The tunnels smelled like rot and iron.
We found the entrance where Kaelon's agents said it would be — a collapsed well on the eastern edge of Arhenor, hidden behind a tannery that hadn't produced leather in months. The wooden cover had been replaced with a stone slab etched in runes I didn't recognize. Something older than draconic or human script.
Thorn pressed his palm to the ground beside the slab and closed his eyes. His spectral flowers bloomed in a circle around his hand, pale green, pulsing once before wilting.
"Thirty meters down," he said. "The tunnel branches into three paths. The left one is collapsed. The center leads deeper — I can feel open space, something large. The right one..." He paused. "I can't read it. Something is blocking me."
"Blocking how?" Kaelon asked.
"Like the ground itself doesn't want to be felt."
