Hiker Vanished in Utah in 2009 — 14 Years Later, A Climber Finds His Phone With CHILLING Footage…

 

Adam Reyes disappeared on June 2nd, 2010, somewhere in the twisting labyrinth of Utah’s Maze District, a region so remote and unforgiving that even veteran park rangers referred to it as a “map of where not to go.” It was a place where sandstone cliffs rose like ancient monuments, where narrow slot canyons twisted in on themselves, and where a single misstep could erase you from the world without a trace. Adam knew the risks—he had been hiking these deserts for years, navigating remote canyons and hidden gullies, a backpack stuffed with survival gear and the kind of meticulous preparation that only came from obsessive attention to detail. Still, he vanished.

His last message to his sister, Mia, was brief but filled with a quiet foreboding: “Signals dying. One more slot canyon to explore. Back tomorrow.” That was it. He never returned. Rescue teams combed the sandstone maze for eleven days, moving slowly and methodically through tight, winding canyons, over sunbaked rock, across hidden alcoves where the desert seemed to fold in on itself. They found nothing. No gear, no footprints, no indication of a fall. No signs that could suggest what had happened. The desert had swallowed him completely, leaving behind only the vague, haunting sense of absence. For fourteen years, Mia lived in quiet torture, suspended in the cruel limbo between hope and despair. A disappearance is always more tormenting than a death. When someone dies, there is closure, a finality to grieve. A disappearance offers none of that. You mourn a life that might still exist somewhere, every shadow in the distance and every glint of light a potential false hope. Every time a water bottle, a boot, or a scrap of clothing appeared somewhere in the Canyonlands, Mia’s phone would light up, her heart racing, her body trembling with a hope she knew was probably misplaced.

And then, on October 18th, 2024, something happened that would shatter that uneasy suspension. Evan Marshall, an experienced climber from Salt Lake City, was descending a narrow sandstone chimney deep within the Maze District when he noticed something wedged impossibly far inside a crack, a shape that should not have been there. It took him a moment to process what he was seeing, a pause that can only happen in remote, tense wilderness, where every movement carries risk. He snapped a photo with his own device, then carefully climbed out of the precarious formation and drove forty miles to the nearest ranger station, where the real work could begin.

Rangers returned to the canyon with precise extraction equipment, moving with surgical care. The object was a phone. Adam’s phone. It was a sun-faded, sand-scarred 2010 model, cracked across the screen, grit packed into every seam. It was remarkable that it had survived at all. Exposure to sun, sand, and the brutal daily temperature swings of the desert usually reduced such devices to little more than dust in a matter of years. But this phone had endured, though not without a physical toll. Its battery was grotesquely swollen, the lithium-ion cells expanded into a bloated, almost grotesque balloon that distorted the chassis. Rangers described it as soft, egg-shaped, trying to tear the phone apart from within. Lithium-ion cells in desert heat do not survive intact—they vent, rupture, and leak. This one had clearly long since died a chemical death. Copper tabs were corroded green, layers of the laminate inside delaminated into powdery fragments.

The impossibility of powering it on was immediately obvious. Yet, wedged behind the decayed battery in its compartment was a micro SD card, undamaged and almost pristine. It wasn’t original to this model. Someone had added it later. Someone who had access to the phone long after Adam vanished, after it had become a technological husk. Evan handed the card to authorities, and within hours, the National Park Service requested assistance from digital forensics specialists.

The card arrived at the CBI digital forensics lab at precisely 2:12 p.m. Forensic analyst Lena Harwood logged it, but even before imaging, a sense of wrongness settled over her. The SD card was a 32 GB model from 2014—four years after Adam’s disappearance. Already impossible, already unnerving. She had to examine the phone itself first, assessing the chemical and physical damage with a microscope. The battery pouch was swollen to 320% of its original volume, with electrolyte crystals visible around the seams. Mild venting had clearly occurred decades before. The phone could not have been powered on since roughly 2012, at the latest. Any files on the micro SD card dated beyond that point could not have been created by Adam. Someone else had inserted them.

Lena carefully removed the battery, which crumbled like stale pastry, and cleaned corrosion from the internal reader slot. Once the SD card was secured in a write-blocker for imaging, she began the delicate process of recovery. The card contained one folder labeled DCIM. Inside were six video files: five dated June 2010, within the final days of Adam’s expedition, and one dated October 2016. Lena froze. A video six years after Adam vanished? Metadata confirmed it—someone had created this file using the phone’s directory structure, even though the device had been inert for years. Someone had recorded it elsewhere and slipped the card back into the dead phone.

