
Looked up Sisyphus and there's already so many references and potential foreshadowing in just the first 5 chapters.
He's the founder/king of Corinth and the one in Greek mythology who is punished to roll a boulder up a hill, only to have to fall back to the bottom, for all eternity. (leader of the settlement, lives at the top of the hill)
He angers Zeus and is sent to Tartarus (prison in underworld), where he outwits the god of death and chains him up instead. While Thanatos is chained, no one dies on earth. Eventually Ares frees him and death resumes. (people suddenly stopped dying, ML has something to do with it?)
When he eventually dies of old age, he schemes his way out of the underworld by appealing to Persephone, who allows him to return to Earth. (scars on neck, has already died?)
Only reference I could find of the 'Hounds' was from Anne Rice's The Passion of Cleopatra, which was incidentally also about the dead coming back to life.
Fuck this made me miss my grandma ╥﹏╥