Tobias follows the scent deeper, one hand trailing the damp stone wall. The torchlight fades behind him but a warmer glow grows ahead, amber and flickering. The tunnel widens into a low chamber where a small fire burns in a ring of flat stones, fed by pine knots that snap and hiss. Beside it sits a wooden stool, and on the stool a clay bowl still steaming with something that smells of herbs and broth. Whoever built this fire left very recently — or has not left at all. Shadows pool at the far edges of the chamber, and Tobias notices two things at once: a narrow passage continuing deeper into the hill, and a rope ladder hanging from a crack in the ceiling, its top end swallowed by darkness above.