Sai stared at the entrance to the cave that he'd discovered behind the ruined ziggurat in Somber Tune. He could see inside just fine; the not-light that he'd first noticed in the Shadowed Citadel seemed to permeate the entirety of the Vale. The grasses of Somber Tune gave way to a deep moss that covered every patch of the ground inside. From deeper within, he could hear waterfalls.

  He looked up. The cave entrance was a narrow gash in an otherwise smooth face of the void mountains that formed the northern wall of the Vale. Higher up the face, maybe ten meters or so, he could see the lip of a cliff and the tops of several trees growing farther back from the edge. There was something up there. He could feel it. "Do you suppose this cave will take us up there?" he asked.

  "Chirp!" said the raptor.

  Sai nodded. "Me too," he replied.

  The roar of falling water inside the cave was deafening. Not far from the entrance, water cascaded down from above and into a chasm filled with the starry black of Syn's Void. Sai peeked over the edge. He could make out another cave below, but beyond that was only darkness. "Not going down at the moment," Sai muttered.

  He barely heard the raptor's growl over the roar of the water, but he could feel the warning through their psychic link regardless. Gripping the long tepoztopilli Coatl-ome had made him in memory of the spears he'd always wielded for the Horde, he hurried away from the edge before the fluttering emerald drake could knock him over the edge. The raptor leapt to try and bite it out of the air, but it swooped nimbly away. It flapped its way towards the ceiling, spun around, and reared back its head with a great inrush of air.

  Which was when Sai stabbed it through the belly with his spear and slammed it to the floor of the cave. The raptor was on it immediately. The winged wyrmkin screeched and thrashed only briefly. Once the raptor was finished, Sai yanked free his spear. "No fire breath today, thanks," he said.

  They worked their way up through the network of caves, always choosing the path that sloped upwards. At times they had to scramble over boulders or up jagged walls, but they managed to continue ascending until they came to a long hallway through which whistled a cold wind. Sai shivered and rubbed his arms. "Where is this wind coming from?" he asked. "There's no wind in the Vale." He turned to follow the wind to its source but stopped after just a few steps. He cocked his head. "Do you hear that?"

  "Skree?" asked the raptor.

  "I'd swear I heard a voice," Sai said. He looked around. Beside the tunnel they'd just crawled up was another, narrower passage strewn with rubble that led back below. "There it is again!" He hurried down the second passage, faster than was entirely safe. The faint voice echoed through the passage, too soft to make out the words, but still somehow familiar.

  Sai shimmied past a stalagmite at the end of the passage and into a small chamber. Save for a few scattered boulders, a damp collection of stalagmites, and the echoing voice, it was empty. The orc paced through the chamber, checking behind all the rocks to try and find the source. Then he stood at the center of the room and cocked his head. He could almost make out the words.

  "Shall I now share a new nightmare? The wyvern tosses you from its back. You fall, screaming and tumbling through the empty sky. A lizard below catches you. You thank it for saving you. Its eyes are cold. It sinks its teeth into your neck. You scream and break free, but you are surrounded by lizards. All of them bite and claw and tear. They do not hear your pleas."

  Sai shook his head. "I can't make it out," he said, "but it's definitely louder here." He turned at the center of the room, searching for the source of the voice. Soon he stopped. No matter which way he turned, the echo always came from behind him. He craned his head around without turning his body. Then he shrugged off his pack and held it in front of him. It echoed. "It's coming from my pack," he said. He opened the top flap, and the echo got louder. "I have an echo in my pack." He closed his pack, muffling the echo. "Okay," he said, putting it back on his back. "Sure. Why not?"

  This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

  "Chirp!" said the raptor.

  Sai glared at her. "Now I just need to figure out how to get rid of it," he said.

  They headed back up the passage and down the hallway towards the wind, stopping only to put down the pair of werewolves that tried to ambush them. A cleft in the rock at the end of the windswept hall led back out of the caves and onto the overlook Sai had seen from below. The wind still blew, coming from down the mountains to the north. "How is that possible?" Sai cried. Then he stopped. "Do you hear music?" he asked. The song rode the wind with the voice of the earth and the trees. Sai had not had many opportunities to hear Belasolu perform, but he recognized the music immediately as one of the elf's magical woven songs. This song, though, sounded sad.

