Before the deals. Before the sigils. Before the pact-bound swords and smug monologues....
There was only Marrow and he was nothing.
Beneath all realms known to man and monster alike, beneath the veils of sky and time and logic, slept the Umbraca Realm—not hell, as mortals imagined it, but something older and colder.
A world without sunlight. A world that never grew.
Imagine a cathedral the size of a continent, built from bone and black stone. Cracked pillars stretched into a ceiling of endless mist, where monstrous statues wept shadows instead of rain. The rivers ran not with water, but with the whispering remains of forgotten names. Stars here did not shine—they watched, each one an eye sealed shut in judgment.
Life in Umbraca did not bloom. It calcified. Existed. Endured.
