Keldrin Pass Facility - Midnight
The explosion's light turned night into temporary day—brilliant orange-white fireball expanding upward from the northern ammunition depot, heat wave rolling across the compound hard enough to shatter windows and make stone walls crack with thermal stress. The sound followed a heartbeat later: not single blast but sustained roar as munitions cooked off in chain reaction, each detonation triggering next, four thousand rounds of rifle ammunition becoming storm of shrapnel and pressure waves that tore through anything within two hundred meters.
Order soldiers poured from barracks in various states of readiness—some fully dressed, others barely clothed, all disoriented by sudden transition from sleep to combat conditions. They ran toward the explosion instinctively, training dictating response to catastrophic damage before conscious thought could override reflexive action.
