The class filed into the tunnel, their footsteps soft but echoing faintly against the stone floor. The air was cooler here, heavy with the scent of damp rock and old moss.
Torches hissed and crackled as they burned, their flames casting shifting shadows that crawled along the walls.
The flicker of orange light revealed slick patches of moisture, dark streaks of lichen, and faint grooves carved long ago by hands now lost to history.
Alira took the lead, torch held high. Her presence steadied the group, her movements careful but assured as she traced a finger along the tunnel's worn surface. "These passageways," she explained, her tone both informative and reverent, "were carved by a civilization that flourished centuries before the founding of the academy. They built vast networks beneath their cities and forests, part refuge, part temple. What remains here is but a fragment."
