CHAPTER 380: CHAPTER-380.

"Yeah," Kaya murmured. "Better than you down here. Grab my shirt."

His fingers found the back hem of her shirt and hooked there, steady and sure. With his other arm he held Cutie tight, one arm under the knees, the other around his upper back, the boy’s head turned in toward his chest so it wouldn’t brush the stone. No more whining about how heavy he was. Just a firm, careful hold and the soft drag of his breathing.

Kaya took the first step down.

The stone was cool under her boots, and each stair dipped in the middle, worn by paws and feet that had used this way long before any inn was built above it. There was a thin film of damp in some places, enough to make the tread treacherous. She tested every foothold before she trusted her full weight to it. The air was the strangest part—thick and still, like it had been sitting here for seasons. When she pulled it in through her nose, it came slow, pressing into her chest and staying there. It didn’t quite feel like enough.

"Don’t gulp it," Veer murmured. His breath brushed the back of her neck. "Short in. Short out. This place doesn’t like being woken."

"Feels like it wants us to leave," Kaya said, keeping her tone quiet. Even speaking seemed to use more of the thin air than she liked.

The stair spat them into a low tunnel. Kaya had room to stand straight. Veer didn’t. She heard his shoulder scrape the ceiling softly as he ducked, shifting Cutie a little higher to keep his head clear. The darkness here was not the same as the inn’s shadows. It was older, thicker. But to Kaya’s eyes, it slowly sorted into layers: the pale curve of a wall to her right, rough and slightly uneven; the darker seam where it met the floor; the faint suggestion of where the tunnel bent ahead.

"Turn coming," she whispered. "To the left."

Veer’s hand on her shirt tugged once in acknowledgment. His vision was sharp in moonlight, in forests, across stone courts at night. Here, where light had never touched, the dark sat better with her than with him, and both of them accepted that without needing to argue.

They moved together, step after cautious step. Breathing was work now—air in, air out, lungs complaining at how thick and stingy it felt. The tunnel walls were close enough that Kaya could have reached out both arms and brushed them. She did touch the right one with her fingertips as they walked. Deep furrows ran along it, four at a time, like claws had been dragged there on purpose, over and over, until the grooves became part of the path.

"What is this place really?" she asked after a while, keeping her voice low so it didn’t bounce too hard off the stone. "You didn’t just stumble into some random hole."

"No," Veer said. The word nudged the ceiling and came back smaller. "This is older than any ring above us. Before there were walls and courts and inns, the wolf tribe and the other beasts carved ways like this under the ground."

"Why?" Kaya’s chest felt tight, but the question still pushed out.

"For war," he said. "For hiding. For moving between hunting grounds when the surface burned or flooded. Packs would bring the pups and elders down when raids came. Patrols used these throats instead of open ground when they needed to cross someone else’s claim without being seen."

Kaya imagined it—whole families huddled in this same dark, breathing this same heavy air while claws and fire tore up the world overhead. The tunnels ancient cities carve for refuge and movement can run for levels and levels beneath the surface, with only narrow shafts and cracks feeding them air. [1]

"And then you all decided you liked pretty stone and markets better," she said.

"The tribes agreed to build together," Veer replied. "Rings around the old dens. Houses over old camps. When the capital was finished, the leaders didn’t like the idea of old mouths like this running under their paws. Too many ways for an enemy to slip through."

Kaya’s fingers hit a jagged break in the wall where rock had once fallen inward, then been cleared again in a narrow cut. "So they blocked them."

"They sent work crews," Veer said. "Collapsed every entrance they knew. Threw rock into the throats until they choked. Let the old ways die." His hand tightened slightly on her shirt. "On their maps, there are no tunnels here anymore. Just solid ground."

"But this one’s still breathing," Kaya said.

"This one caved in on their side long before they got ambitious," Veer answered. "Then some idiot built that inn over this end. On paper, it was dead with the rest. I found the hollow on patrol. The echo under my feet said it wasn’t gone. I kept the echo to myself."

Kaya didn’t say thank you out loud. She just kept walking.

The tunnel dipped once more, the air growing even heavier for a brief stretch, then began to rise. Her legs burned. A faint headache squeezed at the back of her skull from the short, measured breaths. She refused to hurry them. Veer had Cutie in his arms; a bad step here and all three of them would roll like stones.

"Exit?" she asked when the black ahead lightened by a shade, turning from absolute to almost.

"Soon," Veer said. "There’s a crack where an old water channel broke. It opens near the lower dens."

Kaya glanced back over her shoulder, barely catching the outline of his face in the black

"Whose place?" she asked, voice low. "Your pack’s?"

Veer shook his head, fingers tightening on the back of her shirt as they walked. "No one’s. This line doesn’t go into a den. It spits us out in a cave behind a waterfall. Old meeting point from before the capital—too loud to sleep in, so no one claimed it. They just passed through."