The map clearly marked the place as “safe,” which immediately made her suspicious. Lena had learned long ago that “safe” on hiking maps usually meant “someone hasn’t died here recently enough to update the legend.” Still, the trailhead looked normal enough. A small wooden sign. A worn path. Sunlight filtering through tall pines. Her brother had come this way last month. And never come back. She stepped onto the trail. At first, everything felt ordinary—the crunch of gravel, the whisper of wind through branches. But after an hour, she noticed something strange. She hadn’t seen a single animal. No birds. No insects. Nothing. Just the sound of her own footsteps. The path led her to a clearing. In the center stood a fire tower—old, rusted, leaning slightly to one side. A ladder climbed up its spine. Her brother loved heights. “Of course,” she murmured, and started climbing. At the top, she found his backpack. Untouched. Inside were his things—water bottle, snacks, notebook. The last page of the notebook had one sentence scribbled over and over: Don’t look down. Lena swallowed and turned— —and that’s when she saw it. The ground below wasn’t ground. It was moving. A slow, shifting surface, like thousands of bodies pressed together, breathing as one. Waiting. The tower creaked. Something below reacted to the sound. The mass stirred. Lena gripped the railing, heart pounding, realizing too late what the map had meant. Safe wasn’t for hikers. It was for whatever lived down there. In the end, the fire alarm worked perfectly; it just warned the wrong people.