The sound was like nothing I had ever heard—a tearing, howling explosion that collapsed everything in milliseconds. I didn't see the ceiling crack or the walls crumble. I only felt the sudden, crushing weight as the world above me came down, and I tumbled with it.
I tried to scream, but the noise came out as a rasp... My chest burned from the effort, but I screamed again anyway—calling out for my wife, my 2-year-old son, my parents.
Then came the smell: scorched concrete, metallic blood, something acrid I couldn't place. I shifted my hand, scraping it against broken glass, and tried to feel for anything alive in the void around me.
Relief and terror collided in my chest. He was alive, but somewhere out of reach, buried as deeply as I was. I tried to move, but the pain, raw and unrelenting, ripped through me.
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