Valerius, his form a blur of disciplined power, had already crushed the Echo-Beast’s skull. A single, brutal strike from his obsidian-hafted maul had cracked bone and silenced the creature’s guttural snarls. Now, he approached Cormac, the heavy weapon slung with practiced ease.
Helping this wandering knight had been a gamble for Cormac. A boy raised in the isolated canyons of the Obsidian Delta, far from the Sunken Spires and their ancient, forgotten powers, he knew the stories of House Enforcers. If Valerius spoke of a capable, whisper-singing shepherd to his masters, Cormac’s carefully constructed life would shatter. He would run, leaving behind the only home he had ever known.
Yet, a deeper current in Cormac stirred. Valerius, despite his injuries and strange mission, had shown courtesy. He spoke with a measured respect, treating Cormac not as a wild boy but as a host. Protection, even for a stranger, felt like an ancient obligation, a duty echoing through the canyons from a time before recorded memory.
“Are you unharmed?” Valerius’s voice rumbled, but his gaze, sharp and wary, remained fixed on the fallen beast. Its hulking form, now limp, twitched subtly.
“Be careful!”
No words were needed. The headless Echo-Beast, a grotesque, broken mass, lurched upward. From the pulped ruin of its neck, a sickly thrum began to rise, a pale, shimmering distortion of reality. It was a Residual Echo, a clinging, spectral stain of life force, now reanimated and furious.
With a guttural cry, it charged. Cormac reacted instinctively, a low, resonant hum rising in his chest. He braced, feeling the beast’s raw, discordant vibrations before impact. A well-placed kick sent the reanimated mass skidding across the parched earth, rolling dozens of paces before righting itself. It seemed largely unperturbed.
“Physical force means little to a Residual Echo!” Valerius shouted, his voice strained.
“Then how do I break it?” Cormac called back, a cold dread coiling in his gut.
“Disrupt its resonance! Sever its thread from this plane!”
Cormac stretched a hand, attempting to gather the surrounding primordial energy, the ‘whisper-singing’ that was his birthright. A faint, silvery sheen bloomed on his palm, but it fizzled, dissipated into the desert air. It wasn’t enough. It just wasn't right.
Valerius, witnessing the boy’s struggle, narrowed his eyes. This raw, untutored power… it confirmed his earlier suspicion. “Do not merely call the energy, Cormac! Focus it, shape it into a potent chord, and *hurl* it forth!”
Cormac understood. He closed his eyes for a heartbeat, letting the endless, vibrant hum of the Delta flow through him. He found a focal point, drew the disparate strands of raw vibration into a tighter, denser knot. A sphere of shimmering, pearl-white energy coalesced above his outstretched palm, throbbing with a contained, furious song. With a practiced flick of his wrist, a motion as familiar as skipping stones across a dry riverbed, he propelled the resonant orb toward the charging beast.
It struck the Residual Echo with a silent concussive force. A soundless shriek tore through the air, vibrating in Cormac’s teeth. The orb clung to the spectral mass, its focused energy beginning to unravel the beast’s lingering form. It rolled, convulsing on the ground, a futile attempt to dislodge the disruptive energy. But the whisper-song, once ignited, drew sustenance from the very essence of the Residual Echo, burning with an unyielding, destructive resonance.
Valerius watched, a gasp catching in his throat. This wasn’t just raw power; it was an intuitive, devastating mastery, one that dwarfed his own experience. The boy’s whisper-song, unchecked and untaught, was clearly superior to the beast’s fading strain.
Cormac poured his focus into the attack, a low hum vibrating through his body, ensuring the resonant orb did not falter. He felt the Echo-Beast’s struggle, its resistance weakening. After what felt like an age, but was perhaps only thirty seconds, the Residual Echo gave one final, desperate shudder. Then, it dissolved, its spectral form consumed, its very essence burned away in an instant.
Both Cormac and Valerius let out ragged sighs.
“Is it truly done?” Cormac asked, his voice hoarse.
“Yes… For now. Absorb its lingering power. Unless you wish to draw another to this place.”
