The warm morning sunlight that had previously greeted them head-on was gradually swallowed by a thick canopy of heavy overhead branches, pressing in closely. The trail, once a bed of loose earth, transformed entirely into a jagged staircase of irregular river rocks, slick with a fine layer of green moss and lingering morning dew that had yet to burn off.

Dika brought up the rear, his breathing ragged and erratic while sweat plastered his cotton T-shirt entirely to his back.

"I swear to God... who even designed this trail? Have they zero mercy left for the future generation of our nation's youth?" Dika groaned in a raspy voice, wiping the sweat from his forehead with his jacket sleeve. He dragged his feet along as if they were each weighed down by solid lead.

"That's why you need to cut back on the convenience store snacks back at the dorm and get on some cardio," Rian teased from up ahead, glancing back over his shoulder. In truth, Rian was already feeling a dull, aching throb in both of his calves, but he forced himself to stand tall to keep the group's morale afloat.

"Alright, cut the bitching, Dik. We’re almost there," Gani called out from the lead position. The broad-shouldered guy pointed ahead, where the rows of pine trees began to part, revealing a reasonably wide, flat clearing.

Sure enough, a few minutes later, they broke free from the exhausting rocky incline and stepped out into a fairly spacious clearing. Right in the center of the clearing stood a weathered, moss-green wooden sign bearing faded white paint lettering: POST 1.

"Alhamdulillah... we finally made it to this ghost post," Dika whimpered shamelessly, letting his body drop straight onto a large boulder as he unbuckled his heavy backpack with rough, jerky movements. "My spine feels like it's about to snap in half, I'm not kidding."

One by one, the rest of them shed the heavy loads from their shoulders. Maya let out a long, shuddering breath, stretching both arms wide into the air to loosen her stiff shoulder muscles before parking herself on a clear, bark-free fallen log. Rian and Gani followed suit, kneading their cramped legs after nearly three hours of non-stop climbing.

The atmosphere around Post 1 felt significantly quieter than the bustling registration gate earlier that morning. The surrounding forest looked deeply choked with wild brush and colossal trees draped in hanging aerial roots that climbed high into the air, blocking out a large portion of the blue sky.

"Man, this is insane. My legs are completely dead," Maya muttered, massaging her own calf. She pulled her tumbler from her side pocket and took a slow, cooling sip of water. "Though... the view isn't half bad now that we're looking at it."

"Easy to say for someone not lugging around a twenty-kilo pack, May," Dika retorted, flopping flat onto his back over a carpet of dry leaf litter and staring up at the intricate network of overhead branches. "If I knew it was going to be this vertical, I would've just stayed home playing PlayStation."

Gani chuckled softly as he tore open a small packet of whole-wheat crackers, handing pieces out to Rian and the others. "That's why you've gotta enjoy the process, Dik. When else are you going to experience total muscle failure like this alongside your closest friends?"

Off in the corner of the clearing, Sita sat cross-legged on a flat rock, pulling her knees tight against her chest. Her gaze remained hollow, locked deep into the dark, shadowy interior of the forest where the thick foliage cast heavy gloom. She hadn't joined in on her friends' banter once.

In the middle of their casual conversation, Maya suddenly froze. Her nose twitched, and she drew in a deep breath through her nose as if trying to verify something that had just grazed her sense of smell.

"Hey... are you guys smelling anything?" Maya asked abruptly, her tone shifting into something tense and serious. She swung her head left and right, sniffing the air around her.

Rian paused mid-chew on a cracker, sniffing the air as well. "Smelling what, May? Dika's body odor? Because that's pretty hard to miss."

"No, seriously! I'm not joking," Maya protested, her voice spiking slightly. She shuffled closer to Rian. "Just smell it. It's... it's incense. Really heavy incense, mixed with the scent of jasmine flowers."

Hearing Maya's words, Dika—who had been lounging comfortably—bolt upright. He aggressively sniffed the surrounding air with a look of morbid curiosity. "Whoa, watch what you're saying, May. Don't tell me someone's running a pop-up flower shop in the middle of this godforsaken wilderness."

Gani sniffed the air too. Sure enough, faintly carried over on a gentle breeze drifting from deep within the forest to the left of the post, came the distinct, unmistakable aroma of burning incense—a scent typically reserved for sacred spaces or specific rituals, standing in jarring contrast to the natural smells of the open woods.

"Incense?" Gani muttered, then shrugged indifferently. "Ah, it's probably just leftover offering ash or incense residue from other climbers who headed up ahead of us over the last few days. It's totally normal for hikers to leave offerings out here for good luck."

"But, Gan... there isn't any ash or burn residue anywhere around here. This place is totally clean," Maya argued back, her eyes sweeping across the entirety of Post 1's clearing, which indeed appeared completely bare save for wild grass and sprawling boulders.

"Relax, May. It could just be some forest flower that happens to smell a lot like jasmine," Rian offered, trying to smooth over the anxiety etched across Maya's face. He let out a soft laugh, reaching into his pack's side pocket to pull out a couple of chocolate bars. "Here, eat some chocolate so your mind stops wandering off. Your blood sugar's probably crashing, which is why you're hallucinating incense."

Maya took the chocolate bar from Rian hesitantly. A lingering gut feeling told her something wasn't right about that scent, but seeing Rian and Dika laughing it off and happily munching on crackers, she chose to push her doubts aside and gave a slow nod.

"Yeah, maybe it's just in my head," Maya murmured quietly, tearing open the wrapper.

The mood relaxed once more. Dika rolled out a string of lighthearted jokes about his college days to fully break the tension. They spent a dozen minutes enjoying their break at Post 1, temporarily forgetting the burning ache in their legs.

However, right in the middle of one of Dika’s punchlines about an old campus blunder, Maya glanced down by chance. She noticed her right shoelace had come undone and was perilously close to dragging in the muddy dirt.

Maya shifted her seating position slightly forward, dropping her chin to focus on retying her boot.

It was precisely while she was looking down that the corner of her eye caught something deeply unnatural resting on the patch of fine, dusty soil right next to the shadow of Rian’s standing boots.

Maya’s hand instantly locked up. Her breath hitched in her throat.

Right behind the shadow of Rian's feet stood a pair of bare human feet—ghostly pale, caked in dried black grave-dirt across the skin, and completely, rigidly motionless. Those feet stood impossibly close, as though their owner was standing flush against Rian’s back without making a single sound.

A violent spike of adrenaline hammered against Maya’s ribs. An intense, bone-chilling cold instantly shot upward from her toes, flash-freezing her entire body. She wanted to scream, wanted to warn Rian to jump out of the way, but her voice died in her windpipe as though a heavy, invisible hand was clamping shut around her throat.

Summoning every last drop of courage she had left, Maya forced her head up quickly to look at whatever—or whoever—was standing behind Rian.

Snap.

The space was entirely empty.

There was nothing behind Rian except open air and the trunk of a towering, silent pine tree. The pale, dirt-caked footprint shadows vanished without a sound or a trace, as though they had never been there to begin with.

"May? What's wrong? Why is your face totally drained of color?" Rian’s voice broke through her daze, staring down at her with a furrowed brow of genuine confusion.

Maya swallowed hard past a throat that felt like sandpaper, her entire frame trembling violently while the heavy, suffocating scent of incense suddenly blasted past her ear once more.