A quiet settles the moment I pass under the final arch leading from drowned sewers into this deeper realm where centuries are entombed.

Damp stone presses in from all sides, reflecting the weight of endless years.

The catacombs are older than Haven's outer walls, older than any living memory.

Here, the city once laid its dead when they could not risk journeys beyond the fortress. Coffins and bodies stack in cramped halls, memorials to those who perished during siege and darkness.

Water drips from my battered armor, pooling on flagstones grown uneven with time. Though I carry sputtering lantern, I have no real need of its light, the blue-white glow of my eyeless sockets reveals far more than simple flame could.

Still, I keep it burning out of habit, some faint courtesy to the living minds that once walked these passages, or perhaps a vestige from borrowed memories of old soldiers using torches to banish shadows.

Remaining light shows coffins in dusty alcoves, some carved from stone, others wood long rotted to splinters. Human shapes lie half-exposed, old linen shrouds fused to bone. A place of final rest should offer peace, yet something rots beneath ancient stone.

The lantern sputters, then dies.

Light matters little to these borrowed bones only to the echoes that guide them.

Skeletal fingers trace worn inscriptions. Names carved by hands turned to dust themselves. Some still speak their stories, soldiers, farmers, guards, children whose parents outlived them.

Others have faded to mere grooves in stone.

Lamentum.

A coffin lid shifts, wood creaking against stone. Then another. And another. The sound carries through the cramped passageways like falling stones in greater cavern.

It echoes.

I draw Aeternus.

The demon shield, crafted from the Duke's skull, radiates power in my arm as as corrupted energy seeps from the walls themselves.

The first corpse rises, jaw hanging loose, fingers grasping.

Rest, I think, cleaving through its skull with Aeternus.

The blade cuts through bone, and the body crumples.

A withered hand reaches out to grab, I step back. Aeternus slashes. The blade severs the grasping fingers, but the corpse presses on, uncaring of its loss.

Free hand seizes corpses skull. Ancient bone creaks beneath skeleton ones. The creature thrashes, its remaining hand clawing uselessly at my armored form.

My grip tightens. Fractures spread across the yellowed surface. The skull fragments beneath my palm with a sharp crack.

The body collapses, lifeless.

Their are more.

They come in waves now, drawn by corruption's pulse. These are not warriors or monsters, just empty shells denied their peace. A mass of limbs reaches for me.

Rest.

Aeternus cuts through three at once. The dead pour out from their alcoves. Fingers claw at ancient bindings. Empty eye sockets fix upon my empty frame of bone.

The dead look upon the dead, but there is no recognition, only the shambling pull of undeath.

Forward motion, pulling bones towards second death.

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They are empty vessels denied their rest.

My shield deflects a lunging corpse. Its skull shatters against the demon bone, scattering teeth across stone floors. Where it lands, it writhes, crawling, trying to bite with a ruined mouth.

More emerge from their alcoves. Tattered burial clothes drag behind them like shed skin. They press forward in the narrow space, climbing over each other, breaking brittle bones in their mindless advance.

I recognize no kindred spark in their vacant stares. Their movements jerk, lacking grace or calling.

A mass of fleshless fingers tears at my armor straps. Teeth scrape uselessly against my enchanted bones. They cannot harm what death has already claimed, yet still they try, driven by urges that have no names.

I slam my shield forward, using its massive surface to push through the press. Lesser bones crack and splinter as I drive them back against the catacomb walls. The demon bone shield crushes ribcages and skulls into powder.

A corpse leaps onto my back, trying to find purchase on smooth bone. I reach back, gripping its spine, and tear it apart at the vertebrae. The pieces scatter, still twitching.

The narrow passage works against their numbers. I become a wall of bone and purpose. Each undead is met with only destruction.

My blade continues its work through the press of bodies. Each strike separates bone from bone, granting final rest to these corrupted remains.

The tunnel narrows further, forcing the dead into a bottleneck where Aeternus can cleave through multiple forms at once.

A mass of bodies piles up, forcing the rest to climb over their fallen brethren.

I drive my blade through the mound of corpses.

Power surges outward, tearing through corrupted flesh and bone.

Bodies collapse.

Empty eye sockets dim as whatever dark force animated them is unwoven.

The demon shield proves invaluable, its massive surface creating space where none existed.

Shield breaks bone. Sword severs limbs.

These bones remember the Legion. Undead in the catacombs are much easier to dispatch.

I crush the final skull between demon shield and stone wall. The empty socket's glow fades as death claims its own once more.

Dust settles in the aftermath.

Broken bones litter the flagstones, finally at peace. I gather my borrowed frame against a wall, letting the magic that drives me pulse slower.

Though I need no rest, these moments of stillness help order.

A distant drip of water marks time's passage. The catacombs grow quiet again, as they should be.

Blue and white sockets sweep the dark, seeking any movement among the shadows.

Finding none, I let my bones settle bones clicking back into proper alignment.

I rise after.

The tunnel continues deeper, where dwarven roads await. These catacombs are but the first challenge.

My mission lies that way, yet something pulls at these ancient bones. A wrongness in the walls.

Carved into the archway above.

"Here Sleep The Names Unspoken

The chamber stretches beyond eyeless sight, filled with rows of unmarked graves, no inscriptions. Only smooth stone containing whatever lies within.

My armored feet scrape against the floor as I move between the rows. The demon shield vibrates against my arm, responding to whatever power lingers here.

No corpses rise to challenge my presence. These dead, at least, seem content in their rest.

Or perhaps better contained by whatever binding holds them.

The corridor widens: tall niches climb floor to ceiling, each stacked with skeletal remains. Some show careful arrangement - skulls stacked, femurs aligned.

Others appear haphazard, as if tossed in desperation.

The floor is cluttered with wooden bits, stone dust, and coffin lids. Pale lumps of wax remain, old candles melted away.

A few tarnished candleholders spread out, too thick with spider webs to have burned in recent memory.

Near one stone grave, a brass plaque reads. "Here lay's the Vigilant Sister. Who served first upon the walls."

The coffin's lid is splintered at the midpoint.

No footprints mar the dust, only long grooves near the break, scratches that speak of a sharp, irregular claw.

The ragged remains inside show a collapsed ribcage, bones half-scattered, few remain.

Many are missing.

There is no echo.

I move on.

Occasionally, movement. Not the scuttling of rats, though I expect them, but heavier, slower.

I turn corners where the crypt extends out in branches.

Grave design rarely follows anything but the need for expansion.

The dead from above are numerous.

I find some sealed vault doors half-ripped from their hinges, old steel rods warped as if pried open.

The architecture shifts as I move deeper. Ornate archways replace rough-hewn stone.

Dull but clear name plates mark the resting places of survivors who found safety in Haven's walls, the merchant princes and noble houses who did not die out with the fall.

These are not common graves.

Marble columns frame family crypts. Gold leaf, though tarnished, still traces elaborate family crests.

Vials that once held precious oils lie shattered on polished floors.

I pause before a family crypt. The heavy bronze door hangs askew, torn from hinges thick as a bone wrist.

Inside are only broken crypts, not signs of risen dead. Violation of rest. Their stone lids lie broken, contents scattered.

Where noble bones should lie, only empty space remains.

Another crypt tells the same story. Four generations of master craftsmen, their final works their own resting places, now lie exposed.

The bones are gone. No signs of violence mark the remaining fragments. No tool marks or animal gnawing.

Not even a fragment these bones might borrow.

The pattern repeats.

Something passed through these halls, something that left no trace save hunger satisfied.