1 Chapter One

Mark's muscles burned with exhaustion. He had been running down the dark, twisted corridors for hours. Whatever had been hunting him seemed to momentarily have lost interest in him and he took this opportunity to rest. He bent over and rested his hands on his upper thighs panting then leaned against a cold, clammy cobblestone wall. Was he the only one who had lasted this long? He had lost track of the others half-way through the chase. He had gotten separated from Derek, Samantha, and Terrance.

Him and his wife had gone camping in the mountains with their friends. This particular stretch of mountains was part of a National Park. The friends had all agreed that it was the perfect weekend get-away, they could never have imagined the horror that awaited them there.

They had set up camp next to a mountain creek, and the first night had seemed like a normal night in the woods. It wasn't until the second day that they knew something was off. When they emerged from their tents, they realized their camp had been destroyed in the night. That wasn't the worst part though, their friend Derek's wife Amanda was missing too.

Derek was in a pure panic, he knew something very bad had happened. They all did. The blood trail and drag marks only solidified their suspicions. Derek had pleaded with his friends to help him find Amanda. The friends agreed to help look for her, but they were terrified of what they might find if they found her.

They first searched the area calling out Amanda's name to no avail. They decided against their better judgment to follow the drag marks, and realized that the drag marks led them straight into a much darker and deeper part of the woods. The blood trail is what brought them to the entrance of the cave. They debated on leaving and going for help but Derek pleaded with the group to look with him inside the cave.

After entering the darkness of the cave, they realized they were being hunted. It was a clear trap that had been set up by whatever had destroyed their camp and dragged Amanda off. It wasn't long until they found what was left of Amanda, and when they heard the shrieking from behind them in the darkness of the cave entrance, they panicked.

At some point during the panic, Mark and his wife Myka had gotten separated from the group, and Mark had watched to his horror as the love of his life was brutally slaughtered and devoured in front of him. Myka..

Mark slid down the wall and buried his face in his hands as he started to cry trying desperately to get the image of her brutal end out of his head. He didn't want to think about what might have happened to their friends. Myka's screams still echoed in his head.

Was everyone dead but him? Had they met the same fate as Myka. Mark's head spun. He smashed his fist into the icy concrete of the floor and the pain temporarily brought a distraction from the fear and anxiety he was feeling. He knew he would probably never see his friends again, probably never get out of whatever depth of hell they had wandered into.

He tried to calm himself after the pain in his fist turned from agony to a dull throb but he couldn't help the sense of dread he had felt since the group had stumbled upon the entrance to whatever this was. In fact, he had felt dread even before that. The night they set up camp in the woods, he couldn't shake the feeling that something was lurking in the dark; stalking, waiting.

The hair on the back of his neck stood up as the corridor suddenly got as cold as death itself. He had already had this happen before, right before the beast killed his wife. The sense of dread he had turned into pure terror, and he managed to scramble to his feet. Tempted to run, he knew that if it had found him, it was already too late for him too, and that putting up a fight just makes the inevitable that much worse. He slumped back down the wall and curled into his knees shaking with fear as he cowered on the floor.

Then he saw a shadow skulking down the foggy, damp, frigid corridor. He knew what the shadow was. He knew it was, in fact, too late to run. He heard a low growl, then clicking. When he heard the clicking, he realized what the creature was doing. It was hunting by echolocation, like a bat. That meant its vision was probably especially poor. Still there was little chance he could outrun or escape it now as the shadow on the dimly lit walls grew.

Mark could not yet see it. It wasn't until it came around the end of the last twist of the corridor that the gravity of what was about to befall him resonated with him fully. It was too late, the beast had now caught his scent.

The beast stood at what he estimated to be 7 feet tall, it was large, scaly. Its skin looked almost reptilian. Although it looked humanoid, it wasn't human in the least. It had long legs that looked almost like a raptor's with 4 claws that made up its toes on each giant foot. It crouched close to the ground and moved on both its back legs and its forelimbs, much like how an ape carries itself at times. The creature's torso was large, muscular, also ape-like but fur-less, instead was plated with a natural form of hard exoskeleton-like plates.

It wasn't a bug, but its plating obviously served as a form of protection for its abdomen and insides. The plating was not smooth, it had spiny ridges, and on its back it also had spiny ridges, not sail-like but a clear adaptation for self-defense.

it had long arms, and long digits on large scaly grey hands that tapered into 4 razor-sharp claws. Mark knew the wounds these claws were capable of inflicting, not only because he had seen what they did to Myka, but also because before they discovered the portal, there had been several attacks in the park they had been camping in, the park where the entrance to this cruel dimension was located.

Mark hoped that if he held his breath the being would simply not realize he was there. He held his breath until his lungs began to burn. He watched the animal taste the air as a tongue slithered out of two large jaws filled with teeth more fearsome than a sharks. Two milky white blind eyes rolled around in their deep sockets. It could not see, but it knew.

The beast let out a fierce growl and despite Mark holding his breath, it suddenly turned in his direction. Mark knew it was blind but it seemed to stare through his very soul which sent the chill of death through all of his limbs. Before Mark could try to escape, or think about reacting, it was racing towards him like a freight train. All 600 lbs of muscle, scale, and bone was upon him in seconds as it pounced on him knocking him against the wall with a sickening thud before its forelimbs stood on his chest.

Before Mark could let out a scream its razor sharp claws were already tearing through the flesh of his chest and in one brutal move it ripped his heart out and held it inches away from his face. Blood gushed from the gaping hole in his chest and the last thing he saw before he slipped into nothingness was the beast devouring his own beating heart.