The waters surrounding the Dock were pure, but as you continue along this pier, you start to see grim detritus, polluting the waters.

You wrinkle your nose and avert your eyes at the sight of the waterlogged corpses, bones, and limbs littering the waters, turning them a sickly, murky grey. And the gore just gets thicker as you walk on.

Soon, in front of you, all you can see to your sides is compressed corpse matter, fused into a slurry so thick that you can no longer see the water.

The smell is unbearable now. You feel the need to remove your helmet and cover your nose, but you keep it on, unwilling to sacrifice its protection.

Eventually the pier ends. But you keep on walking. The bones are so thickly pressed here, that they are akin to cobblestone. You walk along the plain of bones, and gradually the terrain around you starts to gain definition, warping into shape, a varied landscape appearing in front of you. A wrought-iron gate appears, and with the key you found in the Mansion of Dusk, you unlock it and continue on your way.

Through the haze, you see what might be what remains of a huge graveyard, overflowing with the dead. And beyond that, almost invisible in the miasma, a massive cathedral.

"Do you smell that?" The hermit sits nearby, atop an exposed coffin. He grimaces at the smell, putting a rag over his mouth and nose. "That is the stench of death. That which awaits you, if you dare to proceed."

"This dismal region is a Monument to the end of life, and all it entails." He continues. "Their graves overflowed, their coffins burst. And yet... it seems like a festival."

True enough, you can make out some splashes of color among the black of mold and the grey of aged bone. Dissonant music echoes in the distance, amid plumes of smoke from funeral pyres.

"Bizarre, isn't it? I don't think you'll find any happy endings here... It is a hungry place, that will chew you up and swallow you whole..." He chuckles and leaves, forcing you to delve into this shrine to death alone...

In contrast to what you have seen of the Aeon Ruins, the so-called Killing Fields were quite lively. 'Lively', of course, being a very subjective term for a place so aptly named. Pale skinned people in rags run screaming, clambering over graves and bulging crypts.

Pursuing them are towering ghasts, with stick-like limbs, a hole above their deranged grins in place of a face, and clothes sewn from human skin.

They wield blood-rusted axes with reckless abandon, as if the crude things were weightless. They cut down any survivor they find, tossing them into the nearest grave or pile, two things that populate the Fields above all else.

One of the hapless survivors rushes up to you, slamming against you and clutching at your armor madly.

It doesn't stop screaming, and in its eyes you see the same feral madness that enrapts the Shades and all things corrupted by their shadow. You summarily dispatch it, but now the Executioner Ghasts target you. Either they don't appreciate you muscling in on their territory, or you simply look like another madman to them.

Either way, you can't take on so many at once. You run into the thick of it, passing decayed holy men who still clutch their instruments of last rites, and stand in front of a crypt's door.

You attempt to bash it open, but your attempt was far more successful than you could have imagined. The stone doors explode outwards in a shower of gore, the gases of decay having built up into an immense pressure.

You hold your breath and crawl inside, closing the doors behind you, shivering as you crouch, cold as the grave. The Ghasts' peg-legs go 'tick-tack' on the bony ground, halting in front of the door. And they don't leave. You can't stay in here forever, but you'll hold out as long as you can... and yet you are blind, to the wayward bones behind you, silently coming to life...

Your struggle through the Killing Fields leads you to a wrought iron fence, whose gate, littered with heavy padlocks, has been torn down and replaced with a shroud of mist.

You pass through, and find yourself at the lip of the largest mass grave you've seen yet. Hesitantly, you step forward, and disgustingly, the film of corpses ripples under your feet. You tenuously walk across the grisly surface, but its movement persists, rising and falling with more intensity than it should have.

Sensing danger, you run to the side of the gated area and draw your weapon. And the presence waiting underneath reveals itself. Swells of death converge in the center and rise as one.

The grim parody of a bald skull emerges, sockets hateful and empty, face lacking any other features. It ripples out of the dead soup, an amalgamation of bones and flesh fused into a humanoid torso, rising like the tide.

Its skeletal claws, in turn made of more skeletons, sprout and slam against the surface of the cesspool, sending ripples in all directions. Bloody heads roll into its sockets, acting as hateful eyes.

Its dissonant scream fills the putrid air as it rushes toward you, leaving only death in its wake...

You find an iron key, hidden in an opulent bedchamber, and use it to open a heavy door in the Necropolis's main hall, revealing a room absolutely saturated with machines of agony.

A refined torture chamber, a brightly colored playground of pain and death. Whirling blades pass by on parallel tracks in an infinity pattern, armors line the wall, axes ready to chop, pitfalls and jets of flame abound...

And from the ceiling, bladed iron chains hang. Suspended from the ceiling by iron chains, an Iron Maiden hangs. The face of the black metal casket is permanently warped into an expression of screaming, either in joy or in agony, a horrific sight.

But not as horrific as when the chains go slack, letting the iron coffin thunk against the ground. And snap open. And when the device opens, a mutilated body is revealed, red from blood but still twitching in agony, letting out hoarse groans of pain from a throat that should clearly no longer be working.

Holes pockmark the corpses surface, all still oozing blood. And yet, despite its injury induced deformities, you recognize it, from the bloodstained rings that still covered its hands.

They featured prominently in the portrait of a woman that you found in the bedchamber. This woman, or what is left of her, created this terrible place, and now must remain here forever, reliving her agony as a shadow of her former self.

You could almost pity her, if the bloody chains weren't snaking across the floor to you...

With the things hidden in the darkness hot on your trail, you stumble through the final mist veil, clanking against the pitch-black rock below. You continue rolling down a shallow slope, knocking bones out of the way before sliding to a stop.

You groan and get to your knees, reigniting your torch. This blackness feels... different. More solid, and yet more empty than what you have experienced thus far. The strange obelisks are common here, all leaning towards a central point.

But raising your torch, you see naught but a pit... and a tiny leg, dangling from an obelisk. You raise the torch higher, finding two beady black eyes, staring back from a mottled yellowed head. The head of a child.

The skin is cracked, like a skull, and the rest of its body follows suit, giving it an appearance like an emaciated ghoul. You stare at it for a moment, thinking about what it means. A young child, left in the darkness, cold, hungry and alone. Until he became loneliness. Became hunger. Became the cold.

It slowly opens its mouth... wider and wider, unhinging its jaw, exposing long, needle-like teeth like things in the black abyss of the ocean.

It screeches in the voice of a child, and jumps from the obelisk, landing on the ground and ripping one of the black things from the ground. It hefts the obelisk on its shoulder, and squeezes something in its other hand.

A still-beating heart glows red in its grubby fist, and the child takes a bite of it, blood trailing down its front. But then it turns towards you, roaring and twirling its black club, faster than should be possible. Its hunger is still not sated...