The dark did not merely surround us. It swallowed us whole, cold and tactile, pressing into every pore like damp, weighted velvet. This was no ordinary shadow—this was the accumulated gloom of centuries, thickened by old blood, old feuds, and the silent, unyielding authority of a race that ruled humanity from the shadows.
The air hung heavy in my lungs, saturated with the musk of ancient predator pelts, worn aged leather, and the faint, iron-sweet tang of bladed weapons that had spilled blood long before modern cities existed. Beneath my feet, rough-hewn stone slabs scraped the thin soles of my dress shoes—no polished corporate marble, no civilised finish, only raw, unrefined bedrock thrumming with a faint, persistent residual heat.
I felt it before I could process it: a deep, subterrane
