The trail did not stay underground.
After the third chamber the corridor climbed in a long, steady grade. The fungal light vanished completely. The metallic cold thinned until it was only a faint memory on the tongue. Aiden followed the scent thread upward. The stone underfoot gave way to packed earth. The air changed. Woodsmoke. Unwashed bodies. Cooking fat. The sharp edge of fear that never quite left a place where people were kept against their will.
He emerged at dusk through a narrow cleft hidden behind a fall of scree. Beyond it lay a wide, shallow valley in the middle of the hills—sheltered on three sides by steep rock, open only to the north where a single track wound down toward lower country. The labyrinth had been a back door. Whoever ran this camp had known the tunnels well enough to use them as a private road.
The camp filled the valley floor.
