The helicopter died without warning. One second it was cutting cleanly through the green sea of mountains, rotors steady, engine humming like a giant insect. The next, the sound snapped—metal screaming, air tearing apart—and gravity took over. Elara Wynn barely had time to curse. The cockpit lights flickered, then went black. The pilot shouted something she couldn’t hear over the roar as the aircraft tilted hard to the left. Her harness dug into her shoulders, breath punched out of her lungs as the world spun. Trees rushed up to meet them. The impact came in waves. First the tail shearing off, metal ripping like paper. Then the nose slamming down, bone-jarring, violent. Then nothing—just noise, heat, darkness. Elara woke to silence. Not peaceful silence. The kind that rang in her ears and made her chest ache. Smoke drifted through shattered glass. Pine sap and fuel burned together in the air, thick and bitter. Her head throbbed, blood warm at her temple, but when she moved—slowly, carefully—nothing felt broken. The others didn’t move. The pilot was slumped forward, neck twisted at an angle Elara refused to examine too closely. In the back, two researchers lay tangled in wreckage, eyes open, staring at nothing. Elara swallowed hard. Training kicked in before panic could. Shock first, grief later. If she let herself think now, she would freeze. She unbuckled, grabbed her pack from beneath a twisted seat, and crawled out through a gap in the