The Null was not a place.
It was an absence.
A devourer.
Time did not flow there—it pooled, stagnant and thick, a tar that suffocated thought and memory.
Light, if it dared exist, fractured into whispers before dissolving. The void teemed with primordial entities older than gods, their forms indefinable: shifting masses of teeth and tendrils, galaxies compressed into serpents, sentient storms that sang in languages that unraveled sanity.
They did not hate. Did not love. They simply were, eternal and ravenous, pressing against the fragile membranes of reality.
Kael knew them. Intimately.
They had been his only companions during his centuries in the dark.
---
He woke screaming.
The inn room was pitch-black, his throat raw, sheets soaked with sweat. The Blight in his veins writhed like a nest of worms.
