The Echoes of Obsidian Ridge
CHAPTER 8:
A massive detonation blew the top trapdoor off its hinges, sending a shower of concrete dust and steel fragments tumbling down the staircase into the bunker corridor. Heavy tactical boots began stomping down the concrete steps.
“Go! Go!” Julian yelled, shoving Maya through the rear blast door and slamming the heavy steel portal shut behind them. He turned the manual locking wheel until the steel deadbolts slammed home with a solid, echoing thud.
They found themselves in a narrow, rough-hewn timber shaft constructed in the early twentieth century. The air was frigid, wet, and smelled of decaying pine needles and coal dust. The ground sloped sharply downward toward the valley floor.
Julian clicked his flashlight back on, shining the beam down the slippery wooden track. “Keep your head down and stay on the timber ties—the center ground might be rotten.”
They ran through the damp darkness for ten harrowing minutes as the sound of muffled gunfire and metallic breaching tools echoed uselessly behind the sealed blast door. The shaft gradually widened until cold mountain air rushed against their faces, and they burst out through an overgrown wooden portal hidden inside a rocky ravine half a mile below the burning estate.
Looking back up the mountain, Maya saw thick plumes of black smoke rising above the tree line. “They’re burning the house,” she said quietly, her voice trembling in the cold wind. “They’re erasing everything.”
