His had been a barren landscape once more, Henry staring at the abyss that stretched out before him beneath the starless skies of Limbo at the ruins of the preternatural city built and ultimately destroyed by his own hands. The air wasn’t so thick now, wasn’t so heavy with the murky stench of standing water and wet, rotting wood, and the shadows didn’t dance so readily with vestigial remnants of creatures beyond the veil; but as much as he felt compelled to rebuild, to make new as if what had been was nothing more than a first draft of what could have been, there was no movement among the ether and no rush of energy into the air around him to stir up the perdition left behind.

There was just silence, wailing carried from far away places by the semblance of wind that stretched across the landscape’s plains and echoed through craggy canyons carved from unseen forces. That such cries could be so loud wasn’t unexpected - not knowing how Madelyne had come out of the discord brought on by a son not her own - but just as soon as they caught his ears, they were gone again like the passing ghost of rebellion crushed under cloven hoof and inhuman carapace. It may not been music to the ears of someone with more eminent targets - those that had forged such an uprising by taking advantage of a mother’s worry for her son, so vastly powerful that they could fashion such an alliance to remove the problematic pieces of an equally troublesome plan - but it was a start, concession until the joint forces of strife and the accursed could be settled.

But there had been something else to it - something that he had only vague recollection of as it seemed to carry with those invisible currents - that shuttered in an encroaching imposition to aback facing a proportionate sea of darkness to the one his eyes took in; and though there had been a part of him that felt it ignorable, that did little to dissuade the creeping sensation there was something amiss; that writhe of uncertainty underneath his skin that, had he not felt so accustomed to the darkness and the frigidity it induced like the hands of Death itself, caused the hair on the back of his neck to stand up on end; and and the fluttering gut-instinct that in good standing could have been butterflies, but in such dark places were only foreboding.

His steps were taken with care across the empty sands, ravaged by now-settled conflict that seemed to cast them in a darker shadow than before, in search of the treacle sound’s source, tacky to the ears as it seemed to be the landscape around him. It hid in the nooks and crannies of the rocky facades, dripped through the newly made cracks in stony ridges and into viscous pools, melting into the very landscape it seemed to take refuge in though from what, Henry could no longer say without voices to carry their trepidation.

It was only when the ground beneath his feet stopped being coarse that his steps ceased, soft ripples forming in the darkness around him as the very viscosity of Limbo sands seemed to change before his very eyes, clinging to the rust-colored soles of his shoes, climbing over and through the weave of well-worn denim, and forging interlocking pathways across his skin - an undertaking that seemed natural, innate, to this sentient being with no voice, forged in a time of need, from none other than the host it held firm to as its form shifted, swirling like a living abyss, and taking shape into the leather jacket he wore. It was a convenient hiding place, a concealed armor that would bend to his will.

And if not…

It seemed a trick of the mind to suddenly feel the ground crack beneath his feet, forcing urgency into motion as his legs pushed him forward again at a hastier pace than observational meandering, each footfall against the rickety terra firma punching every-widening holes within like it was made of nothing but eggshell towards an uncertain fall - a fall he knew he didn’t want to take when met with the snapping of infernal flame and membranous cries of torment that had suddenly become too loud for his ears.

In one fell swoop, one wrong step, his full weight had suddenly given way to a free fall…

… and in one fell swoop, one blind throw, Henry had fallen outside from such great heights as his bed onto the cold hardwood floor of his apartment, face pressed annoyingly against the ground while the wide eyes of Faline, still perched among the nightmare strewn blankets that had once covered him, stared down in unmitigated curiosity. There was a subtle groan among his movement to get up again and a whimper in supposed return from the cavalier spaniel, Henry’s arm crutched onto the side of the bed for a moment while his legs found stability to hoist him back up, still sleep-addled given how terrible it had been.

It was only when he continued to hear the worried sounds, growing into growling and whimpering prior to full fledged barking, from his pet, an almost regular fixture with him at the magic shop as concealed in the pockets of his jacket provided there was enough room for her, that he took pause for a moment. Bleary eyes grew clearer as he affixed them on her, it becoming clear enough that her attention had been elsewhere, focusing on what he couldn’t immediately say without time to gather what potential oddities there were in the surrounding room. By all accounts, it had been normal - a normal room in a normal apartment that wasn’t a part of the dark and foreboding spaces he found power to occupy, bright white in painted walls with only a few decorative features that aligned with a life once known and minimalist in furnishing if only because of how many times Henry had been left without, cast out of house and home, by abilities he barely understood and beings that only met ill-intent; but odd?

Hardly.

Yet the barking continued and the dog’s intent to continue was clear even in his attempts to console Faline, following her line of sight to his usually worn jacket, black and leather, hooded, which lied in haphazard folding with his discarded shirt from the night before - before he had fallen asleep at an obscene hour, before he had dreamt of being in Limbo, before that tactile sensation of something adhering to his skin, a deep void of darkness he had only used once before with intention when siege and destruction had been brought to the garden gates of Krakoa.

Prompted to his feet, he walked over to the item in question, reaching out to an explosion of inky tendrils that one could easily say launched at him given prying eyes to witness it, taking hold to his fingertips not as a means a harm though his initial reaction had been surprised, even shocked, to say the least, but molding into that very same abysmal camouflage he had dreamt about - liquidus, but protective as an unseen shield; voiceless, but strangely comforting in a way that he found almost symbiotic.

“You’re alright, Faline,” Henry commented as he watched it sink into his skin with only a splay of his fingertips and flip of his hand to observe the process, the presence disappearing from sight, but not from mind as he felt miniscule hints of that cerebral connection he had established in Limbo. Friend, it may not have been, but enemy, it was not.