  "Grrr…" the raptor said.

  Sai followed the music wafting on the breeze to an outcrop that looked out over Somber Tune below. There, beside an ancient oak tree, sat an elf playing an ornate lyre. For a moment, Sai thought the musician was Belasolu. He shared the songweaver's wooden skin, leafy hair, and diminutive stature. He even wore a similar green, knee-length tunic that bore the sheen of a leaf in summer. But Sai did not recognize the lyre the elf played, and when he turned to look at Sai, the musician's face was unfamiliar. Belasolu had not joined him in the Vale. Indeed, Sai remembered with a sigh: Belasolu wasn't actually dead.

  "Greetings," said the elf. He did not stop playing when he spoke.

  Sai walked to the edge of the outcrop where the elf stood. "What is an elf doing here?" he asked.

  "That is a complex question with a long and complicated answer," said the elf. "In summary, the Song is here, so that is where I am."

  "Well that's cryptic," Sai said with a frown. "You know this is Syn's domain, right?

  "It's not," the elf said. "The Song plays on this overlook, and while the Song plays here, this place is mine."

  Sai blinked. "Oh," he said. "You're a god. Kunago."

  "You honor me," said the Sorrowful Bard, still playing the song of Serinor itself. "I'm but a demigod." Sai searched for a response, but Kunago continued. "I hear you've brought your echo back to me."

  "My…" Sai started to say. His eyes widened. "Wait, can you stop this echoing?"

  Kunago nodded. "Let me have the echo," he said.

  Sai sighed and rubbed his eyes. "How in Serinor am I supposed to hand you an echo?" he asked.

  "Grow, fading echo," sang Kunago. The song shifted from its lamenting strains to something dark and foreboding. "Ring throughout the Vale."

  "No!" Sai cried. The echo grew louder and louder, its words forever just outside his ability to understand. "Don't make it louder!"

  Kunago played on, the echo weaving with his song as it grew louder and louder. "Now feel it ring within your being, mortal," Kunago intoned. The air spoke with him.

  "How can I not?" Sai shouted. "It's loud enough to make my teeth vibrate!"

  The song changed again, returning to its original sad strains. "It's not the sound setting your teeth on edge," said the Sorrowful Bard. Though the music had died away, the thrumming of the echo remained in Sai's ears. "It is the power flowing now through you. I have restored to you the Shadowed Voice of the Eternal Nightmare. Speak as it."

  "Wait," said Sai with Syn's voice. He clapped a hand over his mouth. Kunago had been telling the truth. Sai cleared his throat and rapped his chest. The gestures were meaningless, he knew, but it helped him find his own voice again. He suspected it might take him a while to get used to controlling whose voice he spoke in again. It felt like it had been forever since he'd lost the Shadowed Voice. "Does this mean I can command monsters again?" he asked in his own voice.

  "It does," Kunago said. "Now when you speak, they'll hear their master."

  Sai laughed. "This is the best news I've heard since I woke up here," he said. "I can do anything in here now."

  "The Shadowed Voice will not replace your shackles," Kunago warned. "Not here. The Nightmare's yet too powerful."

  "Even if I can't enslave other monsters like I do the wyrmkin, I can still tell them to leave me alone," Sai said with a shrug. "You've given me an amazing gift."

  "I've yet another gift to give you," Kunago said. The Sorrowful Bard strummed a powerful chord on his lyre. "Ring louder, fading echo. Louder yet."

  "What? Louder" Sai asked. The power of the echo grew louder in his ears. "It gets louder?"

  "Resound my presence throughout all this Vale," said Kunago, though by the end, the echo had grown so deafening that Sai could no longer hear the words.

  "WHAT?" Sai shouted. "TALK LOUDER! I CAN'T HEAR YOU OVER THIS NOISE!"

  Kunago said something to him that he couldn't hear. But the elf pointed down into Somber Tune at the ruined egg chamber where Coatl-ome lived. Then he turned his back on the orc and went back to playing existence into being.