A pulse of pure thought, a silent chord struck deep within Cormac, rippled outward. At the heart of the plateau, as the twin suns dipped beneath the obsidian horizon, a scattered herd of sand-steeds halted their grazing. Their shaggy pelts, the color of sun-bleached sandstone, twitched in unison. No barked command, no whip of braided leather, directed them. Cormac merely hummed a low, resonant note, a vibration only he could truly perceive. The creatures, responding to the latent energies he coaxed from the very dust, began to coalesce, flowing like a living current towards the enclosures he’d prepared. Eight years. Eight years had passed since the whispers first stirred within him, since he understood the world not as solid matter but as a shimmering, vibrating song. His mother Aella had taught him to call it whisper-singing, and through it, he had gleaned its unspoken tenets. First, a burning desire, focused and pure, could bend the primordial currents. This was the fundamental exchange, a fragment of his own life force for a shift in reality’s rhythm. Second, articulating that desire, even in a murmur to himself, grounded the intent. It sharpened the resonance, making the energy flow with less strain. Third, the sheer complexity of the desired outcome dictated the cost. Or, sometimes, it rendered the wish utterly unattainable. This difficulty, Cormac had learned, was a capricious mistress. A simple shift of dust, a cooling of water, could be achieved with astonishing ease. Yet, at other times, a seemingly simple task became a gaping maw, devouring his vitality for naught. Days earlier, battling the lean, mottled sand-cat that had stalked his herd, a whispered command to ‘still’ had barely rippled its predatory focus. Its savage pounce had ignored his subtle plea. Yet, for the sand-steeds now, hundreds of them, he could guide their every step, gentle their skittish minds, and draw them home without effort. It felt like breathing. His perception sharpened, focusing on the sand-cat. Giving his makeshift sling-stone the velocity to shatter bone, ensuring its trajectory, had been effortless. The energy cost had been negligible, a mere sustained hum. He could have repeated the devastating blow a hundred times. Guiding the last of the sand-steeds into the pens, Cormac’s thoughts drifted. A discordant vibration pricked his senses, a faint metallic tang on the parched air. It was a low, guttural note, a fresh dissonance from the raw edge of life’s cessation. Similar to the faint tremor he’d sensed when the elder, Old Man Torvin, had drawn his last breath. But this was different. Not human. Not sand-steed. Not sand-cat. *A sand-wolf?* The scent carried memories of a harsh winter, of a loping predator he’d taken down a cycle ago. Its coarse fur, its wild, desperate growl. The vibration was precisely that. As if summoned by his internal query, a figure materialized from the deepening dusk. Jorek. The Echo-Servant from the Sunken Spires, the one whose unexpected arrival had broken Cormac’s lonely vigil. He moved with an easy grace, a dead sand-wolf slung over his shoulder, its amber eyes vacant, its fangs bared in a silent snarl. “Good evening, Cormac.” Jorek’s voice was smooth, a low vibration itself, somehow comforting. “My apologies for the intrusion. Will this serve as fair trade for a night’s shelter?” He gestured with a leather-gloved hand towards the wolf. A sand-wolf was a prize. Its hide could be bartered in the sparse settlements of the Delta. The lean meat, while tough, was sustenance. More than enough for a single night. Cormac offered a curt nod. “Few sand-wolves venture this deep into the Delta. How far did you range for this catch?” For years, Cormac had kept the plateau free of large predators, his whisper-singing an invisible shield. His patrols had pushed the beasts to the periphery. The Sunken Delta, desolate by nature, offered little to sustain them. “I tracked it near the Obsidian Spires,” Jorek replied, his gaze already scanning the darkening heavens. The Obsidian Spires. They pierced the sky, a distant, jagged scar on the horizon, far to the west of Cormac’s lonely plateau. They were called the Great Barrier, an insurmountable wall of ancient stone and forgotten magic. “Reaching their foothills takes days,” Cormac mused, more to himself than to Jorek. “Even for a seasoned traveler.” A knowing smile touched Jorek’s lips. “For my stride, half a day was sufficient.” Cormac felt no