[Ava's POV]
The sanctuary of the unknown lap, the heartbeat that was not one of the three, was a fleeting dream, a soap bubble of calm in the microsecond before the detonation. Reality did not intrude; it performed a hostile takeover.
The assault began not with a bang, but with a fundamental insult to physics. A silent, massive pressure wave struck the eastern façade of the Den. It was the feeling of being at the bottom of a deep ocean when the water above is suddenly displaced by something unimaginably vast. The air in Ava’s lungs was forcibly evacuated before her brain could register the concept of ‘sound.’ Then the world screamed.
It was a multi-layered cacophony of annihilation. First, the high, crystalline, almost musical shattering of the specially treated, three-inch ballistic gl
