The first city that he encountered was called Dark Abode. Once it bore another name. But that was long ago.

  The Cursed managed to enter it before the gates closed. A few steps through the gates, and he found himself within the city walls. The houses stood crooked and gloomy. They had not looked like that before. Several corpses y in the streets, and no one cared.

  Ahead towered the gloomy pace of the ruler. In some windows a red light burned.

  The Cursed entered the inn “Unfortunate Traveler.” In the deserted hall he approached the bar counter, where a single patron was seated.

  The owner questioningly raised a shaggy eyebrow.

  "Water," said the Cursed.

  "We have good wine. Brought today from the Poisoned Wastends," the owner offered.

  "Water," the Cursed repeated.

  The owner nodded and set about fulfilling the order.

  "You’re clearly a new man in our parts, don’t know what’s going on here," said the stranger at the bar in a dull voice. His crumpled cap y nearby. In front of him stood a mug that smelled of beer. "Otherwise you’d have ordered only wine or beer too, if you had no money at all. Because not everyone in a sober mind can endure for long the events we’ve all here been unwillingly drawn into."

  The Cursed received the mug of water and stared questioningly at the speaker.

  "Long ago it began," he continued, seeing that he had a grateful listener. "Ten years ago already, when they overthrew the former King, whose name no one remembers anymore, as if a sorcerous veil had fallen upon people’s minds. Many don’t even remember there was a King, or how prosperous our Kingdom was under him. In his pce came a true tyrant. The Demon King who killed him and his favorites — true knights of honor and virtue who guarded peace and prosperity in people’s souls.

  In our city the Demon King pced his own favorite. Everyone calls him the Bdemaster. He had a grim reputation as the very best and undefeated fighter with any bded weapon in close combat. No one could defeat him. And all who met him in a duel died and vanished without a trace. Since that very time a fierce and evil misfortune took to wandering our homes — something that can neither be spoken of nor described in any sane tongue. They call it the Bck Darkness or the Bck Creature. Some are afraid to speak of it even in a whisper, because they believe the monster will hear them and come for them the next night.

  And it always begins the same way. A person lives — or rather exists, which describes life in this city more precisely. Then at night, suddenly, rge bck masses of darkness appear in his room, constantly moving, stirring, as if someone lives inside it who is going mad. It seizes its victim, devours him without a trace, and disappears, as if nothing foul had ever happened in that pce. That’s how we live, sir. So I don’t advise you to stay here long. I told you all this not because I’m brave or drank too much beer. Not at all. I simply know for certain that tonight I will die."

  He ughed joylessly, finished his beer, took his cap, and walked toward the exit.

  The Cursed rose and went after him.

  If the stranger was telling the truth about his death, and this was confirmed by the tale of the former King and his knights, whom few remembered now, and dishonest people would not speak of such things, then perhaps tonight, very soon, he would meet the local horror and take another step on the path toward his goal.