Clara’s boots crunched against the frost-coated forest floor, her lantern casting jittery light through the skeletal trees. She clutched a battered map, its edges greasy with sweat from her trembling hands. Greed gnawed at her—somewhere deep in these woods lay the abandoned Stillwater mine, rumored to hide veins of untouched gold. The whispers of fortune drowned out the earlier warning, the guttural croak of a raven circling her: “Leave the earth undisturbed.” She’d paused then, unease prickling her neck, but the hunger for wealth was louder.
The air thickened as she descended into the mine’s maw, stale and cloying, like dirt crammed into her nose and throat. The faint chiming of dripping water slowed her steps. Shadows loomed too large, twisting impossibly as her lantern wavered. Her heart drummed when her pick struck metal. Relief washed over her—gold, glinting gold. She exhaled shakily, laughing.
But her laughter choked as the ground beneath her groaned. Fingers of icy air slithered up her spine. She froze. A sound echoed—a scraping, not her own. The shadows pooled together, their distorted forms birthing something monstrous: a figure of earth and bone, eyes hollow voids, mouth yawning wide with hunger. The stench of rotting soil filled her lungs.
Her scream shattered the silence. The forest swallowed it whole.
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