The dream was always the same.
Kaelen was drowning. Not in the frantic, air-starved way of a man pulled beneath a wave, but in a slow, eternal descent. He drifted through a city of impossible scale, its spires and arches carved from mother-of-pearl and coral. Luminescent jellyfish pulsed in silent courtyards where statues of long-forgotten kings stood vigil. Sunlight, filtered through a mile of ocean, dappled the streets in shifting patterns of gold and deep, mournful blue.
It was beautiful. It was a tomb.
And it was silent, save for one thing: a low, resonant hum that was not a sound, but a feeling. It vibrated in his bones, a thrumming chord of immense power and profound sorrow. It was the Echo. It had been with him since childhood, a constant, inexplicable companion that the priests of the Sun-Throne called a blessing and the village physicians called a peculiarity of the mind.
He was walking through this sunken plaza, drawn as always toward a great, circular dais, when a shadow fell over him. It was not the shadow of a cloud or a leviathan, but of pure, star-devouring nothingness. It blotted out the light, and the gentle hum of the Echo twisted into a shriek of rending metal and breaking stone. The city began to crumble around him, and from the darkness, a single, blood-red eye snapped open.
Kaelen jolted awake, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. The straw mattress rustled beneath him, and the familiar, homely smells of dried herbs and woodsmoke filled his nostrils. He was in his small room above the village tavern, "The Grinning Griffin." The Echo was still there, a faint, steady thrum at the edge of his perception, a comforting anchor after the terror of the dream.
Dawn was just brushing the sky with pale gold over the rooftops of Oakhaven, a village nestled in the fertile valley of the Sun-Kingdom of Lysterium. From his small window, he could see the distant, glittering peaks of the Sunspire Mountains, and beyond them, the ever-present, faintly shimmering dome of the Aetherial Barrier—the magical wall that had protected the Five Realms from the Blighted Lands for a thousand years.
He dressed quickly, pulling on his simple tunic and leather breeches. Downstairs, the common room was quiet, smelling of last night's ale and the promise of this morning's bread. His adoptive father, Borin, was already at the hearth, his broad back to the room as he stoked the fire.
"Dreams again?" Borin asked without turning. The old soldier's hearing was sharper than a hawk's sight.
"The same one," Kaelen admitted, taking a loaf of yesterday's bread and beginning to slice it. "The city. The... fall."
Borin grunted, a sound that could mean anything from sympathy to dismissal. "The past is a ghost, boy. It can't drown you unless you choose to breathe its water. Focus on the now. The King's Tithe-collector will be here by noon. I need you to take the south pasture count. And try not to get lost in your head while you're at it."
It was the same gentle admonishment Kaelen had heard all his life. He was a dreamer, a boy with his head in the clouds—or in his case, in a sunken city at the bottom of the sea. He was an orphan, found by Borin as a babe swaddled in strange, silver-threaded cloth at the site of a strange, localized storm that had left the earth scorched in perfect, concentric circles. He had no past, and his future seemed to be the small, predictable life of a tavern-keeper's son in a sleepy village.
As he stepped out into the crisp morning air, the Echo shifted.
It was a subtle change, a mere fluctuation in its constant frequency, but to Kaelen, it was as jarring as a thunderclap. The hum dipped, wavered, and for a single, heart-stopping moment, it was joined by a dissonant, grinding note—a sound he had only ever heard in his dream. He stumbled, grabbing the doorframe for support.
"Kaelen?" Borin was at his side in an instant, his hand firm on Kaelen's shoulder. The concern in his eyes was real and deep.
"It's... it's nothing," Kaelen breathed, forcing a smile. "Just stood up too fast."
Borin's gaze held his for a long moment, seeing the lie but choosing not to challenge it. "The south pasture," he repeated softly. "The world is heavy enough without you trying to carry its echoes, son."
Kaelen nodded and set off, the strange dissonance in the Echo clinging to him like a shroud. The vibrant green of the valley seemed muted. The cheerful songs of the birds felt distant. He walked the familiar path, his mind churning. The Echo had never changed before. It was as constant as his own heartbeat. What did it mean?
He reached the crest of the hill overlooking the south pasture. The sheep were dotted across the landscape like moving clouds. He pulled out his wax tablet to begin the count.
And then he saw her.
A woman, standing at the edge of the Whisperwood, where the shadows between the ancient oaks were deep and cool. She was unlike anyone he had ever seen. Her hair was the colour of moonlight, and her clothes were of a fine, dark grey leather, tailored for travel, not for court. A long, slender blade was strapped to her back. But it was her eyes that held him—they were ancient and sharp, the colour of a winter sky, and they were fixed directly on him.
Before he could call out or retreat, she moved. She crossed the distance between them with an unnerving, fluid grace, stopping a few paces away.
"Kaelen," she said. Her voice was low and melodic, yet it carried the weight of command.
"How do you know my name?" he asked, his hand instinctively reaching for the skinning knife at his belt.
"The same way you hear the song of the Drowned City," she replied, her wintery eyes missing nothing. "My name is Lyra. I am a Warden of the Aegis. And the Echo you have heard all your life? It is not a dream. It is a warning. And it has just begun to fail."
She pointed a slender finger east, towards the Sunspire Mountains and the Aetherial Barrier beyond. Kaelen followed her gaze.
There, high in the sky, at the apex of the shimmering dome, a flicker of darkness pulsed. A tiny, distant crack, like a flaw in a great crystal. And as he watched, the Echo in his soul gave another painful, shuddering lurch, as if the very heart of the world had skipped a beat.
The peace of Oakhaven was an illusion. The safety of the Five Realms was a memory. And Kaelen, the orphaned dreamer, stood at the edge of a story that was five hundred years in the telling, and it was finally, terrifyingly, beginning.