—gone, flung somewhere in the fall.
She coughed and rolled onto her back, blinking up at the patchy sky above the trees.
There was no figure. No voice. Just the slow, steady drip of water from leaves, and the growing sting of new cuts.
It hadn’t been a person. Or if it had… they were gone.
She lay there for a long moment, chest rising and falling, trying to remember how to breathe.
The water around her was murky, brown-green and lukewarm. Bits of leaf litter floated beside her. A beetle paddled in frantic circles across the surface. Her clothes clung to her like second skin, soaked through with mud and sweat.
Slowly, she pushed herself upright, wincing as pain flared in her ribs and shoulder. Her arm throbbed—probably bruised. A scrape ran along her elbow, raw and red, with flecks of grit embedded in the skin.
She looked around.
The jungle loomed on all sides, thick and unbroken. Trees towered above her, their trunks slick with moss and vines. Their canopy blocked most of the light, casting the lower forest in a dim, humid twilight. The air buzzed with insects—soft, constant, like background static.
She was in a kind of natural cove—a shallow inlet off a slow-moving river. The bay curved inward gently, like the jungle had scooped out a small bowl for her to land in. The water lapped at the muddy edge with soft, rhythmic sloshes.
Beyond the cove, the river continued east, winding out of sight around a bend. It was wide, maybe twenty feet across, its surface broken only by the occasional ripple of something swimming just beneath.
She wiped at her face with a shaky hand. Her fingers came away streaked with mud and blood. Her throat ached from shouting. Her lips were cracked. The heat pressed in again—thick and wet and smothering.
No sign of the figure.
No voices.
No trails.
Just water, trees, and the weight of silence.
She hugged her knees to her chest, trying not to cry, and dipped her hand into the water, rinsing the blood from her elbow. It stung, but she welcomed the pain—it made her feel present. Real.
Then she saw them.
Two shapes, just above the waterline.
Dark. Round. Unmoving.
Eyes.
Her breath caught.
They were low, far too low to be human, just breaking the surface like pebbles floating on still water. But they didn’t blink. Didn’t shift. Just stared.
Her stomach twisted.
The rest of it was submerged, but she could make it out now—the long, faint outline under the surface. Like a log. Like something sleeping. Still, except for the slow ripple fanning out from its body.
A crocodile.
Watching her.
She shot to her feet with a choked gasp, stumbling back from the water’s edge. Her bare heel slipped in the mud and she caught herself with her hands, smearing her palms. She scrambled up the slope of the inlet, not daring to look back.
Twigs snapped underfoot. Thorns scraped her calves as she pushed into the undergrowth, breathing hard, chest hitching with every breath.
She didn’t stop until she was well away from the water, crouched behind the thick base of a tree, the sounds of the river fading behind her. Her legs trembled beneath her.
She peeked around the trunk.
Nothing moved.
The cove looked exactly the same—still, quiet, empty. But those eyes were burned into her mind. Cold. Patient. Like it had been there long before she noticed. Like it knew she was weak.
She clenched her fists, trying not to fall apart again.
The jungle didn’t need to chase her.
It only had to wait.
