The circle formed around the crystal like a noose tightening.
Kimara found herself pressed between bodies that trembled with more than cold. To her left, Vess clutched her own arms so hard her knuckles had gone white beneath her blue feathers. Tears carved silent tracks down her cheeks.
"They're going to hurt us," Vess whispered, her voice barely audible. "I can feel it wanting to hurt us."
To Kimara's right, a boy named Thane rocked back and forth on his heels. His breathing came in short, desperate gasps. "My sister said... my sister said the crystal reads your soul. What if it finds me wanting? What if no Echo chooses me at all?"
Around the circle, the same terror played out in different faces. Some wept openly. Others stared at the crystal with the blank expression of animals led to slaughter. A few had wet themselves and didn't seem to notice.
Only the Korthak twins stood different.
Raex and Mira faced the crystal like it was a long-awaited lover. Their perfect blue feathers caught the shifting light, and their matching smiles held secrets that made Kimara's skin crawl. They whispered to each other in the private language twins sometimes develop, their eyes bright with anticipation.
They knew something. Something that made them certain they would survive this day.
Kimara studied them with the focus of a predator watching prey. She had grown up hating those smiles, those confident voices that had called her *broken* and *worthless* since childhood. Now, seeing them stand so sure while others wept, her hatred crystallized into something pure and sharp.
When this was over, she would make them bleed for every cruel word.
But it was the Rulers who truly commanded attention.
Vorthak the Ironbound filled the shadows like a living furnace. His skin held the deep bronze of metal heated beyond endurance, and every breath he took sent ripples of heat through the air. The four molten titans circling above his head moved with hypnotic slowness, their forms shifting between solid rock and liquid fire. When he shifted his weight, the sound was like continents grinding together.
His eyes held the satisfied gleam of a conqueror surveying his spoils. Every Phisotian in the circle was a resource to be harvested, a tool to be sharpened and used until it broke.
Sylaeth Starweaver was beautiful in the way winter storms were beautiful—brilliant, terrible, and utterly indifferent to the lives they destroyed. Her hair flowed like spun starlight, and her skin held the pale luminescence of distant moons. The five spectral forms dancing around her head sang with voices that promised both ecstasy and annihilation: deer that leaped between dimensions, trees whose leaves were tiny galaxies, flowers that bloomed with the light of dying suns.
When her gaze swept across the assembled slaves, Kimara felt the weight of cosmic indifference. To Sylaeth, they were no more significant than insects—interesting only in how they might suffer before dying.
Both Rulers watched the proceedings with the lazy satisfaction of gods playing with dolls.
One of the Judges stepped forward—the one whose spectral titan loomed above him like a mountain given malevolent life. When he spoke, his voice carried the authority of crushing stone.
"The Awakening begins. You will approach when called. You will place your hand upon the Crystal of Resonance. You will accept whatever Echo deigns to choose you, or you will be fed to the domes as meat."
He paused, and something that might have been amusement flickered across his hidden features.
"Jorik of the Kelyn line. Approach."
Jorik stumbled forward like a man walking to his execution. His mother's sobs echoed from somewhere outside the circle, but the boy didn't look back. His hand shook violently as he reached toward the crystal's surface.
The moment his palm made contact, the entire chamber erupted in light.
The crystal sang—not the pure, clear note Kimara had expected, but something discordant and hungry. Jorik screamed as energy poured into him, his body convulsing like he'd been struck by lightning. Above his head, a faint shape began to form—something small and flickering, barely visible against the chamber's shadows.
When it was over, Jorik collapsed to his knees. On the back of his hand, faint lines of silver light pulsed with his heartbeat. Initial Resonance. An Echo of wind, weak and common.
He would survive to fight another day. Nothing more.
"Kess of the Whitewing line. Approach."
One by one, the Phisotians stepped forward. One by one, they screamed. Most received common Echoes—wind, stone, small flames that would barely light a candle. Their crystals sang with brief, forgettable melodies that faded as quickly as they began.
But some didn't survive the process at all. A girl named Leta simply... stopped. Her heart ceased beating when the crystal found nothing inside her worthy of an Echo. The Judges dragged her body away without ceremony.
Vess squeezed Kimara's arm with desperate strength. "I'm scared," she whispered. "What if it kills me? What if I'm like Leta?"
