Dawn never truly reached the underground tunnels beneath San Diego because sunlight could not survive in places built from rot, blood, and centuries of buried hunger, and deep beneath the sleeping city ancient concrete corridors stretched endlessly through darkness where rusted pipes dripped black water beside walls scarred by claw marks older than most kingdoms above them.
The ghoul kingdom remained awake.
Restless.
Uneasy beneath the distant vibration of human traffic beginning far overhead.
Every creature hiding beneath the city felt it tonight.
That shift.
That horrible pressure crawling slowly through stone and bone alike ever since Eryndor's symbol appeared again across the surface world.
