They came armed with shovels, heavy machinery, and a fragile kind of hope, moving slowly across a landscape that no longer made sense. Where there had once been roads, there were now rivers of hardened mud. Where there had been trees, there were splintered stumps and torn roots jutting from the ground like broken bones. Every recovery was announced in the same flat language, but behind each clinical phrase lay a life violently cut short.

The woman found first. The three men discovered together. The one who was never brought home. Their names and stories now live mostly in living rooms and kitchen tables, in the quiet spaces where families replay final conversations and unanswered messages. Officials will file reports, and the province will rebuild, as it always tries to do. But for those left behind, time will be measured forever in two parts: before the hillside fell, and after the mountain took everything.