The mountain did not just hold secrets.
It breathed them.
Buried truths no geological scan could capture, no official report could document—ancient, dormant, woven into every layer of stone and sediment beneath our feet. I could feel it coiling around me, a cold, intangible weight: not the stare of any human enemy, but the slow, watchful consciousness of the earth itself, awake at last.
I forced my jaw tight, shoving the disorienting sensation down.
Focus. You’re here to read stone, not spiral into existential dread.
Later. Wine first, crisis second.
“Mrs. Wolfhart?”
Elias, the younger geologist, shot me a shaky, nervous chuckle, his headlamp bobbing unsteadily. “You’re staring at that east wall like it personally robbed you blind.”
I tore my gaze away from the fissure thrumming wi
