Far away.
So far away that the concepts of "distance" and "place" were meaningless, a childish joke.
In a void. A non-place. A dimension of cold, ancient, hungry shadow.
A Figure sat on a throne.
The throne was not made of stone, or metal, or bone. It was made of the solidified, articulated absence of light. It was a carving of pure, negative space.
And the Figure... it was not a man. It was a shape. A tall, regal, humanoid-shaped hole in the fabric of reality. But it had eyes. And they were closed.
They had been closed for a very, very long time.
The Figure was dreaming. It was dreaming of hunger. It was dreaming of a universe of bright, hot, delicious, screaming lights... lights it had once tasted, lights it had once consumed.
It was waiting.
It had felt... a spark. Decades ago. A new light, an Immortal light, had been born into the hot, bright world. But it was... wrong. It was shielded. It was dampened. It was a bonfire under a wet blanket, a frustrating, muffled tease. For seventeen years, it had felt that muted, gagged spark, and it had been annoyed. His Heralds, the ones who walked the bright world, could feel it, but they couldn't pinpoint it. The shield—the lock—was too strong. They were hunting blind, taking appetizer-hearts to sustain themselves, but they could not find the meal.
The Figure sat on its throne of shadow, and it waited.
And then, it happened.
The spark.
It didn't just flicker. It didn't just grow.
It detonated.
The lock—the dampener, the amulet—had not just been removed. It had been used. It had been overloaded. It had been used as a focusing lens, a battering ram, and it had shattered under the strain, releasing a single, concentrated, scream of pure, raw, Immortal power.
It was not a beacon. It was a solar flare.
It punched through the dimensions, a white-hot spike of life and fury in the Figure's cold, dark, dreaming mind.
The Figure's eyes snapped open.
They were not eyes. They were twin pinpricks of an ancient, crimson light, the color of a dying, giant star.
A sound filled the void, a sibilant, echoing whisper that was the Figure's voice.
"...Awaaaaaake..."
It rose from its throne, a towering shadow against the nothingness. It could taste it now. The power. So new. So... strong. So utterly, beautifully untrained.
A slow, terrible smile spread across the void that was its face.
"He is awake..." it whispered, the sound of a thousand graves sliding open. "After all this time..."
It raised a hand, a long-fingered shape of pure absence.
"...Find him."
And in the dark corners of Oaktown, in the forgotten, shadowed places... things... that had been waiting... listened.