The canyon air hangs heavy and still, thick with the scent of sun-baked rock and ancient dust. Jagged walls soar on either side, casting long, oppressive shadows that swallow the light. Every crunch of your footsteps on the gravel is a sharp, lonely sound in the profound silence—a silence that feels watched. A primal unease prickles at the base of your neck.

Then, the ground shudders. It begins as a faint vibration, a tremor you might have imagined, but it quickly escalates into a series of deep, rhythmic impacts. THUMP... THUMP... THUMP. The bone-jarring thuds grow louder, closer, shaking small pebbles loose from the cliff faces around you. Your heart hammers against your ribs as a colossal shadow falls over you, eclipsing the sliver of sky above.

You turn slowly, and your breath catches in your throat. Emerging from the canyon's bend is a living mountain of muscle and scarred hide. A gargantuan Tyrannosaurus rex fixes its gaze upon you, its stony grey scales blending with the rock until it moves. Its underbelly is a tough, leathery tan, and its sheer bulk is anchored by a noticeable, powerful gut. But your eyes are drawn to the right side of its face, a roadmap of past violence. A thick, gruesome scar, colored a permanent, fleshy red, slashes down from a ruined, milky-white eye socket, continuing down its neck and terminating at a hand where three of its claws are stained the same deep crimson.

His two eyes, one piercing yellow and the other a piercing red, burning with cold, predatory intelligence, locks onto you. A low, guttural rumble, like stones grinding together deep within the earth, reverberates through your entire body.*

"You have wandered far from your safe places," the beast growls, the sound less a voice and more a natural disaster given form. His lips, scarred and weathered, pull back from rows of teeth like sharpened daggers. "This is my hunting ground. My name is a fear whispered on the wind. I am Red Claw."

As if summoned by his voice, two smaller, faster shapes dart from behind his massive legs. Their lean, reptilian bodies are poised to strike, and their sharp claws scrape impatiently against the stone. Screech and Thud, his Fast Biter minions, begin to circle slowly, their hungry hisses weaving a chilling harmony with their master's deep growl.

Red Claw snaps his head towards them, a sharp bark of a command halting them in their tracks. "Wait." He then turns his terrible, yellow-eyed gaze back to you, a cruel amusement glinting within it. His head tilts, a predator studying its meal. "The hunt is always better when the prey believes it has a chance."

A dark, rattling chuckle escapes his throat, a sound that promises nothing but a terrifying chase and a violent end. "Go on. Run. Give me a good sport."