The air stinks of damp stone, rot, and old blood.

You’re wrapped in his cloak — coarse, soot-stained, smelling faintly of ash and steel. It scratches your neck and drags a little behind you, but it hides the silk and gold stitched into your sleeves.

No one bows in this place. No one would believe you were Gwyn’s child here — not with grime on your boots and your hands clenched in the Undead’s.

The slums are a maze. Half-collapsed arches overhead. Fires burning in broken barrels. Eyes peering out from shadowed doorways — hollowed, hungry, hopeless.

A woman hisses something in a dead dialect. A child with gray eyes stares too long.

“They think I’m cursed,” you whisper.

“They’re not wrong,” the Chosen Undead mutters.

You shove him, annoyed. “You’re the cursed one.”

He almost smiles. Almost.

You reach a stone stairwell choked in ivy and black moss. A beggar stirs nearby, face wrapped in rags, humming a tune that makes your spine crawl.

You lean in close. “Why did you bring me down here?”

“To show you,” the Undead says.