MR_WICK_14

Before time had shape, before life had meaning Xha’veth watched.

Kael has always felt out of place, a hollow presence in a world where meaning has long since decayed. But when the sky fractures and something calls to him a voice no one else can hear his quiet life collapses. The Whispered Event marks the beginning.

Visions. Echoes. Forgotten things crawling back into the light.

Kael doesn’t understand what’s happening to him, only that it began the moment Xha’veth turned its gaze his way. And whatever has awakened inside him… it was never meant to return.

ECHOBORN

Veln was still waking when Kael returned to the upper levels.

Mist clung to the stonework like cobwebs. Lanterns flickered along narrow streets. Market stalls hadn't opened yet, and the copper bells above the chapel towers hadn't rung. The city breathed in silence and Kael matched its rhythm, walking quietly, unnoticed.

His reflection stared back at him in a brass mirror beside a vendor's cart.

A branded mark crawling across the nape of his neck like a parasite.

And beneath it all something worse.

Later that day, back in the Copper Wound, Ryall flopped a tattered field manual onto the table beside him.

"You've been asking questions," Ryall said, plucking a pear from a basket. "Time for answers."

"Standard Classifications for Whispered Emergence," Ryall recited with mock grandeur. "Outdated, dry as bone but it'll explain the basics."

Those who hear what should not be heard. Touched by echoes of truths buried outside the stream of memory. Mental projection, foresight, mindwalks, and auditory incantations.

Those who see what others cannot. Born of shadow and distance, drawn to unseen realms. Dimensional tearing, short-range phasing, and deepfold illusions.

Those who step beyond. They touch layers beneath the waking world. Enhanced body control, elemental resonance, and movement through the old ley-threads.

Kael looked up. "So... most awakened only have one path?"

"Yeah," Ryall said. "One awakens, sometimes a second after training. But three?" He leaned forward. "Only nobles in the far north claim that. And they lie."

Kael turned the page slowly. "Can someone have... none?"

"Then they're not Awakened," Elira said from the doorway. She stepped in, tossing her scarf onto the rack. "Or they're something else."

That evening, Kael sat alone at the Wound's rooftop, book in hand.

He flipped through diagrams of sigil runes. None of them matched what he saw in his dreams. Not the swirling calligraphy that bloomed in the Whispered Event. Not the strange language written in his mind when he wasn't fully awake.

The parchment blackened at the edges when he did.

Kael burned the page and didn't try again.

He trained with Tessan in the courtyard. Studied lore with Drev, who rarely spoke but watched everything. Sparred with Elira who never went easy on him.

He mimicked a Fathomwalker's leap, channeling motion through muscle—but never enough to reveal how he could bend distance itself when no one watched.

He mirrored a Veilborn's illusion trick just once. Drev noticed. He said nothing.

And the whispering? That never stopped.

They came mostly at night. Faint voices beneath the walls. They said things he didn't understand, in languages that didn't exist.

A thin scroll Ryall slapped onto the table late one night after too many drinks.

"Old ruin in the Outer Barrens. Pre-Ascension glyphs," he said. "Half-mad priest we met said the place is a grave of truths."

Elira rolled her eyes. "Every ruin is a grave."

"Yeah," Ryall grinned. "But this one might speak back."

Because one of the glyphs drawn on the map a crooked spiral with a slash through it matched a symbol he had seen once before.

Right before the screaming started.

Chapter 9 – The Three Paths and the Lies Between