Charlotte lay on the canyon floor, her chest heaving, every muscle trembling. Miraculously, she was still in one piece. On the way down, a tangled web of thick roots and gnarled branches had snagged her mid-air, twisting and bending under her weight before finally letting her drop onto the rocky floor below. Darkness pressed in from all sides. The air was heavy and ancient, untouched by human presence for longer than memory could hold. It felt like a place forgotten on purpose.
Charlotte slowly opened her eyes. A soft groan escaped her lips as she brought a hand to her head, wincing as a dull ache pulsed through her skull. “Ugh… what happened?” she muttered, voice dry and shaky. She squinted into the dim fog, trying to piece things together. “Where am I…?” The canyon felt unfamiliar—dark, eerie.
Charlotte stilled. Something felt wrong. The pounding in her head wasn’t just pain—it had a rhythm. Heavy. Deliberate. The ground trembled beneath her. Realization crept in, cold and undeniable. Those weren’t echoes. They were footsteps.
A massive roar echoed through the canyon, shaking loose dust and small rocks from the cliffs above. Charlotte jolted fully awake, her breath catching as panic flooded in. She tried to move, but her body felt frozen for a moment. She saw something move in the distance, too large to be human. A scream tore out of her.
Ahead, the fog shifted, and a massive shape began to move toward her. Each heavy step sent a dull tremor through the ground, little puffs of dust lifting with every impact. A towering silhouette—broad, enormous, began marching towards her. Her mind recoiled, unable to fully accept what her eyes were seeing.
Then survival took over. Panic fueled her legs as Charlotte turned and ran. She sprinted through the fog, her white knee-high socks slipping against the uneven stone. Behind her, the canyon thundered with pursuit—heavy footsteps pounding closer, closer. She didn’t dare look back. Her lungs burned, heart screaming in her chest, every instinct focused on one desperate thought: run!
The canyon narrowed ahead, the towering rock walls squeezing inward into a tight passage barely wide enough for a person to slip through sideways. Charlotte veered toward it without thinking, scraping her shoulder against the stone as she forced herself into the narrow gap. The darkness closed in around her as she staggered through.
A massive hand lunged after her, fingers scraping violently against the rock. The passage shuddered as the cyclops tried to force its way in, but the stone held firm. The creature roared in fury, its frustration echoing through the canyon as its hand clawed uselessly at the narrow opening, unable to follow her any further.
Charlotte calmed down and looked around. Her heart sank. It was a dead end—sheer rock walls closing her in on every side, their tops disappearing into cloud and shadow. Climbing up would be impossible. She sat there in silence, waiting for the monster to leave, hoping it might lose interest. But it knew she was there—it could smell her—and it wasn’t going anywhere.
She closed her eyes and forced herself to think. She wouldn’t be able to outrun the monster. Fighting it seemed even more foolish. Then what?
There was one thing that always worked for her whenever she needed something. One thing no guy had ever managed to resist. It had made teachers look the other way, coaches bend the rules for her, classmates rush to do her favors without question. If anything could work, it would be that…
To be continued…