Chapter Seven:
The jungle breathed.
Not in a metaphorical sense—but in the way leaves rustled without wind, the air thickened with whispers, and the ground pulsed faintly beneath their boots as though the island itself exhaled.
Eliot moved cautiously, machete in hand, parting the dense, dew-glazed foliage. Behind him, the rest of the crew followed in silence, each person haunted by the memory of the fog and the voice that had echoed just before they made landfall.
No one mentioned it. Not aloud. But their eyes betrayed them. They had all heard it.
"It feels… wrong," Mara muttered, brushing away a vine that clung too tightly to her sleeve. "The jungle—it listens."
"I'd say it remembers," Eliot replied, voice hushed. "And it doesn't forget."
Not far into their trek, the group stumbled upon the first sign.
A rusted compass. Half-buried in the soil, its glass cracked, and the needle still spinning erratically. Eliot bent down and picked it up, rubbing the dirt from its surface. The initials C.H. were etched into the back.
"This isn't ours," he said flatly.
"How old do you think it is?" asked Rowan.
"Too old," Mara answered before Eliot could. "We were never the first."
As if summoned by her words, the jungle around them seemed to tighten. The trees grew thicker, casting deeper shadows. And then, the voices started again—barely audible, like a chorus of memories caught in the leaves.
Eliot froze. So did everyone else.
"…run…"
"…turn back…"
"…they're watching…"
Each whisper came from a different direction. No two were alike, and none seemed fully human.
They pressed on, unnerved but drawn deeper, until the trees parted suddenly to reveal a clearing. At its center stood a makeshift camp—tents worn by time, pots blackened by ancient fire, and a notebook lying open on a moss-covered rock.
Eliot approached cautiously. He flipped the water-stained pages.
Drawings. Maps. Notes scrawled in panic.
> "The voices know our names."
"We found a temple. One of us didn't return."
"The trees moved last night."
"We can't leave. Something won't let us."
And then one final line, underlined over and over again:
"This island remembers every soul that touches it."
The page was torn beneath the ink.
Silence fell again—deep, suffocating.
Suddenly, Rowan gasped. "Look!" he pointed at the trees just beyond the clearing.
Carved into the bark, faded and weathered, were names. Dozens of them. Some scratched in desperation. Others calmly etched. Some they recognized from the journal. One of them was Eliot's.
But he had never been here before.
He stared, heart pounding. The letters were unmistakable: E L I O T.
Mara backed away. "This isn't just memory. It's prophecy."
The air dropped several degrees. Somewhere deeper in the jungle, a slow, dragging sound began. Footsteps that didn't belong to any of them.
The crew didn't speak. They simply turned and prepared to move again—deeper still—chasing answers, haunted by echoes that blurred the line between past, present, and what was yet to come.
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