The first video was disorienting: sand-strewn desert, Adam’s voice panting, whispering, “I think someone’s following me.” The camera wobbled violently, shadows passed across the sandstone above him, and then the footage glitched, cutting abruptly. The second file offered clarity: a smooth vertical wall of sandstone, carved with perfect horizontal steps every three feet. Too even, too deliberate to be natural. Adam’s whisper, fearful and low, described the structure as “These aren’t natural. Someone made these.”

But the sixth video, the one dated 2016, made Lena recoil. The recording appeared to have been captured inside a cavern lit by a flickering light source. The camera was propped on a rock, not held. A figure approached, robed, hooded, face obscured, whispering in a low, deliberate voice: “He wasn’t the first. He wasn’t the last. The canyon keeps what it’s owed.” Then darkness. The implication was unmistakable. Someone had possessed Adam’s phone for six years, long after the battery had failed, and recorded this cryptic message intentionally.

Lena’s breath caught as she explained the impossibility. The device could not have functioned in 2016. Any attempt to power it would have ignited the corroded battery. The only conclusion: someone removed the micro SD, recorded the video elsewhere, and returned it to the dead phone. It was a message, carefully hidden inside a relic of the desert, left for discovery in the maze of sandstone canyons.

She called Ranger Daniel Pierce and FBI agent Ryan Kesler to the lab. Together, they began to review the earlier footage, watching the second 2010 file again. Adam whispered about steps carved into sandstone, “These aren’t natural. Someone made these.” Pierce observed quietly, “Those aren’t park service carvings.” Kesler noticed another detail: a secondary, calm whisper beneath Adam’s panicked breaths. It echoed as if captured inside a confined cavern, a space unrecorded on any park map.

Lena pointed to a polymer fragment wedged beside the SD card, heat-resistant and layered, matching materials used by off-grid desert dwellers. Pierce nodded slowly. Local rumors spoke of unregistered camps deep within the Maze District, people living off-grid, protecting and worshiping the canyon, keeping its secrets hidden. The sixth video suggested someone among them had Adam’s phone, had recorded the message, and had waited until the moment they chose to leave it behind.

The timestamp read October 7th, 2016. Not Adam. Not his battery. Not a natural event. Someone else. The hooded figure’s one visible eye glinted in the dim light of the cavern. Not afraid, not curious, simply observing.

Pierce finally said, his voice tight, heavy with implication, “Then the question isn’t who killed Adam Reyes. It’s who kept his phone—and why they’re showing it to us now.”

For fourteen years, the desert had remained silent. For fourteen years, Mia had suffered in uncertainty. And now, in a canyon deep beyond the reach of maps, a device long dead carried a message that could change everything. The phone’s cracked screen, the corroded battery, the mysterious SD card—each element spoke to a truth buried beneath layers of heat, sand, and time, a story only just beginning to emerge.

The Maze District, once just a wilderness of sandstone and shadow, had finally begun to speak.

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Adam Reyes vanished on June 2nd, 2010 somewhere inside Utah’s maze district, a place so remote that even park rangers called it a map of where not to go.

 His last message sent to his sister, Mia, read, “Signals dying. One more slot canyon to explore. Back tomorrow. He never came back. Search teams spent 11 days combing the sandstone labyrinth. They found no gear, no tracks, no signs of a fall, nothing. The desert swallowed him whole. For 14 years, Mia lived in quiet torture. A disappearance is harder than a death.

You mourn a person who might still be alive. Every time a water bottle or boot was found in Canyon Lands, Mia’s phone lit up. But everything changed on October 18th, 2024. A climber named Evan Marshall was descending a narrow sandstone chimney when he saw something wedged deep inside a crack, something that shouldn’t have been there. He snapped a photo, climbed out, and drove 40 m to the nearest ranger station.

 The rangers returned with equipment and extracted it with surgical care. It was a phone. Adam’s phone. A sun-faded sandscarred 2010 model with a cracked screen and desert grit packed into every seam. The kind of device that should have turned to dust in this environment. But here’s where the realism matters.

The battery was grotesqually swollen. A chemical balloon. Rangers described it as soft and eggshaped, like it was trying to tear the phone apart from the inside. Lithium ion cells don’t survive heat cycles in the desert. They bloat, rupture, leak, and become dangerous. This battery was well past dead. The internal pouch had delaminated into powdery layers.

