Ella woke up to the pitch blackness of the night, her ears twitching slightly and her instincts sensing something that she could not fully understand. She could somehowhear it before the sound fully formed.
Not the noise itself, no, came after, what stirred her from sleep was something far more instinctive, something that curled at the base of her spine and whispered danger in a language older than thought. When her eyes snapped open, the darkness inside the tent pressed in around her like a held breath, it was eerily quiet, no crickets, no rustling trees, no nothing.
Then came the footsteps.
Dozens of them surrounding the camp, light, quick and uneven, like no human she had ever heard before.
