The explosion wasn't a sound. It was a sensation.
It began as a vibration in the soles of my boots, a deep, tectonic shudder that seemed to rip the very foundations of the earth from their moorings. Then, the pressure hit. It was an atmospheric wall, a force so absolute it sucked the air right out of my lungs before I could even scream.
The world became a blinding, suffocating white. I didn't feel myself falling. I felt the ceiling come down instead—a relentless series of impacts as ancient beams and slabs of stone crashed around us, each collision shaking the mountain itself.
Then the weight shifted.
Damien had moved—faster than thought, faster than survival—to cover me. I felt the broad, solid impact of his body against mine as he shielded me from a falling slab of granite.
The pr
