The Nothing

A double spot on the Desperado Club's wheel of fortune, the worst of twenty-five: Carl nearly goes into it (ch. 9); 'Remember when you almost got sucked away into the Nothing, Carl?' (epilogue).

Where the demon harem was tossed during the original Ascendency (ch. 34); where Slit came from (ch. 34) and where the Gate of the Feral Gods opens onto when it closes (ch. 15–ch. 29); 'cast away to the Nothing' (ch. 24).

Samantha says a beaver god is in it, Capa, whom Hehaka wears as a hat (ch. 24); being abandoned was worse than the Nothing (ch. 34); something she once did there (ch. 62). Imogen tells the masquerade's founding story — Yarilo exiled to it for breaking the peace — and promises that the ground will open and feed peace-breakers into it, an eternity in the realm of darkness and gnashing of teeth (ch. 65); the warning at the door repeats the price, and a footman describes the fall (ch. 66); the pet show is an hour of nobody being banished (ch. 67); Signet says the Nothing is fed every time, and Apito awards no boons (ch. 68); Zabit applauds Carl for nearly angering Vrah into breaking the seal (ch. 69). Imogen dares Signet toward the realm of mumbled screams (ch. 73), and the floor rends open and takes her (ch. 74).

Inle, one of only two orishas to have spent time in the Nothing, is not all there and will end up back in it (ch. 15); Orthrus, unleashed from it at the end of the fifth floor, has a memory made unreliable by his time there (ch. 18); MaeMae's missing husband might be in it (ch. 26); Samantha says a goddess there, Makara, with a crocodile's head and a fish's body, makes sushi rolls of her own innards (ch. 31). The casino holds entrances to it, one of a harem of feral sisters gets out, and a voice once called from it for Samantha as Signet fell (ch. 32, ch. 33); Wakinyan's escape (ch. 42); the system's own words: 'The great prison, the Nothing, has been breached, and not for the first time' (ch. 54).