The forest was quieter now, but not peaceful. Every step Marla and Andrew took felt heavier than the last, weighed down by the oppressive humidity and the knowledge that the horrors of the tear were still watching. Garrison led the way with practiced caution, scanning the canopy and listening to the vibrations of the earth beneath their boots.“Stay low,” he whispered. “The predators don’t just patrol the ground. The flyers are patient. They wait.”
Marla’s heart pounded in her chest. Every shadow seemed to flicker, every rustle of leaves magnified. The distant calls of dinosaurs—the thunder of massive feet and the piercing cries of winged hunters—made the ground vibrate with fear.
Suddenly, Garrison halted, motioning them to the ground. Marla crouched, her breathing shallow. Ahead, the forest floor was littered with bones—gnawed fragments of vertebrae, cracked skulls, and ribcages. Some were fresh; some ancient. The smell of decay was thick, clinging to the damp ferns.
Andrew swallowed hard. “How is this place still alive?”
Garrison shook his head. “It isn’t. Not really. It’s survival against survival. Only the clever or the lucky survive more than a day here.”
Then the ground trembled, softly at first. Marla froze.
A shadow passed above them—huge wings blotting out the crimson sky. The Quetzalcoatlus had returned. It circled, searching, sensing. Its shriek echoed through the trees, cutting through the heavy air like a blade.
Suddenly, a low growl rumbled from the underbrush nearby. The long-necked dinosaurs they had seen earlier were being hunted. A tyrannosaur emerged, its massive head swinging side to side as it stalked unseen prey. Its amber eyes caught the sunlight in flashes of lethal intelligence.
Garrison whispered, “We can’t stay here. We have to move through the lower valley. Faster, but quieter.”
Marla glanced back at the shimmering tear they had passed earlier. Its edges pulsed faintly, reminding her of the unnatural horrors they had glimpsed—creatures that shouldn’t exist. If that thing followed them… there was no escaping alive.
As they pressed on, the forest became darker, denser. Every footstep could trigger a predator’s attention. The cries of distant dinosaurs were punctuated by sudden splashes—prey caught, dragged, devoured. Marla felt a chill crawl down her spine.
Then a scream rang out—human this time. A sound that froze her in place.
“Someone else?” she whispered.
Garrison shook his head. “No. Not anyone from your time. Something else… something that came through the tear.”
The leaves rustled violently behind them. Something moved with terrifying speed, snapping branches and trampling ferns. They ran, hearts pounding, slipping over mud, barely avoiding roots. Above, the Quetzalcoatlus’s shadow circled like death in the sky, waiting.
And in the distance, a roar that wasn’t natural split the air—a predator that dwarfed even the tyrannosaur, moving with a terrifying grace.
Marla screamed, clutching Andrew’s hand. There was no choice: run or die.
Source: Some or all of the content was generated using an AI language model
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