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.
"Lin—!" Min-joon's voice cracked with desperation. He dropped to his knees beside him, pulling Lin's limp form into his arms. His hands shook as he pressed them against Lin's ribs, not knowing whether to stop the bleeding or hold his soul together. "Stay with me. Don't you dare let go. You're not done yet."
Lin's eyes flickered open. They were unfocused, drifting somewhere far away. "...Too loud," he murmured. His voice was little more than breath. "It's all too loud..."
Min-joon clenched his teeth. He wanted to scream, but Keller's voice cut through the storm.
"Don't waste time begging him awake. We need to move—now."
Keller stood a few feet away, his boots planted firmly on shifting bone. His gun hung limp in his hand, useless against an enemy made of marrow and shadow, but his eyes burned sharp and calculating. "The envoy's gone quiet. That doesn't mean it's gone. It's regrouping, waiting for us to sit here and fall apart."
"Then what do you suggest?" Min-joon snapped, his arms tightening around Lin. "He can't even stand."
"Then you stand for him." Keller's voice was flint striking steel. "Or he dies here, and all of us with him."
Hwan stumbled forward, his face pale as bone-dust. He looked worse than all of them combined, frail body shaking like it was already halfway in the grave. Yet his voice carried with eerie clarity. "No... Keller's right. The envoy hasn't left. It's watching."
The boy's eyes—too large, too haunted—lifted toward the throne at the graveyard's heart. The colossal seat of chains and marrow was empty now, abandoned after Lin's rebellion, but the air around it still pulsed. "It's waiting for the abyss itself to decide what to do with him. With us."
Lin groaned in Min-joon's arms, his body twisting weakly. His lips parted, words spilling out in a whisper. "It... wants me back. Not broken. Whole. It won't stop..."
Not his body—his body was still there, slack against Min-joon's shoulder. But his mind, his spirit, his marrow—whatever piece of him had been fighting all along—was wrenched out of reach.
Inside the Hollow
Lin opened his eyes to silence.
He was no longer in Min-joon's arms, no longer on the graveyard floor. He stood alone in a place that had no ground, no sky, no horizon. Just a hollow, endless dark. His own breath was the only sound, echoing back at him like he was shouting into a cavern.
Then he heard it.
A heartbeat.
Not his own.
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.
Each pulse shook the hollow, rattling through his bones. He stumbled, clutching his chest as though it might burst open. His veins lit with gold for an instant, then black, then gold again. He collapsed to his knees.
"...you came back."
The voice was vast, not echoing but folding around him, inside him. It didn't sound like the envoy. It sounded older, heavier, like marrow that had fossilized into will itself.
Lin raised his head. In the distance—or perhaps inside himself—he saw a figure. Not the envoy's masked shell, but something vaster: a silhouette as large as a mountain, seated upon a throne that spanned the horizon. Its body was stitched together from bones older than cities, its face obscured by shadow.
"I did not choose you," the voice said. "I birthed you. Long before you were Lin, you were mine. The envoy is nothing but my tongue. You are my marrow made flesh."
Lin's stomach twisted. He staggered to his feet, even as the hollow swayed beneath him. "No... I'm not yours. I'm not—"
"You are," the voice cut him off, inexorable. "Every chain you broke, every step you took, every choice you thought was yours—it was mine. I placed you in this era, this body, this fate. You are the marrow's heir."
Lin's fists clenched. His chest burned as if the words themselves were engraving into his bones.
"No..." His voice was raw. "If everything I've done was yours, then why do you fight me now? Why do you need to break me?"
The silhouette leaned forward. Its vast eyes, glowing like caverns filled with gold fire, opened.
"Because you dared to believe you had a choice."
Back in the Graveyard
Lin's body convulsed, resonance flaring so violently that Min-joon and Keller were both thrown back. Hwan collapsed to his knees, clutching his head, screaming without sound.
Chains surged upward from the floor, spiraling toward Lin's limp form. They didn't strike—they cradled, lifting him gently into the air like a prize. His body hung there, head tilted back, eyes shut tight, light bleeding from the corners of his eyes.
Min-joon scrambled to his feet, rage boiling in his chest. "Give him back!" He hurled himself forward, wrapping his arms around Lin's suspended form, clinging no matter how much the chains scorched his skin.
Keller raised his weapon again, pointless though it was, and aimed at the throne. "If you want him, you'll have to come through us. All of us."
The graveyard trembled. Bones cracked, chains screamed, the abyss itself groaned.
And then the hollow heartbeat echoed again.
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.
The throne at the graveyard's center began to rise, chains pulling it upward like a puppet of the abyss itself.
Lin's body dangled higher, light streaming from him in painful bursts. His lips parted, whispering words that weren't his:
"The marrow is awake."