Chapter 4: The Descent

Dawn came gray and cold, the wind still howling across the exposed clifftop with relentless fury. Alex had barely slept, spending most of the night feeding the fire and watching Sam's motionless silhouette against the starlit void. His friend hadn't moved from his position at the cliff's edge—hadn't spoken, hadn't acknowledged Alex's increasingly desperate attempts at conversation.

But as the first pale light crept across the rocky plateau, something shifted. Sam blinked slowly, like someone waking from a deep sleep, and turned his head toward Alex with an expression of dawning confusion.

"Alex?" Sam's voice cracked with exhaustion. "What... where are we?"

Relief flooded through Alex so powerfully it made him dizzy. "Sam! Thank God. Are you okay?"

Sam looked around the windswept campsite, his face creasing with bewilderment. "I feel like I've been dreaming. But I can't remember... why are we up here? This isn't where Cal planned for us to camp."

The mention of Callie's name seemed to trigger something in Sam's memory. His eyes widened with sudden horror.

"Cal," he whispered. "Where's Callie? I remember... she was acting strange, and then..." He pressed his hands to his temples. "God, my head feels like it's full of cotton. What happened to her?"

Alex had never been so grateful to hear someone else acknowledge reality. "She disappeared the first night. Walked toward the river and never came back. And Blake..." The words stuck in his throat. "Blake's gone too."

"What do you mean gone?"

Alex gestured toward the cliff edge where Blake had made his final, impossible step. "Last night. He was acting manic all day—drove us up here at a killing pace, insisted on camping right at the edge. Then in the middle of the night he just... walked off."

Sam stared at the precipice with growing comprehension and terror. "Walked off? You mean he fell?"

"No." Alex's voice was barely above a whisper. "He walked. Deliberately. Like he wanted to."

The two friends sat in stunned silence, the weight of their situation settling over them like a physical thing. Three days ago they'd been four college students heading out for a fun weekend in the wilderness. Now half their group was gone, vanished under circumstances that defied rational explanation.

"We have to get help," Sam said finally. "We have to tell someone."

"Tell them what? That our friends disappeared because some invisible force made them?" Alex laughed bitterly. "They'll think we're insane. Hell, I'm starting to think I'm insane."

"Then what do we do?"

Alex looked down at the valley far below, where the river wound its silver path through the trees. Even from this distance, even in daylight, there was something wrong about the water. It moved too smoothly, caught the light in ways that hurt to look at directly.

"We go back," he said. "We go back to where it started."

Sam followed his gaze and shuddered. "The river."

"Whatever's happening to us, that's where it began. Callie was drawn there first. And last night, Blake couldn't stop staring down at it." Alex stood and began breaking down his tent with sharp, angry movements. "If we're going to find answers—if we're going to find them—that's where we need to look."

"Alex, I don't think that's a good idea. If something down there is... is doing this to people..."

"Then what? We just leave them?" Alex's voice cracked with emotion. "We just go home and tell everyone our friends wandered off? That we don't know what happened to them?"

Sam was quiet for a long moment, staring at his own hands. When he spoke again, his voice was small and frightened. "I can barely remember yesterday. It's like someone else was living in my head. Making my decisions, speaking with my voice. What if it happens again?"

"Then we watch out for each other. We stay alert. We don't let whatever this is get its hooks in us again."

They packed their gear in heavy silence, both acutely aware of how much lighter their loads had become. Callie's pack still sat where she'd left it at their first campsite. Blake's gear was scattered around their current site—his tent, his sleeping bag, his carefully organized supplies that would never be needed again.

The descent began treacherously. The trail that had seemed challenging but manageable on the way up revealed itself as genuinely dangerous when approached from above. Loose scree shifted underfoot, and more than once Alex found himself grabbing for handholds as the path crumbled beneath his boots.

But it wasn't just the physical danger that made the journey harrowing. With each step downward, Alex felt an increasing sense of wrongness, as if they were walking directly into the mouth of something vast and hungry. The trees seemed to press closer around the trail, their branches reaching out like grasping fingers. The air grew thick and oppressive, carrying scents that didn't belong in any normal forest—salt water where there should be pine, the humid smell of decay where everything should be green and growing.

