There was no sky. No ground. No time.
Just white.
An endless, humming white that wasn’t light, but something older—raw potential, the breath before creation. And in the center of it, Rowan stood barefoot, his toes hovering inches above an invisible surface. His body felt like it had been pulled inside out and put back together with threads made of memory and shadow.
He turned slowly.
No sun. No wind. Just pressure. Just silence.
And then—
A voice.
“Welcome home, Heir of the Hollow.”
It wasn’t just a voice. It was inside him—wrapped around the bones of his soul. It sounded like Jace. Like Quinn. Like Kaelen. Like no one at all. Like everyone who had ever betrayed him and called it love.
Rowan clenched his fists. “Where am I?”
“You are in the center of your becoming,” the voice ans
