Wound

Within the Shadow, places exist that are so tainted that even spirits of pain avoid them. It's like the difference between a lethal injury and an aggravated one: A bullet hole is bad, but it can be repaired, while a sucking chest wound opened by a set of rending claws is about as bad as it gets. Within the spirit world, negativity marks the land, but with enough effort -- or, sometimes, just with time to heal -- that pervasive aura of awfulness may fade away. Atrocity, however, sears an inflamed hole through the worlds. It leaves more than a mark; it leaves a suppurating infection called a Wound.

A battlefield with many bloody and maiming losses, sites of catastrophes that were abandonded by the government, concentration camps and other places of suffering have the potential to form a Wound.

Appearence
A Wound is no subtle thing in the spirit realm. Similar to the aforementioned chest wound, a Wound is an obvious injury to the spiritual fundament. Some look like actual wounds, with the ground peeled up like strips of flesh and blood pulsing from the pit as if pushed to that by a distant heartbeat. Most Wounds, though, simply reflect the horror that initiated their growth. Walls leak pus from bullet holes. Smoke drifts from craters in the ground, and in those smoke one sees and hears the screaming faces of the soon-to-be-dead. Maggots writhe. Windows and doors open and close like mouths, barking obscenity and heresy. Rare Wounds are subtle, hidden like a deep infection. Often encased in half-darkness, these concealed Wounds only reveal their nature once one has gone too far in. Usually, the signs of such atrocity are delicate, like the faint odor of fleshy rot or the persistent buzz of black flies and mosquitoes.

Some Wounds have the characteristics of a certain Vice that aided in their creation.

Inhabitants
Only the darkest and deformed spirits are born within a Wound. In some cases, a creature known as Maeljin overtakes a wound as their domain and protects it against those who would cleanse the are, such as Uratha.