At first light, they returned to the place where the screams had died.
One soldier swore he remembered seeing the final glow of a torch there the night before. Now, there was only silence—thick, suffocating silence, as if the jungle itself was watching them intrude.
Blood stained the giant ferns in wide, violent arcs, still dark and wet despite the pale morning mist clinging to the ground. Leaves were torn and bent inward, pointing toward a narrow passage in the undergrowth. There was no body. Only a shredded blue sleeve, half-buried in the mud, and a long, uneven trail where something heavy had been dragged away with purpose.
The jungle had not merely killed the man—it had claimed him. All that remained was the sharp, metallic scent of copper and the deep, unmistakable four-toed prints of the beast that now owned what was left of his soul.