surprise. He himself, if he pushed his whisper-singing to its limits, could cover such distances. But it reinforced the quiet caution already stirring within him. This Echo-Servant possessed a power far beyond the usual. --- Later, a crackling fire cast dancing shadows across the dust. They sat before Cormac’s rough-hewn dwelling, the rich aroma of wolf-meat stew filling the cool night air. The twin moons, like polished obsidian discs, began their slow ascent. Jorek looked up, a soft whistle escaping his lips. “The stars here, they sing with such clarity.” “Aella, my mother, told me this plateau was among the highest points of the Delta,” Cormac murmured, stirring his stew. “Aside from the Spires, of course.” “Compared to *those* peaks, what else could challenge them?” Jorek shook his head, a faint awe in his voice. “I journeyed near them today. Even the Sunken Lords would struggle to cross that.” “I thought the Lords wielded god-like power,” Cormac said, a familiar ache in his chest. Aella’s words, heavy with dread, always followed thoughts of them. “Could they not simply *will* themselves over such a range?” “Not all, my friend. Not all.” Jorek’s expression grew serious. “The heads of the Great Houses, perhaps. House Vashar’s matriarch, for instance. I once witnessed her quell a minor mesa with a mere flex of her hand.” *A mere flex.* Cormac felt a prickling shame. Sometimes, in the quiet solitude of the Delta, he entertained a dangerous fantasy. That his whisper-singing, growing stronger year by year, might one day rival the legends of the Sunken Lords. Jorek’s words shattered that delusion. His own power, vast as it felt to him, was but a flickering spark against a raging sun. “Tell me,” Jorek said, changing the subject, his voice lighter. “Does not this solitude weigh upon you, living alone?” Cormac shrugged. “It does. But I have grown accustomed to it.” “No thought of bringing a village girl here? To share your hearth?” A bitter smile touched Cormac’s lips. “Who would choose a life tethered to this dust, herding sand-steeds?” “Surely many a young woman would find comfort with a steadfast man such as yourself,” Jorek countered gently. A dull ache stirred in Cormac. Once, when he was younger, before Aella died, before the villagers cast him out over Torvin’s death, girls would follow him. Now, silence. They understood the grim reality of this life, this exile. Marrying Cormac meant a lonely existence on the fringes, forever looking over their shoulders. “Do not despair,” Jorek offered, his voice surprisingly soft. “Fate has its own song. You might yet encounter a kindred spirit upon the desert winds.” A passing thought reminded Cormac that Jorek was the only soul to visit him in eight years. The likelihood was a cruel joke. Silence settled between them, broken only by the crackle of the fire and the distant howl of a sand-jackal. Cormac, his gaze fixed on the embers, broke the quiet first. “Why do you trouble yourself?” Jorek tilted his head, a question in his eyes. “Trouble myself with what, Cormac?” “The villagers. The promise they gave you, whatever it was.” Cormac gestured vaguely towards the distant, unseen settlement. “With your skill, you could command far greater tribute, with far less effort.” Any settlement, Cormac knew, would yield willingly to an Echo-Servant of Jorek’s apparent power. To declare protection, to demand wealth and allegiance, would be simple. A hundred times easier than hunting sand-wolves across vast expanses, then bedding down in a shepherd’s hut. The villagers, after all, deserved little. They had driven Cormac out, accused him of dark deeds, leaving him to fend for himself. “They are adrift, Cormac,” Jorek said softly, like a father explaining a complex truth to a child. “Lost in the currents.” “Adrift?” Cormac echoed, confused. “They live each day trembling, in this remote frontier, unprotected by those who command the deeper currents. They are but dust in the wind.” Jorek’s voice held a quiet dignity. The plains around Cormac’s plateau, while desolate, were relatively peaceful. Beyond, the fertile reaches of the Delta teemed with primeval creatures. He spoke of the pride of an Echo-Servant, one who had inherited the power of the primal song, to shield the vulnerable. Though he served no House now, he could not simply stand by. This was not Aella’s tale. Her whispered warnings spoke of Sunken Lords as oppressors, Echo-Servants as their merciless