Elias felt his stomach drop.
His balance wavered.
He grabbed for a support rail as wind howled through the open hold, threatening to suck everything not bolted down into the sky.
Somewhere inside that roar, the crucifix's voice stirred again—faint, steady.
Survive.
The sky ripped open around them.
Elias's body hurled backward as the explosion tore through the dropship's hull. The detonation wasn't a burst of fire—it was force, pure and clean, the kind that snapped bones and buckled steel. Shards of glowing alloy scattered into the upper atmosphere, spinning past him like blades. He twisted mid-air, limbs flailing against the sudden shift in pressure, the roar of ruptured air drowning out even his own breath. The red glow of the ship's interior smeared into streaks behind him, vanishing as the violent updraft swallowed him whole.