 There was zero chance of powering the phone on. The connectors were corroded green. The battery edges had crystallized electrolyte. Any attempt to charge it would have caused a fire. And yet behind the swollen battery wedged into the compartment was a micro SD card, undamaged, almost pristine. The card wasn’t original to this model. Someone had added it. Someone after the disappearance or before it.

 Evan handed it to authorities. Within hours, the National Park Service requested digital forensics support. The desert hadn’t told its story, but maybe the data would. The micro SD card arrived at the CBI digital forensics lab at 2:12 p.m. Forensic analyst Lena Harwood logged it in, then paused. Something felt wrong.

 The card was a 32 Ga model from 2014, 4 years newer than Adam’s disappearance. Already impossible, already wrong. Before imaging, Lena needed to examine the phone itself. She placed Adam’s device under magnification. Battery condition report. Realistic detail. Lithium pouch. Cells swollen to 320% volume.

 Outer laminate delaminated copper and aluminum tabs visibly corroded. Electrolyte crystals present around seams. Mild venting had occurred years earlier. She noted owner could not have powered this phone on for the past decade. Battery failure occurred within 2 3 years post disappearance. Meaning if new files were added to the card after 2013, Adam didn’t record them. Someone else did. Someone who had access to Adam’s phone.

 Someone who put the SD card in after the battery was already dead. Lena carefully removed the battery entirely. It crumbled like stale pastry, then cleaned the corrosion away from the phone’s internal reader slot. Finally, she inserted the micro SD into a forensic write blocker and began imaging the card.

 It contained one folder labeled DCIM recovered. Inside were six video files, five dated June 2010, one dated October 2016. That date froze Lena. Adam Reyes vanished in 2010. But someone or something had created a video file 6 years later using the same naming structure Adam’s phone would have used, except the phone hadn’t been functional since around 2012.

 She called her supervisor immediately. The video files were partially corrupted. Heat damage to flash memory, but recoverable. She opened the first one. Static sand panting. Adam whispering, “I think someone’s following me. The screen flickered, shadows in the canyon above him. Then the camera tilted as if Adam dropped the phone. The rest was glitch.

 But the second file, that one was clearer. It showed a smooth vertical sandstone wall with perfect horizontal cuts every 3 ft, like steps carved into the canyon itself. Too even, too deliberate. In the audio, Adam kept whispering, “These aren’t natural. Someone made these.” But the sixth file, the 2016 one, made Lena physically recoil.

 It was recorded from inside a cavern lit by a flickering light source. The camera wasn’t held. It was propped up on a rock. Someone approached the lens. Not Adam. A figure wearing desert robes, face obscured, whispering, “He wasn’t the first. He wasn’t the last. The canyon keeps what it’s owed. Then the file cut to black. Lena froze. Her supervisor leaned in.

 This isn’t a lost hiker, he said. This is a crime scene. What the canyon hid for 14 years. Someone had been protecting. 14 years after Adam Reyes vanished in Utah’s maze district, the sixth video file recovered from his phone stunned investigators. The timestamp read October 7th, 2016, 6 years after Adam disappeared.

 6 years after his phone’s battery had already swollen, ruptured, and chemically died in the desert heat. Someone else recorded that file. Someone who had access to Adam’s phone long after he was gone. In the forensics lab, analyst Lena Harwood replayed the sixth video. A cavern flickered dimly on screen. A hooded figure stood inches from the lens, whispering, “He wasn’t the first.

He wasn’t the last. The canyon keeps what it’s owed.” The words echoed softly, as if spoken underground. The figure stepped back into darkness, and the clip ended abruptly. Lena leaned back in her chair. There was no powering Adam’s phone in 2016. The battery had chemically failed a decade earlier. The charging circuits were corroded. The rails were shorted.

 Any attempt to apply power would have caused immediate ignition, which meant someone removed the micro SD card, recorded that video with a different device, then slid the card back into Adam’s broken phone and hid it inside the canyon. Not to destroy evidence, but to leave it behind. A message. Lena called in Ranger Daniel Pierce and FBI agent Ryan Kesler.

 They stood silently as she opened the second video Adam had recorded back in 2010. The footage showed a sandstone wall carved with perfect horizontal cuts like steps spiraling downward. “Those aren’t natural,” Pice muttered. “And they’re not park service carvings.” Adam’s whisper played through the speakers. “These aren’t natural.

 Someone made these.” Kesler tapped the screen. He found something he wasn’t supposed to. Lena played audio from the moment Adam dropped his phone. After boosting the lower frequencies, another voice emerged beneath Adam’s breathing. A calm whisper. He found the descent. All three froze.

