First, there was the stink: a lungful of boiled leather, hot iron, and the damp, mineral sweat of men who had spent half their lives underground and the rest wishing they had.
Apollo had expected fear, maybe, or suspicion at the mouth of the Smokestone Hollow, but what he found instead was commerce, raw and unfiltered, same as the arteries of any old city, only here the blood was banditry and the bones belonged to no one.
By the time they reached the outpost, the sun was already a rumor behind the pass. The path wound through a drape of moss and shale, then spat them into an antechamber domed with black glass.
All the heat from the smithies below bled upward, mixing the taste of basalt with a tang of solder and stinging glue.
Every inch of this place was a palimpsest: old trade tunnel, slave barracks, quarantine ward, and now the favorite resort of men and women who preferred to buy their futures at a discount.
