Ordinarily, the underworld tended to grow around the wealthiest noble families.
Where money gathered, people gathered. And where people gathered, so did crime.
But the North was an exception.
It wasn't that slums didn't exist around the Draken Duke's castle—there were plenty of the poor clinging to its shadow. Rather, there were simply better places for the desperate to gather.
The tunnels.
Once carved out by the demon tribe during their invasion, they had since been abandoned and reclaimed by those who had nowhere else to go. The homeless, the dispossessed, and those who couldn't afford life within the castle walls all ended up here. The result: the largest, most peculiar underworld in the empire.
"It's gloomy, isn't it?"
"Barren too," I replied, glancing around. "They say half the residents here are people who lost their homes to monsters."
