The mountain’s secret hadn’t stayed buried for long.
Turns out the lock I’d unearthed deep in the collapse tunnels was coming for me first.
Grey, lifeless morning light seeped through the motel’s thin curtains in reluctant, threadbare streaks—no warmth, no clarity, just the dull, flat glow of a day built for reckoning.
My ankle throbbed on a brutal, unforgiving loop, the ache coiling upward from my bandaged skin to gnaw at bone and muscle alike. The morphine’s fuzzy numbness had burned off hours ago, scoured clean by sharp, unblinking awareness. Every bruise, every strained nerve, every lingering tremor from the tunnel collapse was hyper-present. Worse was the phantom weight: the ghost of tons of granite hanging over my shoulders, a constant, wordless reminder of what Damian was capable