 “That voice isn’t recent,” Lena said quietly. “It echoes like it was recorded inside a confined cavern, an underground space.” Pierce shook his head. There are no mapped caverns in that canyon. Mapped? Kesler repeated. Not the same thing. Lena showed them a small fragment of polymer she had found wedged beside the micro SD card. Heat resistant, layered, and coated.

 It matched the material used in desert survival cloaks worn by off-grid dwellers, people who lived illegally in remote canyon systems far from roads and patrols. Pierce exhaled slowly. There are rumors about unregistered camps deep in the maze. Locals call them the below folk, groups that walked away from society decades ago.

 Some say they protect the land. Others say they worship it. On the screen, Lena paused the sixth video. The robed figure’s face was shadowed, but one eye glinted in the reflection. Not frightened, not curious, simply observing, evaluating. Kesler pointed at the timestamp. October 7th, 2016. That’s not when Adam died.

Lena swallowed. I analyzed the metadata. The sixth video was recorded underground. Someone kept Adam’s phone for 6 years. Someone who lives down there. Pierce looked at them both. Then the question isn’t who killed Adam Reyes. He paused, voice tight. It’s who kept his phone and why they’re showing it to us now.

 The investigation moved from the forensics lab to a briefing room inside the Canyon Lands field office. A storm was rolling in over the desert, thunder rumbling faintly in the distance as Ranger Pierce spread too maps across the table. Adam Reyes’s GPS track ended 8 hours before his final video. After that, he went completely off-rid, wandering deeper into the maze district than any hiker had business going.

 Agent Kesler paced behind the table, arms crossed. So, the sixth video proves someone kept Adam’s phone, someone underground. Pierce circled a section of the map with a pencil. This is Twin Serpent Canyon where the phone was wedged. That crack isn’t natural placement. Someone put it there.

 Lena Harwood entered the room holding her laptop. I extracted more data from the SD card. GPS fragments, damaged timestamps, audio indexing. Most of it’s corrupted, but there’s enough to reconstruct part of Adam’s route. Kesler leaned in. Let’s see it. Lena brought up a digital overlay. A thin red line traced Adam’s last known movements, then suddenly diverted into a dead zone of the map.

 A blank space with no established trails. This area has no official name, PICE said quietly. Rangers don’t go there. Too many sheer drops, too much risk. Lena zoomed in further. The route Adam walked followed a narrow slot canyon, then abruptly ended at a cluster of sharp altitude changes. Cliff, drop, plateau, then a hollow. Lena pointed.

 Here, this depression, this shape matches the acoustics from the sixth video. Kesler frowned. Meaning what? Meaning the cavern where that hooded figure spoke isn’t random. It’s mapped here, but underground. Pierce inhaled sharply. The below folk legends talk about an entrance, a hidden descent, somewhere the rock swallowed people whole. Kesler shot him a look. You don’t actually believe that.

 Pierce didn’t answer because at that moment, Lena zoomed further, revealing something no one expected. Under the geological layers, barely detectable, were straight lines. long perfect parallel lines. Kesler blinked. What the hell am I looking at? Pier steadied himself on the table. That is not natural erosion. Lena nodded.

 Those are tunnels, man-made, or at least human modified. Kesler ran his hands through his hair. So, we’re talking what? Mining tunnels? Old smuggler’s roots? Pierce shook his head. No mine shafts run through this canyon, and nobody would carve structures this deep just to hide contraband. Lena pulled up the eighth audio fragment from the corrupted file set recovered earlier that morning. This was recorded just before Adam’s last known video.

 A faint echo filled the room, a dripping sound, a hollow rhythmic beat, and then Adam’s whisper. There’s a ladder cut into the stone going down forever. Someone made this. Someone’s living here. Static blurred the rest. Kesler pressed his palms against the table.

 If an entire underground settlement exists out here, that’s a federal issue. Missing persons, illegal habitation, possibly cultreated. Lena kept scrolling. I found something else. something hidden embedded deep in the SD card’s deleted sectors. She clicked once a sketch appeared, photographed by Adam sometime before he vanished. It was rough drawn on the back of a map, but unmistakable, a spiral staircase carved into a massive sandstone shaft descending into darkness.

 Under it, Adam had written two words. The descent. The room fell silent. Pierce finally spoke. Adam didn’t just get lost. He found something no one was supposed to find. Kesler straightened. And whoever lives down there, they’ve been active for years. They recorded that sixth video in 2016. They hid the phone to be found. Lena whispered.

