A guttural cry ripped through the shadowed crags. Kael, a jagged shard of stone still clutched in his hand, watched the hulking Stone-Ghoul collapse. Its head, once a craggy mass of hardened hide and bone, had imploded, a shower of dark dust and shattered rock where it had been. He released the projectile, his breath catching in the cold mountain air. Dust settled on his leather-clad arm. Kael’s gaze flickered to Varn, the lowlander knight, sprawled near a collapsed rock spire. This encounter had been close. Helping the knight was a risk, Kael knew. Varn might return to his lord, speak of the mountain-dweller who commanded stone. Then, Kael’s quiet life would shatter, replaced by chains or demands. Still, the old knight, despite his wounds, had shown respect, spoken with a quiet dignity Kael rarely saw in outsiders. A guest, even an uninvited one, deserved a measure of protection in the Craglands, an unspoken law etched into the very rock. “Are you… whole?” Kael asked, his voice a low rumble. Varn didn't respond immediately. His eyes, wide with a new kind of fear, fixated not on Kael, but on the felled Stone-Ghoul. Its massive body lay prone, headless, yet a faint tremor ran through its bulk. “Beware!” Varn rasped, pushing himself up, wincing. No words were needed. The Stone-Ghoul, a monstrous husk, began to rise. Where its head had been, a pallid, shimmering light pulsed, ethereal and sickening. The fractured neck writhed, as if searching for something lost. Kael reacted, a jolt of alarm urging him forward. He slammed a boot into the rising body, sending it stumbling back, skittering across the scree. It rolled, a heavy, dead weight, for several paces. No visible damage. The pallid light remained, steady and chilling. “Earth-husked spirits,” Varn gasped, staggering to his feet, “They shrug off common blows!” “How then?” Kael demanded, his hand reaching for the solid earth beneath his feet. “Rend the animating spirit! Crack its will with primal force, or burn its essence clean!” Kael instinctively pushed his Lithomancy outwards. He willed the ground to crack and swallow the thing, envisioned sharp stone spears erupting to impale its form. But the pallid light merely flickered, untouched by the raw, physical earth-force. Varn observed Kael’s attempt, his grimace deepening. He had witnessed Kael shatter the ghoul's head with impossible speed, a feat no ordinary man could manage. Now, this young mountain-dweller struggled with basic spirit disruption. It confirmed a suspicion: Kael was a raw conduit, powerful, yet untrained. Kael, in his isolation, knew nothing of a spirit’s resistance, or the subtle manipulation required. “Don’t just force the earth!” Varn yelled, his voice strained. “*Shape* your intent! Direct the power with purpose!” His words echoed the disciplined practice Kael applied to his own unique way of life—guiding a wandering flock, carving a hearth from stubborn rock. A subtle shift in his Lithomancy, not a brute force surge, but a concentrated point of will. Kael closed his eyes for a heartbeat. He pictured a single, razor-thin point of resonant stone, imbued with his own primeval spirit. He would not just shatter the body, but unravel the animating essence. His mind honed, focused, he thrust his hand out. A needle-thin beam of shimmering earth-energy, barely visible, shot from his palm. It struck the pulsating light at the ghoul's neck. A high-pitched, grinding shriek tore through the air, like stone scraping against stone. The husk thrashed, convulsing, rolling on the ground in a frantic attempt to dislodge the ethereal wound. Kael poured his will into the beam. A deep, cold satisfaction rippled through him. He was feeding the earth’s calm resonance into the pallid spirit, consuming its discordant energy. Unlike Varn’s futile efforts, Kael’s focused earth-essence was tearing at the spiritual core. Less than a minute later, the pallid light flickered violently, then collapsed inwards, drawn back into the inert rock of the Stone-Ghoul. A final, drawn-out wail, a sound of ancient pain, faded into the wind. The husk lay still, just a pile of lifeless stone and hide. Kael and Varn both exhaled, the sound loud in the sudden quiet. “Is it truly over?” Kael asked, his voice hoarse. “For now. Draw its essence. Unless you wish to face another reanimated thing.” Drawing the essence wasn’t difficult, Kael found. He stretched his hand towards the ghoul's corpse. He imagined inhaling a vapor, a cool, invigorating current. A vibrant energy, the same dull, greyish hue as the fading light, flowed from the husk, through his palm, and into his body. It was a primal chill, an unfamiliar heat. Kael felt something new, something *more*, settling within him. A deep, resonant power, like the bedrock shifting beneath a mountain. His body tingled with an eerie pleasure, a tremor of pure, raw strength. “Is this your first time?” Varn asked, his voice thick with disbelief. “Yes.” Kael’s reply was a whisper. “Impossible.” Varn shook his head. Power, he knew, grew slowly, awakening through age or ritual. But to absorb it with such instinct, such primal ease… Kael’s innate strength was terrifying, boundless. His potential, a chasm. Varn cleared his throat, adjusting his posture. A profound shift had occurred. “I have been… indelicate, young master. What ancient lineage do you claim?” Kael felt a familiar unease. Varn’s sudden deference, the bending of his neck, prickled at Kael’s skin. He didn’t want the old knight to diminish himself. “Your wounds first. Then we speak.” Varn still bled, a slow trickle of crimson staining his brow where the ghoul’s claws had torn him. *** Varn let out a soft groan as Kael applied a poultice of crushed moss and mountain herbs to his head. Kael’s small dwelling, carved into the very rock, held such remedies, rough linen strips always ready for cuts and scrapes. Healing with Lithomancy, Kael knew, was a different matter. He could mend a shattered rock face, coax a new vein of ore from the depths. But to mend flesh, to bridge severed skin and bone, demanded an exorbitant draining of his core. To heal Varn’s scalp would empty him entirely, leaving him hollow and weak. “My apologies, young master. To burden one of your gifts with such a task.” Varn’s voice was laced with a deep self-reproach. “I told you.” Kael’s gaze was steady, piercing. “I am not ‘gifted.’ I am a shepherd of rock-goats. A son of these peaks, nothing more.” His words held a quiet defiance, a refusal to accept the strange new title. A brief, silent battle passed between them. Varn finally shook his head, a faint smile touching his lips. “Alright, alright. Your glare could crack granite.” Kael’s lips twitched, a rare, fleeting moment of humor. “But why?” Varn asked, his gaze sweeping around the spare, rock-hewn room. “Why does a man, a *power* like you, dwell in such isolation? No disrespect to your way, but it seems… confining.” It was the same question Kael had wanted to ask Varn yesterday, only flipped. Kael could not answer with the same ready pride Varn had shown for his knightly calling. Pride in his shepherd’s life was not a feeling he harbored. “A long story,” Kael murmured, his gaze drifting to the rough-hewn window, offering a vista of jagged peaks. He spoke of his childhood, of his mother’s hushed warnings about the lowlands, about the titled ones who coveted power, who would steal a soul for a fleeting gain. He recounted the awakening of his Lithomancy, the deep, unsettling connection to the earth, and his mother’s fierce insistence that it remain hidden. Varn listened, his expression grave, then nodded slowly. “She possessed wisdom.” “You think so?” Kael’s brows furrowed. He had expected Varn, a lowlander knight, to scoff, to dismiss his mother’s fears as ignorant superstitions. “Twenty years ago,” Varn began, his voice distant, “House Volkov, the house I served, clashed with House Eldrin. Three thousand Volkov knights rode to war. Nine hundred never returned.” Kael’s breath caught. “Almost a third.” “Every man I called brother, my wife, my son, all vanished in the dust of that conflict. Only I remained, a solitary monument to their sacrifice.” Varn’s face was etched with a sorrow so profound it seemed to pull at the very air around him. Kael could only guess at the depths of that grief, a pain that perhaps rivaled his own loss. A heavy silence descended, broken only by the crackle of the small hearth. Varn finally straightened, a flicker of his knightly resolve returning to his eyes. “Your mother, in her wisdom, was right about the fleeting life of a common knight. But she was mistaken in one crucial aspect: your talent, young Kael, transcends any mere knight. It is a primal force, a forgotten echo.” “Does it?” Kael asked, a thread of doubt in his voice. “In this moment,” Varn said, a faint, rueful smile, “I am a knight of considerable renown. Yet, you, with untamed power, vanquished a spirit-husk that would have claimed me, perhaps even my entire patrol. You did this without truly understanding your own gift.” Varn took a slow sip of the goat’s milk Kael had offered him, then fixed Kael with a resolute gaze. “Such an ability does not merely qualify you as a titled one. It marks you for greatness, Kael. A lord of the highest order, perhaps even a king if the tales of your ancient blood are true.” To Kael, it still felt like a story, a grand exaggeration. For so long, his mother’s words had anchored his understanding: he was powerful, yes, but dangerous to the lowlanders, a potential tool to be used and discarded. Perhaps Varn, in his delirium, simply overestimated him. “My mother said my father was a simple Crag-Brother, a stone-warden. Could she have lied?” “Life is rarely simple,” Varn mused. “Not all tall parents birth tall children. Sometimes, a raw, ancient power like yours surfaces from an unassuming lineage. These are rare, but they happen. The deep currents of the earth are mysterious.” Kael thought of the small hamlet nestled in a valley below, the families he occasionally saw. The stout stonemason and his equally stout wife had birthed a son who towered over them both, impossibly tall. He’d often wondered… “For this, Kael, I believe you must descend from these peaks.” “Why?” Kael asked, his gaze now distant, seeing beyond the familiar peaks. “We need more than petty squabbles. Humans are not yet masters of this world. The deep things, the ancient ones that sleep beneath the Craglands, they stir. And the forgotten races, those pushed aside by the old gods, they watch and wait. While the titled ones below wage endless wars, a strong, clear-sighted soul like yours is desperately needed. One more protector, one more beacon.” Ancient ones. Forgotten races. To Kael, these were the stuff of his mother’s whispered tales, as unreal as the gods of the old myths. Yet, Varn spoke of them as tangible threats, waiting in the shadows of the world below. “Besides,” Varn added, a gentle quality to his voice, “it is a waste to see such spirit contained. You are not truly content, Kael, are you? Living only as a shepherd?” Varn had seen through Kael’s guarded answers earlier. Kael remained silent for a long moment, then gave a small, almost imperceptible nod. “Your mother’s fears, Kael, while understandable, are largely exaggerated for someone of your power. Common folk, yes, they are vulnerable. But a true master of the earth? Even the great houses show respect, or at least caution, to their peers. And you… you are more.” “So I won’t be dragged off, enslaved, against my will?” Kael’s voice was low, laced with the ingrained fear of generations. “No promise is absolute. Not in this world.” Varn’s words were stark, honest. A torrent of thoughts crashed through Kael’s mind. A part of him, a yearning for something more, wanted to believe Varn. But the deep-seated fear of the lowlanders, woven into the very fabric of his being, refused to fade. These two currents, opposing and powerful, created a heavy, silent tension within him. Varn waited, patient as the unmoving stone, his bandaged form a quiet presence. Many minutes passed. At last, Kael spoke, his voice barely a whisper, yet firm with newly forged resolve. “What could I gain… if I left these peaks?” Varn smiled, a knowing light in his eyes, recognizing the shifting earth within Kael. “That, Kael, depends entirely on the stones you seek to unearth. Knowledge, purpose, kinship… perhaps even the truth of your own forgotten lineage.”

Echoes of the Deep Stone