Kimara looked down at the trembling girl—really looked at her for the first time. Vess was small, barely coming up to Kimara's shoulder, with feathers so pale they were almost white. Her eyes held the kind of innocence that didn't survive long in their world.
"You won't die," Kimara said quietly. It wasn't comfort—it was calculation. Vess was weak, but weakness could be useful. The girl would need protection, and protected things were grateful. Grateful things were loyal.
"How do you know?"
"Because I won't let them waste you." The words surprised Kimara as much as they seemed to surprise Vess. But they felt true. Not out of kindness—Kimara had little of that left. But out of recognition. Vess was afraid, but she was still standing. Still trying. That counted for something.
"Raex of the Korthak line. Approach."
The first twin stepped forward with the confidence of someone attending a coronation rather than a potential execution. He placed his hand on the crystal like he was greeting an old friend.
The response was immediate and spectacular.
The crystal exploded into brilliant blue-white radiance that made everyone in the chamber squint and look away. The sound it made wasn't a song—it was a symphony, complex harmonies that spoke of ice and glory and power beyond mortal understanding. Above Raex's head, a magnificent form took shape: a phoenix made entirely of frozen flame, its wings spread wide enough to cast shadows across half the chamber.
Ice Phoenix. One of the rarest Echoes in existence.
When the light faded, Raex stood transformed. His Initial Resonance markings didn't just pulse—they blazed like captured arctic fire. The smug smile on his face could have cut glass.
Even the Judges seemed impressed. Vorthak leaned forward slightly, his molten titans moving faster in what might have been interest. Sylaeth's expression remained unchanged, but her spectral forms danced with increased vigor.
"Mira of the Korthak line. Approach."
The second twin's awakening was equally dramatic. Fire Phoenix—the Ice Phoenix's eternal partner and opposite. Red-gold flames wreathed her form as her Echo claimed her, and the crystal's song became a roar of triumph and burning desire.
When it was done, the twins stood side by side like young gods. Their rare Echoes marked them as valuable property—too precious to waste in the deepest domes, too important to treat like common slaves. They would have better food, warmer quarters, and the grudging respect of every Phisotian who dreamed of something beyond mere survival.
They looked at Kimara and smiled.
"Your turn, freak," Raex called out, his voice carrying easily across the chamber. "Let's see what pathetic Echo wants a broken bird."
Mira laughed, the sound like silver bells dipped in poison. "Maybe none of them will choose her at all. Maybe she'll just... stop. Like Leta."
The Judges who had remained stoic throughout the entire ceremony actually chuckled. The sound was like boulders grinding together.
"Kimara of no line. Approach."
*No line.* Even here, they denied her the dignity of her father's name.
Kimara walked forward through a gauntlet of stares. Some pitying, some curious, most simply indifferent. She was the freak, the broken one, the girl who didn't belong anywhere.
She placed her hand on the crystal's surface.
And immediately understood why the others had screamed.
It felt like the crystal was trying to turn her inside out, examining every corner of her soul with ruthless intensity. But unlike the others, Kimara didn't fight it. She opened herself to the invasion, let it see everything—her rage, her hatred, her burning need to rise above the chains they'd wrapped around her throat.
The crystal's song when it came was... disappointing.
A simple melody, barely more complex than a child's lullaby. The light was dim, flickering, almost apologetic. Above her head, a faint shape formed—something that looked like metal filings dancing in an invisible wind.
Magnetism. One of the most common Phisotian Echoes. Barely worth the energy it took to manifest.
The Judges' laughter was open now, no longer hidden behind professional restraint. Even Vorthak made a sound that might have been amusement—a rumble like distant thunder.
"Magnetic resonance," one Judge announced, his voice dripping with mock ceremony. "How... predictable."
But Kimara barely heard them.
Because as the crystal's power flowed into her, as her Initial Resonance markings carved themselves into the back of her hand with lines of silver fire, she felt something else stirring. Something the crystal hadn't detected, something sleeping in the deepest part of her soul.
Something that whispered a single word in a voice like cosmic wind:
*Soon.*
She stood, her new markings pulsing with gentle light, and met the twins' mocking gazes with calm indifference.
Let them laugh. Let them think they understood what she was.
They would learn better soon enough.