They’re still down there. A gust of wind rattled the windows as the storm moved closer. Pierce folded the map. “You’re not going to like this,” he said. “But there’s only one way to confirm any of this.” Kesler nodded slowly. “We go into the canyon.” Pierce shook his head. “No, we go under it.

” Thunder cracked outside, and somewhere in the desert, deep beneath the rock, something waited. The storm broke just after sunrise. Sheets of rain hammered the canyon walls as Ranger Pierce, Agent Kesler, Lena Harwood, and a two-person rescue team hiked toward the entrance Adam Reyes had sketched 14 years earlier. Twin Serpent Canyon was a maze of twisting stone corridors, narrow enough in places to scrape both shoulders at once.

 The air smelled of wet dust. Every footstep echoed like they were walking inside a giant drum. Pierce led the pack, his voice low. Stay close. Flash floods can form in minutes. Kesler scanned the cliffs. You sure this is the right canyon? Pierce nodded. This is where the phone was wedged, and Adam’s GPS fragments tracked straight toward this fork.

 They reached a sheer sandstone wall. Rainwater streaked down the rock in dark vertical rivers. And then Lena saw it. Right there, she whispered. 3 ft above the ground, half hidden by mud and debris, were the same perfect horizontal cuts Adam had filmed, precise, evenly spaced, carved by human hands. The beginning of the staircase.

Kesler stepped closer. They go up. Pierce wiped rain from the rock. No, look again. They go down. And they did. The steps spiraled downward, disappearing into a narrow slit in the earth. A shaft cut straight into the canyon floor. An entrance. Pierce tested the first step. The stone was slick, but solid. This isn’t natural erosion.

 Someone chiseled these. Kesler pulled out a flashlight and aimed it down the shaft. The beam reached maybe 40 ft before fading into black. Lena swallowed. That is deeper than Adam’s video suggested. Kesler clipped a rope to the anchor point they drilled an hour earlier. We descend one at a time. Pierce first. I follow. Lena stays between us. Rescue team on top.

 Rain continued pelting the canyon. The shaft seemed to breathe cold air from below like the earth itself was exhaling. Pierce went first. His boots clapped softly on each carved step. 10 ft, 20, 30. His voice echoed faintly up the shaft. Still stable. Keep coming. Kesler followed. Then Lena.

 The walls closed around them as they descended. The air grew colder, heavier, thick with a mineral smell like wet clay and rust. At 40 ft, the shaft flared into a chamber. Pierce swept his flashlight and froze. Jesus. The floor wasn’t stone. It was planks. Old wood, weathered, ancient, arranged in a circular platform.

 Kesler stepped carefully beside him. Who built this? Lena’s light caught something carved into the far wall. Words, dozens of them, scratched by hand, shaky and uneven. Names, dates, some faint, some fresh. Pierce leaned close. These are people. These are the names of people who came down here. Kesler read one aloud. Be li 1994. Lena read another.

Escortez 2002. And then her light froze on one name. Adam Reyes 2010. Pierce whispered. He made it this far. Under Adam’s name was a second line written in smaller, frantic scratches. Not alone. A cold draft blew from the tunnel ahead. Kesler tightened his grip on his flashlight. We move forward. They followed the draft into a low passageway. The ceiling forced them to crouch.

 The darkness felt alive, like it pressed back every time their lights passed over it. Deeper in, the passage suddenly widened into a huge cavern. Lena gasped. Oh my god. The cavern floor was a maze of old timber scaffolding, rope ladders, clay jars, and handmade tools. Some ancient, some modern. A civilization pieced together from whatever the desert swallowed.

 Pierce whispered, “Someone’s living down here, or a lot of someone’s.” Kesler stepped forward slowly. “Quiet! Listen!” A faint rhythmic sound echoed from somewhere deeper in the chamber. A thud, a pause, another thud, like something striking stone in slow, measured intervals. Lena’s voice trembled. That’s the same sound from Adam’s audio.

 The rhythmic thutting grew louder, echoing through the cavern like the heartbeat of the earth. And then between the echoes came a second sound. Footsteps, not one pair, many, soft, controlled, approaching from the dark tunnels ahead. Kesler drew his weapon. Pierce, lights down now. Pierce dimmed his flashlight. Shapes emerged from the darkness.

 Tall robed figures, faces hidden behind veils of woven cloth, moving silently in perfect synchronization. Lena froze. That’s the figure from the sixth video. The lead figure raised a hand, not threateningly, but slowly, deliberately, as if signaling them to stop. Kesler’s voice was low and tight. “Don’t move!” the figure stepped forward, and in a voice as calm and hollow as the cavern itself, it whispered, “You should not have come here.” Thunder rumbled above ground, far away now, unreachable.

