The truck crawled forward, engine humming low.They had entered the only road that cut between the hills—narrow, winding, and silent.
Ethan glanced at the map's fading outline.
"This stretch between the cliffs… that's the entry corridor to the B-zone," he said. "Once we're in, there's no other way out."
Marcus gave no reply. He was captain; if he didn't say stop, no one would.
The cabin fell silent.One by one, their terminals flickered and died—not with a glitch, but as if the light itself were being swallowed. Signal icons winked out into voids of black.No one spoke.
Ahead, the slopes rose steeper until two cliffs swallowed the road whole.A slit of gray stone opened before them—narrow, sheer, no room to turn.Sunlight thinned to a knife overhead; everything below drowned in dust and dimness.
Damian had never been here.But he knew this place.
Iron Fang had vanished here—no bodies, no trace, only a rumor that the mountain had closed its jaws around them.
He shifted closer to the silver-haired youth beside him, one arm half-raised in silent defense.
No wind. No birds. Not even rot.The valley was hollow, too quiet—as if the world itself were holding its breath.
"Stop," Noah said suddenly.
Ethan braked. The truck shuddered to stillness between the cliffs.
Noah pushed the door open and stepped out. His stride wavered; dust curled around his boots.His dark eyes caught what little light there was—sharp, intent, uneasy.Marcus followed, hand closing on his arm to steady him.
Noah crouched, pressing a gloved hand to the ground.
"I hear something," he murmured. "Low frequency. Sub-sonic. A repeating pulse through the bedrock—mechanical, artificial."
He looked up, voice tightening.
"There's a jammer buried here. Power source still alive… maybe from before the Cataclysm."
Marcus's face hardened.
"That explains the A-ranks the Ashbournes sent. Fifteen A-class warriors and five Psionics don't mobilize for storage duty."
Noah nodded slowly, eyes narrowing toward the black slit ahead.
"They called it a warehouse," he said, almost to himself. "But nothing about this feels like storage. Whatever it is—research site, weapon vault, energy well—it's important enough to bury and keep running for decades."
Marcus's gaze swept the valley.
"And profitable enough to kill for."
Caleb muttered, "Then that's what the Core Families are really after."
No one disagreed.
The windless silence returned.Behind them, the truck's frame groaned—a long, low sound, like breath drawn through teeth.From deep within the stone came the faintest tremor, steady and patient, as if something enormous were breathing just beneath their feet.
And for the first time, Damian felt it breathe back.