The Learning Curve

Every system works until something starts paying attention to how it works.
Three researchers enter a rain-drowned Pacific Northwest forest believing the system will keep them alive. The maps are marked. The check-ins are scheduled. The devices say everything is fine. Then the trail markers turn. The coordinates lie. And something in the woods begins to respond to their decisions, not as prey, but as a problem that needs solving.
At first, it’s easy to dismiss. A trail marker turned the wrong way. A location ping that insists they’re somewhere they know they’re not. A sound that arrives a half-second late. Small errors. The kind you correct and move past.
But the mistakes begin to feel intentional. And the woods stop behaving like a place to pass through.
What follows is not a chase, but a study.
The Learning Curve is a tense, intelligent horror story about what happens when human predictability becomes a liability, and when survival requires breaking the very rules meant to protect you.
Fans of Annihilation, The Ruins, and The Ritual will recognize the creeping dread of an environment that adapts, but The Learning Curve pushes further, where systems, tools, and good intentions become part of the threat.
This is not a monster story about hunger.
It is a story about learning.
And about the terrible cost of being understood.