A sluggish current seeps around these feet, carrying scraps of cloth and things too shapeless to name. Here, where men once huddled when all else was lost, no memory remains but grime and guilt. This is the underbelly of Haven, where those who had nowhere else to go faded into darkness, forgotten by a city struggling to survive.

No dragon skies, no wolf’s snarl.

Those fragments lie dormant, suppressed so nothing competes with the mission ahead. Hollow eyes look across slick walls, indifferent to rot and filth.

The eel’s corpse drifts somewhere behind me in the muck. Its black fluids linger, but the sewer’s slow current will disperse all traces soon enough. The only reminders of that brief clash are my own tattered bandages, stained darker where monster once gnawed.

An unseen pull tugs from the deeper tunnels, an echo older than hunger. It’s the same compulsion that roused these bones from the Field of Broken Banners, guiding me forward whether I willed it or not.

This time, it leads me through a corroded gate that wasn’t meant to be locked.

I push the grate open. Moldering hinges groan; stagnant air seeps out.

Beyond lurks another corridor, narrower, older.

Water laps at my ribs. Step by step, I wade in.

Their final footprints vanish into mire and sewage.

A spot that wasn't on the map.

I know what I've found.

More of the forgotten of Haven, vagrants, outcasts, driven down here in desperation. At times, I see evidence of them, half-sunken crates, crude bedding made from rags that must have once been clothes.

A battered pot sits on a shelf of damp stone, rusting in silence.

Chosen bones stir, urgent. The eel’s defeat weighed little on this form, but something else is out there.

A presence. Or perhaps only echoes waiting to be claimed.

In a branching alcove where the sewer widens, the walls rise higher, forming a murky pocket of slightly drier ground.

There, the remains of five or six people lie jumbled beneath collapsed timbers. A rotted plank scrawled with the word “HOME,” now half-submerged in slime, lays awkwardly against and across bone.

I kneel, letting lamp-oil residue drip from the lantern I salvaged. The murk parts enough to show skulls and scattered ribs. One skeleton is smaller, likely a child’s. Another is tall, with snapped femurs. Still more lie half-buried in debris.

Desperation trapped them here.

These bones shift carefully, clearing waterlogged planks. My hand uncovers a skeletal forearm, its owner sporting metal rings hammered in, likely shackles, not jewelry. The spirit is long gone; no trace of a final vow remains. Nothing to claim.

These are not bones I will borrow.

Another skeleton, half-broken, yields only shriveled cloth with pockets emptied. The next is too far disintegrated to hold any resonance.

Finally, near the center, I find a torso pinned under a collapsed beam. The skull tips forward as if in final submission. Crude etchings near its hand, tally marks, perhaps to mark the passing of time while trapped. Around the neck, a necklace of a sort with a rusted badge.

Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

A faint insignia.

I pry aside the beam. The skeleton’s bones remain relatively intact compared to the rest. When my gauntleted fingers lift the skull, a faint presence lingers beneath consciousness. It’s not a warrior’s echo, nor a beast’s hunger.

Something else, the authority of one who enforced order in desperate times.

No single flash of memory, only the vague notion of how it guided and ruled others in this squalid domain.

The badge that dangles from a rotted cord shows half a crest, once an emblem of petty leadership for control among exiles. Memories swirl, an echo, organizing, holding others in line, bargaining scraps of food to keep them alive. Heavy hands and hardened hearts. A fist and a dirk. Hard choices in the dark.

Yes. This is the one.

These chosen bones do not kneel. There is no grand ceremony. Merely a subtle shift in the magic that binds me. I slide my hand across the skeleton’s sternum, fragments separate, responding to the compulsion deep in my core. A hum resonates, faint, intangible, acknowledging this new echo.

Merging pieces, these fallen vagrant’s bones integrate into my ribs and spine. The older fragments rearrange, making room. At once, the memory stirs: not an image, but a sense of navigating tangled corridors, forcing others to follow. A will that once wrestled chaos underfoot. It leaves behind a sense of direction, how to choose the correct path in gloom.

Quietly, I let the rest of the skeleton settle back into the sewer’s sludge. An empty shell. I claimed what I needed.

The occupant is gone. Only this small echo remains.

I straighten, ignoring the silent protest from older bones. This borrowed sense of direction bleeds into the moment.

The half-shattered lantern flickers, revealing a sloping passage to my left. Instinct, or that new memory, suggests the route to the catacombs might lie there.

Where others once sheltered.

So be it.

No fanfare. No hesitation. I set down the lantern on a jutting stone ledge, checking its flame. The sputtering wick remains alive enough to guide a few more steps. It’s enough.

I drag a half-rotted plank over the scattered bones, a brief gesture. Let the water rise and fall as it will, these remains deserve whatever meager rest remains after I’ve borrowed their final spark.

Then, without words or breath, I continue deeper.

What once took vague guesswork and old map is now guided by surety. A new piece in these chosen bones shows me the subtle differences in each corridor’s slope, the way water drains, the cues of stale air.

The wolf or dragon might once have stirred at odd scents, but their howls lie dormant. In their place stands only duty, reinforced by a vagrant’s grim leadership. For all the squalor that soul endured, it now helps me navigate these tunnels.

Sludge churns around my knees. The walls weep black rivulets. Muffled echoes hint at distant chambers. Soon, I sense a space ahead, perhaps where sewers merge with catacombs. This is where Haven once gathered its dead, layering them below the city.

Deeper still, the dwarven roads might wait.

Lamp flame dims, reflection dancing on the dark water. I tighten my grip on Aeternus. Another shape might wait beyond the gloom, some corrupted guardian of the catacombs, or more sewer beasts prowling new territory. But fear does not exist in these bones.

Only the hush of lifeless air, and that unwavering pull driving me onward.

Once more, I let final bits of bandage fall away from my arms. They serve no purpose here in the black. Let those who feared me above remain comforted in ignorance. Down here, I need no disguise.

Step after step, I descend until the water recedes. A sloping curve leads above sewer level. Less sludge, more ancient stone. The vagrant’s memory flutters in half-glimpses, reminding me of secret gatherings, warnings to keep quiet near certain walls.

The passages grow narrower, but I follow exactly where the sense leads.

Far overhead, Haven’s fills with flickering torches and anxious watchers. Beneath, in this silence, I alone move, a still hush that only breaks when water drips from centuries-old pipes.

Soon, the corridor opens into a low-vaulted chamber, its entrance bricked off in spots with old mortar. An arch once sealed lies partially collapsed. Broken steps descend from behind that rubble, likely the first rung of the catacombs. M

Yes, forward. Always forward.

I step around the fallen stones. Moss and fungal growths cling to every surface. The catacombs wait beyond, silent. Their threshold beckons.

With each stride, the echo from the skeleton’s command fades, as though it served its sole purpose to guide me here.

Bracing for whatever lurks in the depths, I tap the final dregs of the lantern’s oil. It sputters, coughs, then springs to life one more time.

Enough to see the first row of stacked alcoves brimming with old remains. The catacombs.

I exhale nothing, no breath. My borrowed bones move as always, forging ahead into the gloom. Above, a city that can’t spare living men sends a single skeleton to claim the path. That is the cost of survival in a world that mercy forgot.

I press on, letting the last scraps of lamplight guide me toward the unknown darkness where the dwarven roads, and deeper horrors, must lie.