Ea's Echo comes back

Ea’s echo came back only after he untethered himself from the need to have it, as if recognising him worthy of returning to. At last, the thing he’d let loose came back, on its own, dressed in the absence of a fight. This is Non-Intent yielding predictable results, but to Aryat it smells like submission. He dips into it with his mind, like a drop of oil into water.

What he senses is the fleeting nature of this unique event, a fragile butterfly threatening to take flight, constricting his breath and tightening the space behind his sternum. Here it is, the echo of Ea’s signature, the one he hunted for, pretended for, and offered a piece of himself for. The cost of it has been paid in silence. Does she know her signature meandered to him? Not important right now.

His fingers hover over the control lattice, and the whole structure thrums like something half-born. Not ready. Not protected. And he knows better. This is a Non-Intent signal—fragile by nature, not design. He knows what it needs: two resonance anchors, minimum. One to hold, one to calibrate.

And yet, he wants to see, to measure how close he is to the Antari codes. Their Library and Ea, its awkward and unlikely custodian, are here waiting to kneel.

If not processed tightly, the signature might snap. Even knowing the backlash could erase the trace entirely, he touches the edge anyway—just a little. Just enough to risk it.

“You summoned me?” Draelh hangs in the periphery like mould—always there, always waiting. “Or I summoned myself? It’s unclear.”

His beady eyes flick between Aryat and the lattice—sharp, narrow things, like daggers too small to threaten but too precise to ignore. Their edge comes not from violence, but from self-imposed hunger, the kind that knows it won’t be fed unless it proves useful.

“Pretty pure stuff,” Draelh sounds casual while checking Ea’s signal. His tone slips between awe and affectation. “How d’you get it?”

Aryat notices the question. A trace of surprise moves behind his heavy gaze, enough to make clear Draelh shouldn’t have asked.

“Right. I’ll run it,” Draelh corrects himself, folding inward like a wound that knows its shape, then scrambles to his work.

Aryat steps into the projection circle. The stone is cold beneath his feet, but it answers him, and Ea’s echo hums just under his ribs. He drinks her signature in—this frequency of simply being without reaching for anything, the Non-Intent. It suffocates him, binds him, but he waits and he tolerates its softness. It came back on its own. That’s all the permission he needs.

Crackle. A faint light all around him. He regards it lazily, and yes, it’s just noise, a well-designed veil for the uninitiated. He smiles. Noise means resistance. And resistance is the flavour of entry.

Draelh cuts the signal.

“Wouldn’t’ve held long,” he says, shrugging like his bones itch. “Noise might be a deliberate encryption too. We need more people here to run this properly. You know … without any loss. No loss, right?”

He lets the words out, even as apprehension gnaws at the back of his throat. There are some things Aryat allows—true things he doesn’t disintegrate you for. Preserving Ea’s signature is one of those true things. He knows it must not be corrupted. He felt it in Aryat’s breath once.

“We’ll just need someone to hold the resonance calibration. Maybe someone to monitor your cuffs. That’s all.” His twitchy fingers fumble at his pockets.
“Some safeties. But you know… Vheron would know even better. He’d think of more… measures. Systems. Ways to… prevent things. Bad things…” He flickers his starving eyes. “…from happening to you.”

Aryat’s mouth shapes into a smirk.
Achievement unlocked.

“No loss,” Draelh shapes his words into a peace treaty. “The signal’s still crisp, loaded, ready for your word. Just… you know, more people.”

“Good.”

“Wanna test anything else?” Draelh fills the next silence.

He doesn’t. Not with the lattices or resonance echos, anyway. He wants to test the levels of Draelh’s anxiety, which are waiting for him, longing for him to push against. Draelh licks his lips, as if trying to erase everything he said. He spends ages putting his tools away. His throat constricted, each swallow a struggle as he steals glances at Aryat, trapped by an unseen force, arrested by the need to stay. He is always free to leave, but he never wants to.

“Your fear is beautiful,” Aryat sends towards Draelh. Ah. This never gets old.