The nights became my sanctuary.
By day, I wore the mask of the Hollow child: silent, obedient, ignored except when there was work to be done. But when the moon rose and the village drifted into slumber, I stepped beyond the reach of firelight and into the dark fields. There, in the embrace of shadow and silence, I pursued the rhythm I had discovered—the hum beneath all things.
I recorded everything.
On scraps of bark, in the dust of old walls, in the grooves of memory—I kept logs. Breathing patterns, heart rhythms, postures. The angle of my spine against the ground. The sharpness of my focus, the depth of my calm, the stirrings of emotion that shifted the resonance I sought. Each night was a failed experiment, and yet each failure left a trace—a narrowing of the path.
Progress was slow. Painfully slow. But it was progress.
For weeks I felt nothing, save the ache in my bones and the burn of sleepless eyes. Then, a flicker. A whisper. A quiver of something vast pressing close before it retreated. Enough to keep me going. Enough to prove I was not chasing madness.
And then—I wasn't alone anymore.
I first noticed her on a moonless night, when the stars carved their cold fire across the black sky. I had been lying flat in the fields, palms pressed to the dirt, listening to the ground hum with the faint rhythm of roots and worms, when I felt eyes on me.
I sat up quickly.
She stood at the edge of the field, her frame half-hidden in the tall grass. Thin, wiry, younger than me by perhaps a year. Her eyes glinted like shards of glass catching starlight, wary yet curious.
A Hollow.
I knew without asking. The way she held herself—aloof, apart, like someone used to silence pressed on her from all sides.
"You're… listening," she said at last. Her voice was quiet, hesitant, as though she hadn't spoken in days.
I nodded.
"To what?"
"The world."
She tilted her head, confused but not mocking. Most would have sneered. Most would have walked away muttering about madness. But not her.
That was how I met Kael.
She came back the next night. And the next. At first, she simply watched from a distance, wordless. Then she drew nearer, inch by inch, curiosity pulling her closer until she sat in the grass opposite me, mirroring my posture.
Finally, one night, she asked:
"Why do you do it?"
"Because I refuse to accept that we're empty," I said. My voice was harsher than I intended, but I didn't soften it. "They call us Hollows. They think we're broken. I think… we're just different. The channels they're born with—we weren't. So we need another way."
"And have you found one?"
I looked up at the stars, then back to her. "I've felt something. Once. A flicker. Like the beat of a drum beneath the earth. It wasn't mine—but it was real. If I can learn to follow it, maybe I can make it mine."
She was silent for a long time. I thought she would laugh at me. Instead, she nodded.
"I want to try."
And so we trained together.
At first, I taught her what I had discovered: the stillness, the surrender, the way to quiet the mind until the hum of the world leaked through. She tried—truly tried—but it didn't work for her. She grew restless, frustrated, her breathing shallow with impatience.
One night, she snapped.
"This isn't me!" she shouted, throwing herself to her feet. "I can't sit here like stone and pretend I'm part of the dirt!"
I blinked at her, startled. But instead of scolding her, I watched. She paced in circles, fists clenched, her body swaying with restless energy. Then, almost without thinking, she began to move—not aimlessly, but with rhythm. Steps that matched her breath. Twists of her arms that flowed like water. A dance, unrefined yet instinctive.
The air shifted.
I felt it before she did—the faint stirring of resonance around her, like wind bending to her rhythm. Her movements carved patterns through the night, and the world… answered.
She froze mid-step, gasping. "Did you feel that?"
"Yes," I whispered. "Keep going."
And she did.
From then on, Kael found her resonance through motion—through running across the fields, spinning in circles, leaping, and twisting until her heartbeat matched the rhythm of the wind itself. She was a storm in motion, while I was stillness rooted to the earth. Two opposites, yet bound by the same discovery.
We gave it a name.
Resonant Tuning.
It was not the wielding of Aetherka—not yet. We could not shape fire or steel our bones with strength. But it was the first crack in the wall, the first bridge across the abyss they claimed we could never cross. By matching ourselves to the patterns of the world, the energy began to echo within us, faint but undeniable.
I found my harmony in silence. She found hers in motion.
Two Hollows. Two frequencies.
And with that, came the revelation that changed everything.
One evening, as we sat catching our breath after hours of practice—Kael's chest heaving from exertion, mine steady from stillness—she spoke a truth I had only dared whisper in my heart.
"If I can find my way," she said, "and you can find yours… then maybe anyone can. Maybe every soul has its own path."
The words hung in the air, dangerous, electric.
It was blasphemy. To the villagers, Aetherka was a divine gift, granted to the chosen few. To suggest otherwise would be to spit in the face of the order that ruled them.
But I felt my lips curl into a smile.
"Yes," I said softly. "Everyone can use Life Energy. But the way to it… is different for each soul."
She smiled back, fierce and bright despite the shadows under her eyes. In that moment, we were no longer Hollows. No longer empty.
We were something new.
We were Echoes.