Chapter 205
The underworld streets were as foul as one could imagine—an open wound beneath the city's skin. The stench of rotting food mixed with stale blood and piss clung to the air like a disease.
Muck clung to every crevice in the cobblestones, and rats scurried around like shadowy residents of their own kingdom. Shouts, groans, and drunken laughter echoed through the narrow, crooked alleys.
The underworld district was nothing like the clean, noble towns Kael had once walked through. The air smelled of piss, blood, and cheap alcohol. Flies buzzed over piles of trash rotting in the corners. Mud mixed with who-knows-what stuck to Kael's boots as he followed Bob down the dark, narrow alleys.
The buildings were broken and leaning. Clothes hung from windows, and suspicious eyes peered from the shadows. Screams and laughter echoed from deep inside the maze of streets.
A scar-eyed man, hunched and twitchy, led a cloaked figure through the grime-ridden path. The figure moved with a quiet, heavy aura. His face was hidden behind a dark metal mask, and a thick cloak draped over his form like a curtain of shadow. Beneath the disguise was Kael, his presence dulled yet dangerous, like a blade hidden beneath silk.
"Where is it?" Kael's voice came out low and cold.
The scar-eyed man, Bob, flinched and looked around nervously. "You… you aren't planning to dupe me, right?"
Kael didn't even look at him, but the tone in his reply was enough to send shivers down Bob's spine.
"You wouldn't like what happened if I thought you were."
Bob gulped and nodded frantically. "Of course not! Believe me!"
Kael simply grunted in reply and continued forward, his boots squelching in the mud as they passed overflowing gutters and broken barrels leaking some dark, unidentifiable sludge.
They soon emerged into a wider space, a street that seemed like a festival for the damned.