The binoculars slipped from Alex's nerveless fingers, held from falling only by the strap around his neck. He stared out at the aspen tree, but he no longer needed magnification to see the new symbol. It was burned into his mind. A tower. A line scratched through it. His tower. His life.
He grabbed the radio microphone, his hand slick with sweat. "Elara," he said, his voice dry, rasping sound. "It came back. The tree."
"What about the tree?" she asked, her voice tight with anxiety. "Did it leave more marks?"
"It left a message," Alex said, the words tasting like ash. "It drew a picture of my tower... and it crossed it out."
The silence that followed was heavier than anything he had ever experienced. He could feel her terror across the thirty miles of wilderness, a cold wave that washed over the radio waves. When she finally spoke, her voice was a fragile whisper.
"That's not possible. Alex, animals can't do that."
"Then we're not dealing with an animal," he replied, the horrible truth of the statement settling deep in his gut. This was a monster from a nightmare, but it had the intelligence of a human. It was taunting him. It was telling him what it was going to do next.
The rest of the morning was a blur of fear. The sun climbed higher in the sky, but its warmth didn't reach Alex. The beautiful, sprawling forest he had fallen in love with now looked like an elaborate trap, an endless green maze with a monster at its center. He and Elara talked endlessly, their voices low and urgent. Every theory that they had was gone, replaced by a single terrifying fact: they were being hunted by something smart.
Around mid-morning, the main radio channel crackled to life again. The search for Ben Carter was resuming. Soon, the distant sound of helicopter blades returned, a reminder of a world operating on rules that no longer seemed to apply. the SAR teams were looking for a man who probably got lost or injured, while Alex and Elara knew the truth was infinitely more horrific. The chatter on the radio felt like a broadcast from another planet, full of procedures and protocols that were useless against a creature that could leave death treats carved in trees.
"We have to do something," Elara said, her voice filled with a new, steely resolve. "We can't just sit here and wait for it to follow through on its promise."
"Do what?" Alex asked, pacing the ten-foot span of his room. "We have nothing. I've got a flare gun and a small axe for firewood. What are we supposed to do with that?"
"What about your truck?" she pressed. "Where did Gus park it?"
"At the trailhead," Alex said, his heart sinking. "It's a two-hour hike from here, Elara. Through the woods. I'd never make it."
They spent the next hour brainstorming, their desperation growing with every dead end. Fortify two towers? The creature was strong enough to scrape metal. Signal for help? They had no emergency that anyone would believe. Every plan they made ended with the same conclusion: leaving the relative safety of their towers was a death sentence, but staying in them now felt like waiting for execution.
Alex stopped pacing and looked out the window again, down at the ground. At the base of his stairs. At the edge of the woods where the tracks were. Where the tree stood.
An idea began to form in his mind—a terrible, reckless idea born from sheer desperation. He couldn't fight it. He couldn't outrun it. But maybe, just maybe, he could understand it.
"I have to go down," he said quietly.
"What?" Elara's voice was sharp, alarmed. "Alex, no! Don't you dare. That's what it wants."
"I know it's what it wants," he said, his own voice surprising him with it's steadiness. The fear was still there, a cold, hard knot inside him, but now it was mixed with something else: anger. "It threatened me, Elara. it came to my home and put a target on my back. I'm not going to just sit up here and wait for it to kick in the door. I need to see those tracks up close. I need to see the symbols. I need to know what we're up against."
"It's too dangerous."
"Staying up here is dangerous," he countered "At least down there, I'm moving. I'm doing something."
"Alex, please," Elara begged. "Wait. Let's think of another way."
"There is no other way," he said, his hand resting on the cool metal bolt. "Keep the radio on. If you hear anything, you scream. And I mean you scream loud enough for the whole forest to hear you."
He didn't wait for her reply. He took a deep breath, slid the bolt open, and pushed the heavy door. It swung open with a groan, revealing the top of steel staircase and the vast, terrifying emptiness of the air below.