The void stretched endlessly around Jason, a vast emptiness that swallowed light and sound and time itself.
He stood on nothing, surrounded by nothing, his body flickering between solid and translucent like a candle flame in the wind. There was no ground beneath his feet, no sky above his head, no horizon to anchor his senses. Just an infinite expanse of darkness that seemed to breathe with a rhythm that matched his own failing heartbeat.
But he was not alone.
Before him, the darkness coalesced. It did not take a shape—not truly. It remained formless, a black void that pulsed with a rhythm that matched his own heartbeat.
It was vast and ancient and patient, and it was watching him with an intelligence that made his skin crawl and his soul tremble. This was not a creature.
This was not a god. This was something older than both, something that had existed before the first stone was laid in the Marrow, before the first lord had been chosen to bear its burden.
The Marrow itself.