 The figure lowered its hand. You followed the descent, it said. Now you must hear what he learned before he died. Kesler swallowed hard. Who are you? The figure tilted its head, veil shifting with the cold breath of the tunnels. We are the ones who guard what the canyon hides. The footsteps behind the figure stopped in unison. Dozens of figures stood watching.

 The lead figure pointed deeper into the cavern. Come see where he went. See what he found. Pierce whispered, “Oh, guys, we’re not alone down here.” The lead figure turned away into darkness, and the team followed. The deeper they followed the robed figures, the stranger the air felt. It grew warmer, thicker, almost humid.

 Agent Kesler kept his weapon raised, eyes scanning every shadow. Lena walked just behind him, clutching her flashlight with trembling fingers. Ranger Pierce stayed at the rear, counting exits, memorizing turns. The robed leader moved gracefully ahead of them, torch light flickering along the cavern walls. The tunnel opened into a larger corridor, huge stone arches supporting a ceiling lost in darkness.

Kesler whispered, “This was carved, not eroded.” Pierce whispered back, “Carved by who and why?” Before they could say more, the corridor emptied into a massive underground hall. All three froze. The hall was filled with structures, low huts made of stacked stone, clay jars, woven mats, dried herbs hanging from ropes.

 Every surface was illuminated by small flame bowls that cast wavering amber light. People moved among the shadows, silent, hooded, watching. Lena whispered, “This is a village underground.” The lead figure finally stopped in the center of the chamber. “This is where we have lived,” it said softly. “Longer than your maps record. Longer than your monument stand.” Kesler’s voice was tense.

 “Where is Adam Reyes?” The figure pointed toward a stone doorway at the far end of the hall. Pier stepped forward. What’s in there? The chamber of echoes, the figure replied. It is where the canyon speaks truths. Where he went, where he left his final warning. Lena felt cold crawl up her spine. Warning about what? Instead of answering, the leader lifted its torch and motioned for them to follow. They walked past silent villagers.

 No one reached for them. No one threatened them. They simply watched, heads turning slowly as the outsiders passed. A deep rhythmic thud echoed again, steady, slow, like the pulse of the earth. Pierce whispered, “That sound again? Same as Adam’s recording.” The stone doorway loomed ahead.

 Two heavy slabs formed an entrance carved with patterns Lena didn’t recognize. Circular spirals, jagged lines, shapes like descending steps. Inside, the air changed. It was warmer still, and beneath the warmth was something else. A faint metallic tang, like iron or blood. The chamber beyond was enormous. A perfectly cylindrical shaft plunged downward into darkness, so deep their flashlights couldn’t touch the bottom.

The walls were carved with spiraling grooves identical to the staircase Adam had filmed. But here, the grooves weren’t steps. They were runes, symbols, warnings etched by hands long gone. The lead figure spoke quietly. He climbed down these spirals further than any outsider before him. Lena whispered. Adam went down there. Pierce shown his flashlight along the walls.

Marks, scratches, fingernail gouges in some places. Struggle marks. Lena covered her mouth. Oh god. Kesler stepped closer. What happened to him? The figure motioned toward a stone altar near the chamber’s edge. Something small rested there, wrapped in dark cloth. The figure gently opened the cloth.

 Inside was Adam’s notebook. PICE gasped. Lena felt tears well. Instantly, the figure placed it into Lena’s hands. He wrote until he could not. Lena opened the first page. Adam’s handwriting, weak, frantic, slanted, filled the pages. The words shook. There are people down here. They watch from the walls.

 They move in the dark. Not animals. Not human the way we are. Something older. Kesler stiffened. Older. Lena turned another page. They follow the heat. They follow the sound. They follow us. Pierce took a step back as a cold breeze drifted up from the shaft. A new sound rose with it.

 Clicking, scraping, wet, rhythmic, very different from the quiet footsteps of the robe villagers. Lena read the next line aloud. If anyone finds this, don’t go deeper. Don’t make the same mistake I did. Suddenly, the torches flickered. The robed leader turned sharply toward the shaft. Dozens of other villagers retreated a few steps. Kesler whispered, “What’s happening?” The leader’s voice dropped to a whisper filled with fear.

 “They hear us?” Pierce swallowed. “Who?” The leader raised a trembling hand toward the darkness below. The ones who live beneath us. The ones we keep the world safe from. Something scraped the stone far below. Louder, closer, climbing. Lena stepped back from the edge, voice shaking.

