The tremor started as a hum—too low for ears, too deep for air.
It climbed through their boots, coiled behind the ribs, and thudded once, like a second heart.Then everyone heard it.
The hum sharpened into a blade that rattled bone.
The ground swelled—gravity flipped.Metal screamed.Marcus hit first.
Belt, side-arm, chest-plate—every gram of steel became a hammer.
Triple weight slammed his shoulders; he felt his cervical spine click like a clock.
A warrior's reflex outruns pain.Color drained from his skin, gray washing outward in a wave.
Stone sheathed him from sternum to fingertips.
Sparks exploded where steel met granite—a brief, molten snowstorm around his boots.
He sucked half a breath—and caught a smaller sound being crushed in the vise.
Noah.
Marcus turned.
Time stretched to half a second of still-life: Noah folding inward, soft armor turned to pincers, blood sketching a line down his chin.
A cough spat crimson instead of air.In that hush Marcus lunged.
Stone surged down his arm and poured over Noah's ribs—a paper-thin shield that kept flesh and metal an inch apart.
One inch was enough for life to crawl through.
Noah's lungs clawed in a rasping gasp—alive.The air went cold.Ethan dropped beside them, eyes blazing glacier-blue.
He slapped a palm between Noah's shoulders; molten dust hissed like wet infants.
Ice veins bloomed outward, locking the armor in sapphire crystal.
Marcus glanced up.
Caleb already stood at the crest of the noise.
He lifted a hand; his Trait field curved into an invisible crescent.
A whip-crack of air and the frozen plating powdered into glittering ash that drifted like sudden snow.Ethan hauled Noah upright.
Three backs met in a triangle, breath braiding white in the cold.
Noah in the center—bleeding, but the beat was steady: the drum of the living.The world granted no second breath.
The valley groaned, cliffs unzipping from crest to base.
Damian's voice sliced through the dust:
"Move—!"He ran first, Adrian cradled against his chest, boots skimming the cooling metal lake, each step splashing rings of molten red.
The trio followed—Ethan dragging Noah, Caleb guarding the rear, shrapnel whining past their ears.
They managed three strides.The hum spiked a third time—now a nail through the skull.
Both walls of the pass convulsed.
The first boulder—truck-sized—peeled away, then a second, a third…
Sky shredded into rubble; existence narrowed to dust and thunder.Inside the thunder, the heartbeat returned—
slow, steady, swelling,
until the entire mountain leaned over and bared its black jaws.