Absorbing the essence wasn’t difficult. Cormac extended a hand over the still-twitching corpse, imagining drawing in the vibrant, invisible strands of energy that lingered. A faint, pale hum, the same color as the dissolved Echo, flowed from the beast and seeped into his skin.
For the first time in his life, Cormac felt a chilling sensation. It was a cold, deep hum that settled within him, making him feel stronger, larger, yet alien. A thrilling, eerie pleasure unfurled through his veins, leaving his entire body shivering.
“Is this truly your first time absorbing a creature’s essence?” Valerius asked, his voice tight with disbelief.
“Yes,” Cormac replied, still processing the strange, unsettling fullness within him.
Valerius shook his head slowly. The innate ability of a whisper-singer typically grew slowly, a gradual awakening with age. But to draw such power, such a potent 'whisper-song' from the Delta’s deep currents, without any formal training or prior absorption… it spoke of an extraordinary, perhaps unprecedented, innate strength.
Realizing the full implication, Valerius cleared his throat. “I have been… remiss, young master. May I inquire after your House, your lineage?”
Cormac flinched at the formal address. It felt wrong, a heavy burden placed upon him. He couldn’t quite articulate why, but he did not wish to see this old knight, a man of such evident skill, lowering himself.
“Let us tend to your wounds first,” Cormac said, cutting through the sudden formality. “Then we can speak.”
Valerius still bled profusely from the gashes above his eyebrow, where the Echo-Beast’s claws had raked him. He nodded, accepting the shift in topic.
---
Valerius groaned softly, a low rumble deep in his chest. Cormac applied a thick, pulpy paste of canyon herbs to the knight’s lacerations, wrapping them with strips of clean cloth. His humble dwelling, carved into the canyon wall, was always stocked for such minor injuries. Ideal healing, instant and flawless, required a profound drain of whisper-song, a cost Cormac knew too well from treating his mother’s occasional scrapes. Repairing a torn scalp would likely consume all his stored energy, leaving him utterly vulnerable.
“My apologies, young master,” Valerius began, his voice laced with deference. “To think I imposed such a task upon one of your station.”
“I have told you,” Cormac said, his tone sharper than he intended, “I am not of any ‘station.’ I am a shepherd. My father’s identity remains a mystery, even to me.” He held Valerius’s gaze, trying to impress upon the knight the sheer absurdity of the honorifics.
After a brief, silent contest, Valerius chuckled, a wry, tired sound. “Alright, alright… cease that formidable stare.”
Cormac allowed a small, almost imperceptible smile to touch his lips.
“But I must ask,” Valerius continued, shifting on the crude cot, “why does one so gifted, a whisper-singer of such potent raw power, tend to goats in this forgotten corner of the Delta? No disrespect to your work, but it seems… ill-suited.”
It was the same question Cormac had put to Valerius yesterday, simply inverted. Why was Valerius, a knight, hunting Echo-Beasts in this desolate place? Cormac couldn't answer with the same quiet pride Valerius had shown. He felt no pride in shepherding; it was simply what he *did*.
“It is a long story,” Cormac said, his voice flat. He began to recount his childhood, the tales his mother had woven—fables of cruel Houses, of whispers-singers hunted and enslaved, of the world beyond the canyon walls as a place of endless hunger and ambition.
Valerius listened, his expression somber, his gaze distant. When Cormac finished, the knight nodded slowly. “She was wise, your mother.”
“You truly believe so?” Cormac asked, his eyebrows rising slightly. He had expected Valerius, a man of evident station, to dismiss his mother’s warnings as the paranoid ramblings of an isolated woman.
“Twenty years past, the House Argent, whom I served, clashed with the Great House Kael,” Valerius recounted, his voice suddenly heavy. “Of three thousand Argent knights, over nine hundred fell. Nearly a third.” A tremor went through his hand, resting on the bandages.
“The true tragedy,” Valerius continued, his eyes unfocused, “was that every soul I held dear was among them. My two closest battle-brothers. My wife. My son. Only I survived.” His face, etched with lines of ancient grief, carried a sorrow too profound for words. Cormac could only guess at its depth, a sorrow perhaps mirroring his own when he lost his mother, though Valerius’s seemed to stretch further, like a deep and poisoned river.
