Aiden dropped into the opening while the last light still clung to the basin walls.
The violet-tinged cold rose around him like water. The broken stone frame was older than the empire markers he had seen farther south—edges still sharp where the earth had protected them, the same angular script cut deep.
The key against his ribs stayed quiet. The ordered power under his skin answered the pulse with a low, steady readiness, the same readiness that had carried him through the highland leaks.
The tunnel ran only a short distance before it opened into a chamber the size of a modest hall. No guardians.
No traps. Only a single standing stone in the center, half-buried, and a shallow depression in the floor where something had once rested. He examined the script without touching it, fixed the pattern in memory the way he had at the first marker, and left.
