The Echo

Physical Form: Small, fragile, and indistinct. They range in size from a scavenging hound to a small child. They look like smudged, three-dimensional charcoal sketches of people or animals, their edges constantly blurring, fraying, and trailing off into smoke. They are practically weightless and physically weak; a solid strike from a weapon or a focused burst of energy easily shatters their form, reducing them to a pile of fine, scentless grey ash. The Tragic Loop: An Echo is born from an incomplete thought, and it is driven by a desperate, instinctual need to reach a conclusion. Because they lack the cognitive weight to finish the thought themselves, they swarm living creatures, trying to latch onto their minds to piggyback on their mental energy. They hunt in packs like starved scavengers. When an Echo touches a victim, it doesn't cause catastrophic damage; instead, it induces sudden brain fog, intense disorientation, and the temporary loss of immediate memories (like forgetting how to cast a specific spell, dropping a weapon because they forgot they were holding it, or losing their sense of direction). They swarm desperately to feel "real" for just a single Spark, but latching onto a complete mind overloads their fragile structure, eventually causing them to dissolve into nothingness. Reason for Breakage: The Echo haunts the deeper channels of the Drowned Reach, especially around the Sunken City and Drowned City sites — places where entire populations were drowned faster than memory could be carried out. Domain rule: the Echo is what surfaces when memory tries to reassemble itself without a body to live in. Where one is seen, a Shard is usually within a day's walk.