A long silence settled between them, broken only by the rustle of the desert wind. Valerius eventually brightened his expression, a practiced mask falling into place. “Your mother spoke with wisdom, Cormac. The life of a knight, or any with true power, is often more fleeting and fragile than a commoner’s. But in one aspect, she was mistaken: the latent power you possess, your whisper-singing, far exceeds that of a mere knight.”
“Does it?” Cormac murmured, skepticism lacing his tone.
“It is… humbling, in my current state, to admit this,” Valerius said, a dry smile touching his lips, “but I am a knight of considerable renown within House Argent. Yet, you, without even truly understanding what it means to absorb a creature’s essence, dispatched a beast that would have given even me pause.” Valerius took a slow sip of goat’s milk, then met Cormac’s gaze. “That raw, untamed ability, Cormac, marks you as noble-tier. Not merely a noble, but one from the upper ranks of the Spires.”
To Cormac, the words felt unreal, a distant hum without substance. Perhaps it was the lifetime of believing his mother’s assessment that his talent was merely that of a canyon protector, a shepherd-guardian. Or perhaps Valerius was simply exaggerating, blinded by the raw power he’d witnessed.
“My mother said my father was a knight,” Cormac said, his brow furrowed. “Could she have been mistaken about his strength?”
“Exceptions exist, always,” Valerius explained. “Not all children born of formidable parents are formidable themselves. Sometimes, a noble-tier whisper-singer arises from knightly blood. These cases are rare, but they happen.” He paused, a flicker of something unreadable in his eyes. “Consider the Delta’s oldest tales. The Great Architect. Born of a stone mason. Power does not always follow the bloodline, only the deep current.”
“For that reason, Cormac,” Valerius continued, leaning forward, “I believe you must descend from this plateau.”
“Why?”
“Because humanity requires more nobles, more true whisper-singers, more skilled knights. We are not yet the undisputed masters of this world. The Echo-Beasts, the Elder-Kin, the Deep-Blooded who were cast aside in the Primordial Dawn—they stir, waiting for their chance to reclaim what they believe is theirs. And meanwhile, the Houses of the Spires squabble amongst themselves, waging endless, petty wars. A strong, virtuous whisper-singer such as yourself is desperately needed, even if it is just one more.”
Elder-Kin. Deep-Blooded. Cormac had only heard of such beings in his mother’s oldest, most fanciful tales, stories whispered around dying embers. To him, they were as unreal as the gods of legend. Yet, Valerius spoke of them as tangible threats, beings that clawed at the edges of the known world.
“Besides,” Valerius added, his gaze softening, “it is a waste for a talent like yours to languish here. You are not truly content, are you, living out your days as a shepherd?”
Cormac remembered his evasive answer yesterday, the unspoken yearning. He remained silent for a long moment, then gave a slow, reluctant nod.
“Your mother’s fears were understandable,” Valerius pressed gently, “but they are largely unfounded for one of your potential. Ordinary knights might be vulnerable, but even the Great Houses show a certain degree of respect toward fellow noble-tier whisper-singers. And one as powerful as you? Your whisper-song would earn you a place beyond question.”
“So I would not be dragged off, enslaved by some House against my will?” Cormac asked, a deep-seated fear still vibrating within him.
“As with all things in this world, Cormac,” Valerius said, his voice grave, “there are no absolute guarantees.”
A torrent of conflicting thoughts swirled through Cormac’s mind, a cacophony of fear and burgeoning hope. He wanted to believe Valerius, to shed the life he knew for something grander, but the lifetime of ingrained apprehension, of his mother’s dire warnings, refused to vanish. These two powerful currents, fear and ambition, clashed within him, creating a heavy, discordant tension.
Valerius waited patiently on the cot, his body wrapped in makeshift bandages, watching Cormac’s silent struggle. Minutes stretched into a long, quiet vigil.
At last, Cormac spoke, his voice low, almost a whisper. “What would I gain, should I descend?”
Reading the nascent determination in Cormac’s eyes, the faint but undeniable hum of decision, Valerius smiled. “That, young whisper-singer, depends entirely on what you desire. Wealth, fame, power… or perhaps family, friendship, and the quiet satisfaction of purpose. The Spires offer all of it.”