The alarm began as a tremor in Mara Vale’s boots.
She stopped beneath the excavation gantry, one hand pressed against the basalt wall, while dust whispered from the ceiling and drifted through the beam of her helmet lamp. Somewhere behind her, the crawler’s engines coughed in the thin manufactured air. Ahead, beyond the cut face, something pulsed again—faintly, rhythmically, a warmth traveling through stone.
“Vale,” Nikhil said over comms. “You feeling that?”