 What is that? The leader took a deep breath and whispered, “The reason we hit his phone. The reason we hid ourselves. The reason no one who descends ever returns.” The clicking grew louder, faster. Kesler drew his weapon. Everyone back now. The torches dimmed, and from the darkness below, a sound rose that did not belong to any human throat. The chamber went silent.

 So silent Lena could hear her own heartbeat pounding in her ears. Then the sound rose again from the shaft. Clicking, scraping, wet, deliberate movements. closer. The robed villagers backed away from the spiral pit, their torches trembling in their hands. The leader whispered, “They come when they hear us. They follow vibration, sound, breath.

” Kesler forced his voice to stay steady. What exactly is coming up that shaft? The leader didn’t look away from the darkness. They were here long before us. We only learned to live above them. Your hiker? He climbed down too far and he woke them. The scraping grew louder. Now they could hear something else beneath it.

Raspy breaths echoing up the stone chamber, amplified by the spiral walls like a horn. Pierce stepped back from the edge. We need to get out now. Lena clutched Adam’s notebook to her chest. Wait, what about the villagers? They’re not coming with us. The robed leader shook their head. We cannot leave.

 This is our duty. We keep them contained. The canyon must never open. If outsiders learn of this place, if they dig, if they widen the paths. A long, low screech rose from the depths. The villagers instantly dropped to their knees, covering their ears. Kesler raised his weapon toward the shaft.

 What the hell was that? But the leader shouted, “No, guns bring them faster. They hunt sound.” Too late. A pale, thin limb slapped onto the edge of the shaft, stretching impossibly long, jointed in the wrong places. The skin was the color of bone dust. The fingers ended in hooked black tips that scratched the stone. Lena stumbled backward, her breath caught in her throat. Pierce whispered. Holy God.

Another limb emerged. Then another. Something was climbing out. The villagers backed away into the shadows, silent but trembling. The leader remained rooted in place. Torch raised. “You must leave this chamber,” the leader said urgently. “They follow new voices first. You are strangers. Your sounds are unfamiliar.

 They will come for you. Kesler tried to keep control. Where do we go? The leader pointed to a narrow tunnel opposite the way they’d entered. There that leads to the upper vents. It will take you back to the shaft of descent. The scraping intensified now. They could hear multiple creatures climbing. Three, maybe four.

 Heavy breaths, wet clicks, bodies sliding along carved stone. Kesler grabbed Lena’s arm. Move. Move now. Pierce swung his pack over his shoulder and followed. As they ran toward the tunnel, Lena glanced back one last time. Something pulled itself halfway out of the pit, its back arched, its rib cage narrow, its limbs spiderlike.

 It had no eyes, just smooth, pale skin stretched across its face like something that had evolved in total darkness. It turned its head toward them anyway, as if it sensed them. It opened its mouth. The shape was wrong. Too wide, too crooked, stretching all the way to where its ears should have been.

 Inside were rows of small, flat teeth, chattering at a speed that blurred. Kesler shouted, “Don’t look. Go.” They sprinted into the narrow passage. The leader slammed the heavy stone door behind them. The clicking immediately exploded against the other side of the rock. Dozens of impacts, claws, teeth, bodies hitting stone. The robed leader shouted through the door, “They will break through.

 Run for the upper vents.” The tunnel twisted upward, tight and steep. The air reverberated with claws scraping stone behind them. Pierce gasped. “They’re following the vibrations of our footsteps.” “Then go faster,” Kesler yelled. The tunnel narrowed further. They crawled, hands scraping the floor, Lena still gripping Adam’s notebook with white knuckles.

 Behind them, the stone door finally cracked. A shriek filled the tunnel so loud and sharp Lena felt it inside her bones. Kesler pushed her forward. Don’t stop. Don’t look. They clawed up the tunnel, dirt raining down as something tore its way in from behind. And then finally, finally, daylight. A thin beam from above cut into the darkness like a knife.

 Pierce shouted, “The vent shaft. Climb.” Kesler boosted Lena upward. Pierce followed. The shaft was narrow but climbable barely. They kicked footholds into the soft red stone, pulling themselves toward the surface. Below them, in the dark, the clicking grew faster, louder, closer. One of the creatures slammed into the base of the shaft, claws clattering violently against the stone, dragging their sound upward.

 Lena screamed, “Hurry!” Kesler shoved Pierce up the final stretch, then leapt and grabbed a protruding rock. The creatures were climbing. They were faster. Pierce reached the top first, emerging into the stormlit canyon. He threw a rope down, bracing his feet in the mud. “Grab it now!” Lena grabbed the rope.

