I was but an apprentice, a name among many, when I first heard the chanting echo through the stone tunnels. Tornpeak had always stunk of damp and rot, but that night… something else stirred in the dark. Something old. Something hungry.
Master Ghildarion spoke of liberation—of freedom from the tyranny of sunlight and kings. He said the dead could be reclaimed, their wisdom drawn from marrow and soul alike. We believed him.
We were fools.
We gathered beneath the cistern, where the city’s sewage met the veins of the underworld. Candles flickered blue. Rats watched in silence.
Ghildarion’s voice shook the walls as he read from a tome bound in stitched skin. Then came the screams—from above.
The city guards, the merchants, the children… They bled from their eyes as the first demon rose. Not of fire or shadow, but of rot and memory. A corpse that remembered too much.
I did not flee. I should have.
Tornpeak was no longer a city. It was a wound.
Streets sank. Statues wept bile. And Ghildarion stood at the heart of it all—arms raised, laughter echoing through alleys choked with bone dust.
I saw neighbors claw each other for scraps of warmth. I saw my mentor eat his own tongue to silence a prophecy. And I—we—kept chanting. Even as the last bell fell silent.
Now I write this by the light of a single candle, hidden where the rot has yet to reach. I do not seek forgiveness. Only remembrance.
If you find this page, know that Tornpeak did not fall in a day. It was hollowed by hope twisted into hunger.
And somewhere, beneath your own city... something stirs and waits.