Chapter 5 – The Tunnel of Secrets

The night was colder than usual. The moonlight spilled over the jagged rocks, painting the mines in silver and shadow. Most of the slaves lay flat on the ground, too tired to dream, too broken to hope. But Rocky did not sleep. His eyes were fixed on the dark hole he had uncovered—the tunnel.

Something inside him whispered that it was not just a passage of stone and dust, but a path to answers.

The next morning, Rocky returned to the spot, pretending to work. He brushed off more soil, carefully widening the gap. As he dug, he felt someone’s gaze on him. Turning slightly, he noticed an old man watching him—the same man who had questioned him about saving the boy. His name, Rocky learned later, was Ibrahim, a miner who had been in Kolar for more than twenty years. His beard was long, his back bent, but his eyes… sharp as blades.

“I told you,” Ibrahim muttered under his breath when the guards weren’t looking, “that place is cursed. Men vanish there. The earth swallows them whole.”

Rocky smirked faintly. “Or maybe the earth is hiding something worth dying for.”

That night, when the guards retreated, Rocky slipped into the tunnel. The air was thick, heavy with the smell of damp soil and rusted iron. The walls were carved strangely, as if men had once worked here but abandoned it in fear.

And then—he wasn’t alone.

“Who’s there?” a voice trembled in the dark.

Rocky froze. Out from the shadows stumbled a young woman, her clothes torn, her face smeared with dirt, but her eyes blazing with defiance. She held a broken piece of iron like a weapon.

Rocky raised his hands slowly. “I’m not your enemy.”

Her breath was ragged. “Then why are you here?”

“I could ask you the same,” Rocky replied calmly.

The girl’s name was Asha. She revealed that she wasn’t a slave like the others—she was brought secretly by the guards, forced to work in the deepest corners of the mine. Unlike the men above, these workers were never allowed to leave. They were invisible. Forgotten.

As Rocky listened, rage brewed inside him. He had seen cruelty, but this was something darker. Asha showed him markings on the tunnel walls—maps, drawn by those who once tried to escape. Some led nowhere. Some ended in collapse. But one trail… one trail pointed further, deeper, toward something hidden beneath the gold itself.

When Rocky returned to the surface, his heart pounded with new determination. The mine wasn’t just a prison of chains—it was a labyrinth of secrets. And in those secrets lay both danger and opportunity.

That night, Ibrahim whispered, “What did you see down there?”

Rocky’s reply was firm, his voice like steel. “Not fear. Not curses. I saw hope.”

For the first time, Ibrahim smiled faintly, though his eyes glistened with unshed tears. Around them, more slaves began to notice Rocky’s fire. The boy he had once saved now followed him everywhere. And Asha… she had become the first ally from the shadows.

The legend was growing—not through violence, but through courage. The winds of rebellion were rising, and the Kolar Gold Fields had no idea that its greatest storm was just beginning.

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