 Kesler boosted her one last time. Below them, pale limbs swarmed the shaft, stretching upward, clawing for purchase. Kesler yelled, “Pull her!” Pierce hauled Lena out just as a clawed hand slapped against the stone beneath her boots. Kesler climbed next, gasping, slipping in the mud. The creature lunged upward, its teeth snapped inches from his heel.

Pierce and Lena pulled with everything they had. Kesler burst out of the shaft as thunder cracked overhead. The three of them collapsed in the mud, soaked, trembling, gasping for air. Behind them, inside the vent shaft, the creatures screeched, high-pitched, furious, but did not emerge into the light. They stayed below, hidden, waiting.

 Pierce whispered, voice shaking. We were never supposed to find this place. Lena clutched Adam’s notebook. We have to go back, she said. Kesler stared at her in disbelief. No, no way. We’re leaving. She shook her head. He wrote something else. Something important. A final message. I didn’t read it yet. Kesler’s stomach dropped.

What message? Lena swallowed hard. The last page. Lightning lit the canyon and Lena opened the notebook to Adam’s final words. Rain hammered the canyon floor as Lena opened Adam Reyes’s notebook to the final page. The ink was smeared in places, but the words were still readable, shaky, frantic, written by a man who knew he was running out of time.

 Kesler crouched beside her, mud stre down his arms. Pierce scanned the vent shaft behind them, making sure nothing climbed out. Lena read aloud. I am not the first to find them. The villagers above are not prisoners. They are watchers, guards. They keep the path sealed. Kesler frowned. We figured that much. Lena kept reading.

 But they don’t live down here by choice. They were forced. Forced to stay between the creatures and the surface. Pierce slowly lowered his flashlight. Wait. Forced by who? Lena turned the page. The last lines were shorter, rushed, written with a trembling hand. If you found my phone, if you found this place, then they let you. Kesler stiffened.

 Adam’s final sentence was underlined three times. They don’t hide the creatures from us. They hide us from the creatures. The three of them froze. A distant clicking echoed from deep inside the canyon system, faint but moving. Traveling horizontally now, no longer chasing them, searching. Pierce’s voice trembled. They’re changing routes.

They’re moving parallel to us. Kesler stood, grabbing his radio. We need evacuation teams, rangers, federal support. The entire area needs to be sealed. PICE shook his head violently. No, you don’t understand. If you send people down here, if you open this place, Lena whispered. You’ll give them new paths. Another thunder crack rolled across the sky.

 Kesler turned the notebook toward her. You said there was more. Lena nodded. On the inside back cover, written so faintly it was almost invisible. Adam had scribbled a final paragraph, one likely written moments before he died. She read, “The creatures avoid heat, avoid light, avoid vibration on the surface.” A cold wind swept through the canyon as if the earth itself heard the words.

“That’s why they never leave the deep caverns. The watchers keep them trapped with torches, noise, ritual, movement.” Pierce pald. It’s a containment system. Lena kept reading, her voice cracking. If the watchers ever stop or if they run, the creatures will rise. They will follow the old tunnels to the surface and nothing will stop them.

 Kesler swallowed hard. So the villagers, those robed people, they’re holding the line. Lena nodded. They weren’t threatening us. They were warning us. Pierce whispered. “Then why did they let us leave?” Lena looked down at Adam’s last sentence. “Because the watchers are dying.” Kesler shook his head. “No, no, that can’t.

” A sound cut him off. A horn, a deep hollow bellow rising from beneath the earth, unnatural, echoing up through the canyon like a dying whale call. Pierce’s eyes widened. That’s a signal, Lena whispered. A warning. Another sound followed. Far worse. A roar. Not animal, not human. A collective howl rising through the cracks in the earth. The creatures were calling to each other, coordinating.

Kesler stepped back instinctively. “What does that mean?” PICE answered quietly. It means the watchers can’t hold them back anymore. The ground trembled lightly beneath their boots. Just once, a small vibration, then another. Stronger. Lena looked from the notebook to the vent shaft. We need to seal this. All of this. Collapse the entry. Collapse every path.

 Kesler stared at the rising dust. And if we don’t, the canyon answered for him. A final line in Adam’s handwriting seemed to burn into Lena’s mind. If the Watchers fail, the maze will open. Thunder cracked overhead. The vent shaft exhaled a hot breath of air from the darkness below and far beneath the surface. The clicking began to climb