Sam felt it too. Alex could see it in the way his friend's shoulders hunched forward defensively, the way his eyes darted constantly between the trees as if expecting something to emerge from the shadows.

"Do you hear that?" Sam asked when they'd been hiking for about an hour.

Alex paused and listened. Beneath the normal sounds of wind and rustling leaves, there was something else—a low, rhythmic murmuring that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once.

"The river," Alex said.

"No, it's... it's like voices. Like people talking, but I can't make out the words."

The murmuring grew stronger as they descended, and with it came an almost magnetic pull—a subtle but insistent urge to leave the trail, to push through the underbrush toward the source of that compelling sound. Alex found himself having to consciously resist the impulse, his feet wanting to carry him in directions his rational mind knew were dangerous.

"Stay on the path," he muttered, as much to himself as to Sam. "Whatever happens, we stay on the path."

But staying on the path became increasingly difficult as the day wore on. The trail itself seemed to shift subtly when they weren't looking directly at it, developing new branches that definitely hadn't been there on the way up. More than once, Alex found himself following what appeared to be the main route only to realize they were heading in completely the wrong direction.

"This doesn't make sense," Sam said during one of their frequent stops to consult Callie's map. "According to this, we should have reached the stream crossing an hour ago. But I don't remember passing any stream."

Alex studied the carefully marked route, trying to reconcile it with their actual surroundings. The landmarks Callie had noted—distinctive rock formations, trail junctions, elevation changes—seemed to have rearranged themselves in the night.

"Maybe we took a wrong turn," he suggested, though he didn't believe it. They'd been following the same path they'd climbed the day before. There was no way they could have gotten lost on such a simple route.

"Or maybe the trail changed," Sam said quietly.

The possibility hung between them like a physical thing. If the landscape itself was shifting around them, if the very ground they walked on couldn't be trusted, then they were in far more danger than Alex had realized.

As afternoon faded toward evening, they finally heard the sound of running water through the trees. Both men broke into a relieved run, crashing through the underbrush toward the familiar noise. After hours of feeling lost and disoriented, the promise of finding the river—their original landmark—felt like salvation.

But when they broke through the tree line, Alex's relief curdled into fresh terror.

They were back at their original campsite.

The fire ring where they'd sat three nights ago was exactly as they'd left it, down to the arrangement of stones around the cold ashes. The flat area where they'd pitched their tents still bore the rectangular impressions of their sleeping quarters. And there, sitting precisely where she'd abandoned it, was Callie's pack—untouched, undisturbed, as if she'd simply stepped away for a moment and would return any second.

"That's impossible," Sam breathed. "We climbed for hours yesterday. We were miles from here."

Alex walked slowly around the familiar clearing, his mind struggling to process what he was seeing. The spatial relationships made no sense. They'd hiked upward for an entire day, following a clearly marked trail that led steadily away from the river. Yet somehow, by following the same trail downward, they'd ended up exactly where they'd started.

"It's like a maze," he said finally. "A maze that leads wherever it wants us to go."

Sam had moved to stand near Callie's abandoned pack, staring down at it with an expression of growing dread. "Alex," he said softly. "If we're back here... if this is where it all started..."

Alex felt it too—that familiar pull toward the tree line, toward the sound of moving water just beyond the screen of pine and oak. The murmuring he'd been hearing all day was louder now, more distinct, almost forming words in a language he didn't recognize but somehow understood.

"We should make camp," he said quickly. "Get a fire started. Stay in the light."

But even as he spoke, he could see Sam's attention drifting toward the trees. His friend's expression was becoming vacant again, that terrible empty look creeping back across his features.

"Sam," Alex said sharply. "Look at me. Stay focused."

Sam blinked and shook his head, but Alex could see the effort it took. Whatever force had claimed Callie and Blake was still here, still hungry, still patient. It had simply guided them back to its domain, like a spider drawing flies into its web.

And now they were exactly where it wanted them to be.

The sun was setting, painting the forest in shades of red that looked too much like blood. Soon it would be dark again, and Alex was beginning to understand that darkness was when the thing in the river grew strongest.

He looked at Sam's increasingly distant expression, at Callie's pack waiting like a monument to the friends they'd already lost, at the tree line that beckoned with promises he knew were lies.

For the first time since this nightmare began, Alex truly understood that they might not make it home.