The fog had thickened into something almost tactile—an ancient breath rising from the damp, pulsing earth. It clung to your skin, slick as oil, curling around your boots and creeping up your calves, wrapping its cold fingers around your spine as if to whisper: You should not be here.

You crouched low in the mud, breath shallow, fingers closing around the edge of the fallen drone’s casing. It was still warm. The black shell gleamed faintly in the greyness, blinking a final, dying red pulse. Something had knocked it from the sky. Hard.

Behind you, the jungle no longer made noise. No birds. No insects. Even the wind seemed to have vanished—airless, as if the world had drawn one long breath and was refusing to exhale. Then, from behind, Henry’s voice—low, thin, shaking slightly in a way you’d never heard before. “Don’t move.”

And that’s when you felt it. The first tremor was so soft it could’ve been your heartbeat misfiring. But then another. And another. The ground seemed to shift under your soles, each step like a dropped anchor in the mud. You turned your head—slowly. Through the fog, it appeared. Not crashing through trees. Not roaring. Just…there.

The Tyrannosaurus rex was a myth made muscle and bone, taller than memory, larger than logic. Her silhouette emerged like a cathedral out of mist—limbs disproportionate, head too vast, tail swinging like a pendulum of death. Her skin was the color of dried blood and charred wood, slick from the humidity, flanks twitching as if something underneath was always alive, always watching.

She paused.

And you knew, in the bottom of your stomach, that she had seen you. Not just you—but you, the warm-blooded, two-legged thing crouched beneath her, trespassing where science should never have returned.

Her massive skull tilted, one nostril flaring. Then the other. You could hear it. The inhale. The long, deliberate gathering of your scent into those ancient sinuses.

Beside you, Henry didn’t move. Didn’t even blink. His arm hovered just behind you, not touching, but ready. Always ready. That was the way of him—unflinching not because he lacked fear, but because he loved you more than he feared death.

And still, she waited. The fog eddied around her legs, clinging to her knees like wet silk. Her yellow eyes gleamed through the mist like twin moons—focused, intelligent in a way that chilled you deeper than any cold. This was not a creature blindly lashing at prey.

She was considering you. Calculating. Her jaw opened slightly. Not a roar, not yet. Just a flex, revealing teeth like rusted sabers—bone-caked and worn. A thread of saliva dropped from the edge of her mouth, striking the ground with an audible hiss. A warning. Or maybe a promise.

Your heart felt like it had shrunk to the size of a thimble, beating against the inside of your ribs like a bird trying to escape a jar. You didn’t dare breathe. Not when her foot shifted, displacing an entire fern bed. Not when her tail sliced through the mist like a scythe. Still she didn’t charge.

She took another step forward—slow, deliberate. The sound was bone-deep, like tectonic plates grinding beneath the jungle. Her head lowered fractionally, tongue flicking the air. She was testing the space between knowing and action.

And then, somewhere far behind her, something cracked—a bird maybe, or another dinosaur crashing through a tree. Her eyes darted. She stilled. A choice was made.

She turned, almost lazily, as though she had all the time in the world to kill you later. One long exhale. Then she stepped back into the mist, swallowed by it inch by inch, until only the sound of her departure remained.

You stayed frozen long after she vanished. Until your knees ached. Until your lungs burned.

And then Henry’s fingers found yours. Cold. Shaking. Alive. You looked at him. Mud smeared across his cheek. Eyes wide. Jaw slack. But he managed a breathy, broken laugh.

“That was…marriage,” he whispered. You blinked at him. He swallowed. “I mean—this is what they meant, right? In sickness, in health, in prehistoric death traps...?”‎ ‎ ‎