hounds, instruments of control and exploitation. Had she lied? Or was Jorek’s truth merely one fragment of a greater, more unsettling reality? Jorek, observing Cormac’s clouded expression, offered a small, reassuring smile. He pushed a clay bowl of warmed sand-steed milk towards him. “Not every soul sings the same song, Cormac. In this vast Delta, there are as many truths as grains of sand.” --- Morning dawned, painting the plateau in hues of ochre and rust. Cormac, with a subtle shift of internal harmony, cleaned the sand-steed pens. Piles of dried dung and trampled straw lifted, drifting on an unseen current to a designated pit behind his dwelling. The arid air would quickly render it dry, perfect for winter fuel. His mind kept returning to Jorek’s words. *Pride.* The concept resonated, a low thrum beneath his usual guarded silence. The idea that an Echo-Servant might not be solely a puppet of the Sunken Lords, but a guardian, finding meaning in protecting the powerless. It softened the sharp edges of his mother’s warnings, if only slightly. Perhaps, if there were others like Jorek, life under the shadow of the Spires might not be utter despair. That aside, he needed to tell Jorek. The sand-cat. The beast Jorek was searching for, the one he claimed was still a threat, was long dead. Cormac had ended its predation days ago. He had planned to let Jorek wander, eventually realizing the futility of his search and moving on. But Jorek’s quiet conviction, his genuine desire to help, made Cormac hesitate. He didn’t want such a man to waste his energy. The problem? The sand-cat’s corpse lay deep in a ravine, decaying, a rotting testament to Cormac’s whisper-singing. Retrieving it, exposing its demise, would reveal his own intervention. The raw energy of his killing blow would still cling to the carcass, a tell-tale shimmer in the Delta’s song. Should anyone search for a whisper-singer on this plateau, Cormac was the only candidate. A sigh escaped him. With the pens tidied, he had a brief window. Jorek had mentioned patrolling closer to the plateau today. Cormac might find him. He centered himself, a deep breath filling his lungs, then released a low, internal chord. He extended his perception, expanding his whisper-singing outward. He reached for the distant echoes of human vitality. *Detect Presence.* Cormac’s senses blossomed. His physical sight, normally limited to the nearest mesa, stretched. He could discern individual heat signatures, the faint tremor of sand-mites burrowing kilometers away. His hearing amplified, catching the rustle of dry weeds, the subtle pulse of underground water. Yet, through this overwhelming influx, his whisper-singing filtered, highlighting only the specific vibration of conscious life. *There.* A tremor of alarm jolted him. A familiar presence, but laced with a frantic, desperate rhythm. Jorek. He focused, his enhanced vision snapping into clarity. Jorek, battered and gasping, blood streaking his brow, a tear in his shoulder tunic. Facing him, a half-decayed sand-cat, its fur matted with dried gore, its jaw agape in a silent, horrifying roar. --- *Who in the name of the Silent Sands would do such a thing?* Jorek gritted his teeth, his eyes narrowed at the reanimated horror before him. A phantom echo. When life departed a creature, the residual primordial energy, seeking to fulfill the final, desperate will of its host, sometimes refused to disperse. Instead, it clung, forcibly animating the broken flesh, giving rise to these monstrous echoes of death. It was why, after felling a primeval creature, a true Echo-Servant would always either absorb that latent energy or disperse it into the earth. To leave it untouched was an act of profound ignorance or malicious intent. Considering the clean, precise hole bored through the sand-cat’s skull, the creature had been killed by someone proficient with focused energy projections. The culprit was either disastrously naive or dangerously reckless. [—KRRRAAAHHHH!—] The phantom echo let loose a deafening shriek, a sound of grating bone and dying will, that tore through the morning air. Its rotting muscles bunched, preparing to spring. “You will not pass!” Jorek bellowed, channeling his own potent energy. A shimmering orb of force coalesced in his palm. He launched it, a blinding flash against the bleak desert. The phantom echo merely roared, its decaying form lunging forward, defying the very laws of life and death.

Echoes in the Dust