Sarah Bennett crouched low and studied the ferns behind her. A wide, crushed path cut through the brush, marking every step she had taken since sunrise. She had come into this valley on a stupid dare, and now she needed to leave it alive. The trail she was leaving made that harder. Something heavy was moving in the brush behind her. She could hear branches snap maybe a hundred yards back. Whatever it was, it was following the broken ferns straight to her. Then she smelled it — sweet, floral, wrong out here. The small glass bottle in her pack had cracked. Perfume soaked the canvas and dripped down her leg. She was leaving a scent trail a child could follow. Sarah stripped off the pack and shoved it deep under a rotten log. She wiped her leg with dirt and leaves. Up the slope, she spotted a dark opening in the rock — a cave mouth half-hidden by stone. She climbed fast, stepping only on stones so her boots left nothing. Inside the cave, the air felt cold and still. She pressed against the wall and listened. The snapping branches passed below, paused near the log, then moved off toward the broken perfume. Her trick had worked. But when she turned, her hand brushed something flat and hard on a ledge — a thick book bound in dark leather, silver symbols catching the last gray light. She was not the first person to hide in here.

Sarah held the book in both hands. The silver symbols on the cover seemed to shift when she looked too long. She needed to know what it was before she stayed another minute in this cave. The wrong choice here could call something to her. She opened the cover. A small skull slid out and clacked onto the stone floor. It was the size of her fist, stained dark red around the eye sockets, the bone dry but the color still wet-looking. Tucked under it was a folded page. The same silver symbols crawled across every line. She could not read one of them. Sarah set the skull down and stepped back. Her boot knocked something soft. She turned and saw what she had missed in the dark — a ring of blackened stones, ash inside, and a thick pile of leaves shaped like a bed. Someone had lived in here. Long enough to sleep. Long enough to leave. She crouched by the ash and pressed her fingers in. Cold. Days old, maybe more. Whoever had camped here had not come back. She thought about why. The book. The skull. The symbols they could not destroy and could not take. She crept to the cave mouth and looked out. Beside the entrance, half-swallowed by moss, stood a small wooden sign hammered into the dirt. The carved letters were faded but clear enough. Positively Do Not Enter. The person who left the book had known. They had tried to warn the next fool down the path. Sarah backed inside and wrapped the book in her jacket, skull and all. She would not read what she could not understand. She would not sleep in a dead person's bed. The cave was no shelter — it was a trap someone had already sprung. She tightened the bundle, picked her steps, and slipped out into the dusk to find somewhere the silver symbols could not follow.