---
(Meanwhile, somewhere in the middle domain of Null…)
The middle domain of Null did not have a sky in the way lower territories did.
It had a ceiling of reality so thick that the light never looked honest. Colors existed, but they were muted, as if the world itself had learned to whisper. The air carried weight. Every breath felt like you were borrowing it from something larger.
Here, mountains did not sit politely on the horizon. They leaned. They watched. Rivers flowed uphill when nobody was looking. The wind changed direction for no reason other than to remind travelers that logic was a privilege, not a law.
And above all of it, there were places the living avoided even when paid.
One such place was a castle that did not belong to stone.
It belonged to hunger.
