SWAMP GHOUL - The Drowned

Born of rot, drowned in mire.
The Codex fed his corpse to the bog,
and the bog spat him back out,
hungering for breath that is not his own.
 
The dead do not rest.
The drowned do not dream.
The Ghoul drags both to the mud.
 
Once a man of the marshlands, he drowned beneath black waters when the Codex demanded sacrifice. His kin cast him into the mire, stones lashed to his chest, prayers whispered to the river’s mouth. The swamp drank deep, but it did not keep him.
 
When the moon waned to its thinnest shard, his corpse clawed its way from the muck — pale, dripping, hollow-eyed. The reeds knotted into his hair, moss clothed his flesh, and his breath stank of stagnant waters. No name clung to him, only hunger.
 
The Ghoul haunts riverbanks and bog paths, dragging the living into his mire. Their lungs fill with his rot, their eyes drown in his gaze. He feeds not on flesh alone, but on the memory of breath, the warmth of those who still walk.
 
The Codex marks him as a fragment of The Hollowing, for in his silence no prayer can rise, and no cry can reach the heavens. Where Kaelen is the Beast, Christina the Martyr, and Nyssara the Dreamer, the Swamp Ghoul is the Drowned — a reminder that the earth itself can betray.
 
Some claim that if you listen in the reeds, you will hear his gurgling hymn, a prayer not to gods, but to the Codex itself. A prayer of muck, rot, and endless sinking.