The marrow graveyard was collapsing.
The titanic bones that had stood for centuries—millennia, perhaps—splintered one after another, cracking under a pressure too deep and too wide to comprehend. Each fracture thundered through the abyss like the groan of a dying world. Dust fell in avalanches, and chains writhed through the air like serpents convulsing in pain.
At the center of it all lay Lin.
He was half-conscious, half-slipping into the marrow itself. His body was torn, threads of resonance bleeding from his pores in ribbons of black-gold light. His chest heaved once, then stilled for a terrifying second, as if the marrow inside him had paused to consider whether he was worth keeping alive.
