I fell.
Not into a basement. Not into a hole.
I fell into absolute, suffocating darkness.
The last thing I saw was Marrow, standing on the edge of the void, looking down at me with pity.
"Some bonds," he whispered, "need to be severed for their own good."
Then the darkness swallowed me whole.
19
There was no floor. There was no ceiling. There was only...absence.
I fell, but falling implies direction. It implies gravity. This was more like being unraveled, thread by thread, until there was nothing left to hold my shape.
I floated in a space that wasn't black, because black is a color. Black has depth. It has texture. This was the color of a closed eye. The color of a dead frequency. The color of nothing.
"Rhett?"
I tried to scream, but my voice made no sound. The air (was there air?) swallowed the vibration before it could leave my throat. It felt like shouting into a pillow, suffocating and mute.
I kicked out, searching for resistance, for walls, foranythingsolid.
My foot met nothing.
My hand grasped nothing.
I couldn't feel my arms. I couldn't feel my legs. I couldn't feel the familiar tug of the bond—the warm, crackling golden thread that connected me to Rhett, the cool, liquid silver of Lucien, the sturdy, rooting green of Kai.
For the first time in months, the chorus in my head was silent.
The silence wasn't peaceful. It was deafening. It was a physical weight, pressing against my eardrums, trying to crush me inward.
It's gone,I thought, the words echoing in my own skull, too loud in the quiet.He cut it. He severed the bond.
Panic, cold and sharp, spiked in my chest. It was a physical pain, a jagged shard of ice piercing my lungs. I tried to reach for the magic—the static I had learned to channel, the riverbed Lucien had taught me to be.
Nothing.
It was like trying to breathe in a vacuum. My lungs expanded, but there was no oxygen. My soul reached out, frantic, clawing, but there was no connection to grab onto.
I'm dead,I thought, the realization washing over me with a terrible, paralyzed calm.He killed me. He dropped me into a hole and I died.
But dead people didn't feel cold.
And I was freezing.
It wasn't a winter cold. It wasn't the nip of frost or the bite of wind. It was a deep, bone-settling chill that started in the marrow and worked its way out. It felt less like temperature and more like... loneliness. Absolute, primal loneliness.
This is what he is,a voice whispered in my mind. Not my voice. A memory.This is a Null.
I curled into a ball, floating in the nothingness, hugging my knees to my chest. I couldn't feel my skin touching my skin. I was numb. Disconnected.
How long have I been falling?
Time didn't exist here. Minutes stretched into hours. Hours into days. Or maybe it had been seconds. There was no sun to mark the day, no heartbeat to mark the minute.
