"You've heard the first Whisper... The Cycle has begun."
The words echoed long after the voice had gone.
Kael Verdan stood trembling in the half-light, bare feet planted on blood-stained stone, the scent of scorched iron and ash hanging heavy in the air. His chest heaved with shallow breaths, lungs burning from the smoke no, shadow that had just poured from his skin.
The mark where the burning had begun still glowed faintly beneath the torn fabric of his shirt. The pain was gone, but something worse remained. A hollow hum inside his bones, like a second heartbeat.
Something was inside him now.
Watching. Waiting. Whispering.
He wrapped an arm around his ribs and staggered forward, leaving behind the shattered chains that once bound him. Every step felt like walking across glass. His muscles ached, his mind reeled but deep within the storm of fear, there was a strange calm.
Not his own.
The corridor ahead flickered with faint torchlight. From beyond the rusted iron door, footsteps pounded closer heavy boots on cold stone, followed by a jingle of keys and the distant echo of a torch crackling to life.
Kael stood still, eyes narrowing on the door. He should've been afraid.
But he wasn't.
The fear had burned away with the chains.
What remained was... something else.
Awareness.
The presence that had spoken to him was silent now, but it hadn't left. Its absence felt deliberate, like a teacher waiting for a student's first test.
The lock clicked.
The door groaned open.
Two guards stepped into the cell, armored in dull iron, their expressions grim. One held a baton crackling with dormant energy nullstone, a weapon that disrupted arcane interference. The other carried a thick collar engraved with glowing blue runes meant to suppress the soul's resonance.
The taller one barked, "Stay where you are, rat."
Kael didn't flinch.
"You're not supposed to be out of those chains," the guard continued, stepping forward. "We don't care what trick you pulled back down, or we'll beat the whispers out of you."
Kael raised his hands, slow and steady.
But something inside him stirred.
Not words this time.
Just intent.
A pressure. A push. A hunger.
Let go.
And he did.
The shadows beneath Kael's feet moved.
They twisted unnaturally, stretching across the stone floor like black oil spreading under glass. The torchlight dimmed as the dark reached out grasping.
The guards hesitated.
"What in the?"
The taller one raised the baton, its crystal humming
But the shadows lunged.
Light vanished in a blink. The torch extinguished with a hiss. Screams rang out short, cut off, raw. There was a crunch, a wet slap, and the sickening clatter of armor hitting stone.
Then, silence.
Kael stood in the dark, panting.
When the torchlight flickered back just a sliver from the corridor beyond he stood alone.
One guard lay crumpled in a heap, unconscious or dead. The other… gone. Only his helmet and a single gauntlet remained.
Kael looked down at his own hands.
They shook.
Tendrils of shadow curled up his forearms, pulsing with dark light, before dissolving into faint smoke.
"I didn't" he whispered hoarsely. "This isn't mine. I didn't mean to…"
"You did," the voice replied, smooth and cold.
Kael stiffened.
"This is power, Kael Verdan. Yours, now. Or mine. Does it matter?"
"What are you?" he demanded, stepping back from the bodies. "What is this?!"
"A memory. A hunger. A truth long buried beneath the skin of your world. I am the Hollow Sun. And now, so are you."
Kael felt bile rise in his throat. He turned and ran.
The prison was a labyrinth.
Narrow corridors snaked through layers of crumbling stone, every hallway lit by dying torches that flickered like nervous eyes. He passed cell after cell some silent, some filled with whispers, others with wide-eyed prisoners mumbling nonsense or clawing at the bars.
One inmate sat cross-legged in a corner, face hidden beneath a hood, chanting in a tongue Kael didn't know but somehow understood. Another, eyes stitched shut, laughed as Kael passed.
"Run, little shadow," the blind man hissed. "You woke it. You opened the black vein!"
A siren wailed somewhere overhead.
"Containment breach Cell 47." "Subject designation: Vessel." "Initiate Protocol Heretic."
Kael's heart pounded. His legs screamed in protest. The skin on his soles was raw and torn, leaving red footprints behind him but he didn't stop.
He had to get out.
He rounded a corner and stopped.
There it was.
A gate, massive and ancient, carved from black stone and framed with iron bands etched in fading gold. Chains coiled around it like serpents. At its center glowed a sigil three eyes bound in a triangle, the same symbol that had burned beneath his chest.
Beyond it… daylight.
Real, honest daylight, pale and thin through the cracks. It was close. A step away. Freedom.
Kael pushed forward.
But before he could reach it a figure stepped from the shadows beside the gate.
She did not belong to the prison.
She stood tall and poised, cloaked in a mantle of raven feathers. A bone-white mask covered her face, shaped like a serene woman's visage but with no mouth. Only eyes glowing violet and unblinking watched him from behind the mask.
Kael skidded to a halt, shadows still twitching around his shoulders.
"Who are you?" he snapped. "Get out of the way."
The masked woman tilted her head slightly, amused.
"I am a Seeker," she said calmly. Her voice was musical and chilling, as though spoken through water. "Of the Veiled Order. And you…"
Her gaze lingered on his eye, then on the mark beneath his shirt.
"…you've just awakened your first Echo. How delightful."
"I don't want any of this," Kael snapped. "I didn't ask to be chosen. I don't care about your Order."
She stepped forward, unbothered by his threat.
"That's the point," she said. "They never ask. The Echoed don't choose. The Echoes do."
Kael's fists clenched. His body still trembled from the surge of shadow. He glanced past her at the gate. The sigil on it pulsed, faintly at first then stronger, faster reacting to his presence.
Let go again, the voice whispered inside.
"No," Kael muttered. "Not this time."
But the power inside him pulsed. The world around him shifted. He felt the chains around the gate begin to shudder and quake.
The Seeker raised a hand.
Not to stop him but to observe.
"To open the First Door," she said, "you must accept what you are. You must surrender… or be consumed."
Kael's lips curled into a snarl.
"I won't be your Vessel. I won't belong to anyone."
She gave a soft, knowing laugh behind her mask.
"We all belong to something, Kael Verdan. The only difference is whether we understand it."
His hands began to glow black light dancing across his veins, his fingertips leaking shadow like smoke from a fire. The ground beneath him cracked, the very stones groaning beneath the weight of what stirred in him.
"You think I'm afraid?" Kael growled.
The Seeker didn't flinch.
"I think you were. But now... you're angry. And that's far more useful."
The sigil on the gate flared.
Chains shattered.
The ground split down the middle as black fire erupted around Kael's feet. He stepped forward, screaming not in pain, but in release as the power within him surged outward.
The First Door exploded.
A burst of force dark and thunderous rushed through the corridor, knocking torches from the walls and sending dust raining from the ceiling. The Seeker stood still amid the chaos, her cloak fluttering like wings.
Kael dropped to one knee beyond the threshold, panting, his skin steaming. Daylight grey and thin bathed his face.
Freedom.
For now.
The Seeker approached, her voice soft.
"You've opened the first Echo, Kael Verdan. You've begun the Cycle."
Kael looked up at her, eyes narrowed.
"What happens now?"
She turned, her mask catching the light.
"Now... the other Whispers will hear you."
And with that, she vanished into the shadows.