At the same time, in a place forgotten by light and life, a different kind of change was stirring.
This place existed in a crack between dimensions, a realm shrouded entirely in a silent, unmoving gray. It was vast, a hollow world as large as a planet. The air did not move. It hung heavy, reeking of ancient death and profound decay. The ground was not soil, but an endless, rolling desert of bones. Countless skeletons, from creatures small and frail to nightmarish beasts whose rib cages were as large as castles, lay bleached and broken. Some were so immense their single vertebrae were like hills, and their lengths stretched for thousands of meters, silent leviathans of a forgotten age.
At the absolute, silent center of this bone-yard stood a single structure: a gigantic throne. It was carved from a substance darker than the gray around it, a material that seemed to drink the faint, sourceless light. And sealed upon this throne was a figure.
