( This Sleeper, watching, waiting, biding. What is time for a creature cursed with immortality?

Amid the swelter, his chains are as a second coat, straddling each other, burdening him down. He feels the young man's presence, the age and vintage of it. Tastes, for all he is fettered — and absorbs.

He cannot exit his own chains. It need not be done, to speak, like a quiet rumbling that resonates as crackles in the ground and words only in the thoughts of his visitor. )

I hear you... I sense you. Little... master.